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“If we do not see progress in these domains, I think the administration made clear that we will not be left with much of a choice,” said Samantha Powers

Source: Washington Post

Samantha Power has long championed humanitarian intervention. Ethiopia’s crisis is putting her to the test.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 14. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Max Bearak and John Hudson Yesterday at 1:59 p.m. EDT

NAIROBI — On the day Samantha Power landed in Ethiopia this week, its civil war — now escalating and spreading beyond the northern region of Tigray — entered its 10th month.

Amid allegations that Ethiopian troops and their allies have committed war crimes and ethnic cleansing and have driven parts of Tigray into famine, the United States has already withheld security assistance and effectively banned travel for top officials.

But Power, who is in charge of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, holds the biggest American lever of influence over Addis Ababa: more than $1 billion in annual aid ranging from health and education support to food and emergency humanitarian response, which makes the United States the largest aid donor to Ethiopia.

It’s a moment seemingly made for Power, the former U.N. ambassador under President Barack Obama who came to prominence in 2002 with her book “A Problem From Hell,” which excoriated American inaction during mass killings in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s, Europe during World War II and the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

“Samantha Power is a world-renowned voice of conscience and moral clarity — challenging and rallying the international community to stand up for the dignity and humanity of all people,” President Biden said in a statement when he appointed her.

Her work inspired a generation of humanitarian activists and helped popularize the notion that Washington bore a unique responsibility to protect the world’s most vulnerable populations, including with military force if necessary.

Power’s one-day trip Wednesday to Ethiopia, which didn’t include a meeting with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, was a test of whether she can restore faith in America’s role in preventing mass atrocities beyond its borders. So far, the U.S. measures curtailing security assistance and sanctioning officials have had little effect beyond turning Ethiopian sentiment against Washington.

“The United States has been working in Ethiopia for 60 years. USAID has spent a billion dollars in the last year in this country, including several hundred million dollars in development assistance. We’re delivering tomorrow 1.4 million vaccines,” Power said in a phone interview from the airport in Addis Ababa as she wrapped up her visit.

“There is so much we want to do together, but this is an own-goal,” she added, referring to the government’s increasingly antagonistic attitude to humanitarian aid groups, journalists and allies in the West.

Unable to control Tigray, Ethiopia isolates region already beset by famine and war

Ethiopia’s government accuses those allies of failing to back its military offensive against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a group the government has designated as terrorists but whom the West dealt with over three decades when the TPLF controlled the country before Abiy’s rise.

Members of the military gather during a ceremony for recruits in Addis Ababa on July 27. (Amanuel Sileshi/AFP/Getty Images)

Top Ethiopian officials have also accused some international aid groups of not just siding with the TPLF but also helping smuggle arms to it, and they have alleged that Western governments and media have overplayed atrocities linked to Ethiopian government forces while overlooking those allegedly committed by the TPLF.

Addis Ababa has responded defensively to allegations that it has committed crimes against civilians and hindered aid. The government puts nearly all the blame on the TPLF.

Inside the Biden administration, the option of using military force to stop the bloodshed in Tigray is seen as a non-starter. But withdrawing substantial amounts of aid is also seen as a poor option, because it is unlikely to change the Ethiopian government’s war strategy and instead deepen what is already one of the world’s most dire humanitarian crises.

Pressed on how and when punitive measures on aid might come into play, Power said she was still in wait-and-see mode. As for what she achieved at her meetings in Addis Ababa, she said she only got more commitments.

“It’s not the kind of track record that would give one confidence yet that those commitments are imminently to be met,” she said. Her requests were in line with the State Department’s recent public statements: that humanitarian aid be unhindered in delivery and that government-aligned troops from neighboring Eritrea as well as militias from the country’s Amhara region withdraw beyond Tigray’s prewar borders.The State Department has also called on Tigrayan forces to withdraw from the Amhara and Afar regions, where they have recently gone on the offensive, displacing around a quarter of a million civilians.

“If we do not see progress in these domains, I think the administration made clear that we will not be left with much of a choice,” she said. The European Union has already withdrawn most of its financial support for aid programs in Ethiopia.

The outlook in Ethiopia is decidedly grim. The government initially pushed the TPLF out of Tigray’s main towns, but the TPLF retook most of the region last month in an offensive that analysts say resulted in a large portion of the Ethiopian army being killed or captured.

The TPLF has since moved into neighboring regions with the stated objective of obliterating what’s left of the government and its allies’ military capacity. On Thursday, Reuters reported that the TPLF had taken control of Lalibela, a sizable town within the Amhara region and home to Ethiopia’s famed 12th-century rock-hewed churches.

The Ethiopian government has in turn sought to recruit widely from regional militias, drawing in fighters from parts of the country previously uninvolved in the conflict.

Asked at a news conference in Addis Ababa about Abiy’s recent use of words like “weeds,” “cancer” and “disease” to refer to the TPLF, Power cautioned that “there are many, many people out there who hear rhetoric, hateful rhetoric or dehumanizing rhetoric and take measures into their own hands

Displaced people protect themselves from the rain at a camp in the town of Azezo, Ethiopia, on July 12. The camp hosts Ethiopians as well as Eritrean refugees uprooted by the ongoing war in the Tigray region. (Eduardo Soteras/AFP/Getty Images)

Power’s past advocacy for humanitarian intervention, including with U.S. military force, has fallen out of favor in recent years as public confidence in Washington’s ability to reshape distant lands wanes. U.S. forces will conclude a 20-year occupation in Afghanistan in September, and the military will formally end combat operations in Iraq by the end of the year, Biden said last week. The two missions have cost thousands of lives, trillions of dollars and fallen far short of U.S. ambitions to bring about stability, democracy or prosperity. The protracted chaos and bloodshed in Libya following the ouster of Moammar Gaddafi in a NATO-led military operation in 2011 also dampened the appeal of humanitarian interventions.

Defenders of the administration say its lack of bold action in confronting the Ethiopian crisis does not indicate a lack of concern.

“There is a false narrative that the Biden administration does not care about mass atrocities, fueled by its decision to risk mass violence in Afghanistan,” said Richard Gowan, a U.N. analyst at the International Crisis Group. “But if you look at Washington’s approach to Ethiopia in particular, you see that the new administration does still have strong humanitarian instincts.”

Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield and the U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, “have all thrown themselves into efforts to halt the Tigrayan war, which hardly seemed to register with the outgoing Trump team,” Gowan said.

Thomas-Greenfield took to Twitter on Wednesday to denounce the Ethiopian government’s decision this week to revoke the operating licenses of Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Council, two humanitarian organizations known for their work in war zones.

“This suspension is unacceptable. I know the work of MSF and NRC well, and they are internationally respected,” she wrote, using the French abbreviation for Doctors Without Borders. “Ethiopia must reconsider this decision.”

At least a dozen aid workers have been killed since November, when Abiy sent troops to Tigray to fight the TPLF after the group allegedly staged an attack on a military base.

The United Nations says the war has left 400,000 people facing famine, while UNICEF estimated last week that more than 100,000 children in Tigray could suffer from life-threatening acute malnutrition in the next 12 months — 10 times the annual average.

Meanwhile, “supplies are just running out,” Power said.

Hudson reported from Washington.

On Tuesday, 3 August, the Ethiopian government forced two charities working in Tigray to leave – in so doing repeating the decision by the Ethiopian government in December 1985 [see below].

Then it was the military government, the Derg, that expelled Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Now it is Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who has forced MSF out.

Both expulsions took place as thousands were facing famine.

Ethiopia Suspends Work of Two Aid Groups Active in Tigray

A convoy of trucks from Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) carrying medical supplies stops by the side of the…

FILE – A convoy of trucks from Doctors Without Borders carrying medical supplies stops by the side of the road after receiving news that the road ahead has been closed by the Ethiopian military, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, May 8, 2021.

NAIROBI – Two international aid groups said Tuesday that the Ethiopian government had suspended part or all of their operations, while the United Nations humanitarian chief warned Ethiopian authorities that blanket accusations against aid workers in the country’s embattled Tigray region and elsewhere are dangerous and must stop.

The United Nations’ new Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths addresses a news conference on the humanitarian crisis in Tigray after visiting the region, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Aug. 3, 2021.

Martin Griffiths spoke to reporters amid a new push to get more badly needed food and other supplies into Tigray, where hundreds of thousands of people face famine conditions and Ethiopia’s government has been accused of blocking assistance. He acknowledged that his own flights into and out of Tigray had difficulties with searches and delays.

Separately, the aid groups Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Council said Ethiopia’s government had suspended their operations on July 30. An NRC spokesman said the stated reasons were “public advocacy” and failure to obtain proper permissions for foreign staff and that all operations were suspended.

A Doctors Without Borders spokeswoman said the operations of the charity’s Dutch section, its largest in Ethiopia, were suspended for three months in the Tigray, Amhara, Gambella and Somali regions, and the group was “urgently seeking clarification from the authorities.”

Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, warned of “dire consequences” in the regions where access to aid is already limited. MSF already had suspended operations in three major Tigray towns after three of their colleagues were killed by unknown attackers.

The Ethiopian government spokesman for the Tigray emergency task force, Redwan Hussein, alleged last month that aid groups are “playing a destructive role” in the nine-month conflict and even arming the Tigray forces that long dominated Ethiopia’s government before a falling-out with the current prime minister. Redwan didn’t respond to questions on Tuesday.

Such blanket allegations are unfair and need to be backed up by evidence, the U.N. humanitarian chief said.

Griffiths also told reporters that some progress had been made on aid delivery to Tigray after more than two weeks as 122 trucks with supplies had reached the region. The previous attempt at an aid convoy was attacked last month on the only operational land route into Tigray as fighting continues.

But some 100 such trucks are needed to enter Tigray every day, Griffiths said, adding the needs are “huge, they are urgent.”

FILE – In this Monday, Nov. 30, 2020 file photo, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed responds to questions from members of parliament at the prime minister’s office in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

He said Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed during their talks asserted that he was trying to ensure more than one land route from other parts of Ethiopia into Tigray for aid. But a route from a neighboring country such as Sudan can be “politically sensitive,” Griffiths added.

The conflict recently spilled into Ethiopia’s neighboring Afar and Amhara regions after the Tigray forces rejected the unilateral cease-fire that Ethiopia’s government declared in June as its soldiers retreated. Now the Tigray forces have said they want Abiy out.

About 200,000 people in the Amhara region and 54,000 in Afar have been displaced by the insecurity, the U.N. humanitarian chief said.

On Wednesday, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Samantha Power, is visiting Ethiopia in another push for better access to the Tigray region, which remains without phone, internet or banking services.

While Ethiopia’s government has blamed the blockage of aid on the Tigray forces, a senior USAID official last week told The Associated Press that the allegation is “100% not the case.”

EXPELLED DOCTORS ACCUSE ETHIOPIA

Source: Associated Press 4 December 1985

A French medical organization has been ordered to end its relief work in Ethiopia, and today the group’s president asserted that expulsion was the price for speaking out against Government policies that he said had killed 100,000 famine victims.

The Ethiopian Government announced Monday that it was halting the work there of Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders.

The Ethiopian Relief and Rehabilitation Commission accused the group of undermining the famine relief effort, lying, misquoting officials and engaging in a ”vicious media campaign.”

The organization’s president, Rony Brauman, speaking at a news conference here today, said aid organizations in Ethiopia were ”in one way taken hostage, becoming more or less accomplices” of the Government by staying silent.

”Or they can speak out and be expelled like us,” Mr. Brauman said.

France Deplores Move

The French Foreign Ministry today officially ”deplored” the expulsion and said the doctors had worked admirably in Ethiopia, saving thousands of lives.

Mr. Brauman insisted the program to resettle people from drought-prone northern Ethiopia to more fertile southern regions had so far cost an estimated 100,000 lives.

The Ethiopian Government hopes to move 1.5 million people south, contending that many of them would starve to death if left in the north.

An internal report provided by the medical team on Monday, only hours before the expulsion notice, suggested a death toll to date of 75,000 to 100,000. It warned that the resettlement program could kill 300,000 people if carried to completion – as many, it said, as the famine itself.

The report said Ethiopia’s resettlement program was designed to lower the population in the northern provinces where rebels are active. It also contended that the Marxist Government wanted to provide workers for new state farms.

”Each day dozens die in the transit camps,” Mr. Brauman said in an interview on Monday. ”These camps are like cesspools. There are people on top of one another who literally swim in excrement. It is abominable.”

Soldiers Are Accused

People also die in large numbers on the road to resettlement camps, he said, and survivors risk death in their first three months in camps unprepared to receive them.

He also said witnesses had reported that soldiers had beaten, imprisoned or killed some unwilling refugees.

In Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, Michel Fizsbin, head of the organization’s local office, said: ”We are facing a situation where you speak out about what you see and then you have no other choice but to leave this country. We have seen a lot and each time we have made some noise.”

Tafari Wassen, the Ethiopian commission’s chief spokesman, said the French group would be given ”a reasonable time” to leave, but he did not specify a date.

The relief commission said it would take over the French team’s operations in northeastern Ethiopia. Mr. Fizsbin said he and his 29 colleagues could be ready to leave Ethiopia within a week.

Under a contract with the Government, the doctors were responsible for medical services for 50,000 people and ran a nutrition program for 10,000.