Another American Military Intervention?
The West Calling for Peace or Making Ethiopia the Next Iraq?
Summary: Since the war in Tigray was ignited by a terrorist group a year ago by launching a preemptive attack on the Ethiopian military's Northern Command to control 80% of Ethiopian military capability, revisionists voices are now rewriting the narrative of the war, including how it started and the options the Ethiopian government had. The coordinated involvement of Western media, Western nations, and international institutions echoing a revisionist narrative departed from the reality of the ground and practically siding with the terrorist group seems to mimic what was done before Iraq was invaded and ultimately destroyed on trumped-up allegations. The recent calls by retired and active American Generals for U.S. Military intervention is a worrying escalation of this flawed narrative. The African Union should take a firm stand against any such interventions as this could lead the whole of Africa into chaos.
By: Tariku Abas Etenesh
November 14, 2021, Los Angeles, CaliforniaBackground
This week the Biden administration sanctioned Eritrea, threatening more on Ethiopia, and three American Generals in different settings called for American military intervention into Ethiopia. This is coupled with western media outlets and political analysis aggressively rewriting the narrative of the conflict that included changing the very cause of the conflict. Are all these coordinated measures to force a peace deal between the parties in the conflict or seeking excuses for intervention?
Fort Sumner and Northern Command
Suppose the Biden Administration found Abraham Lincoln alive today; what would they have done? If Biden's policy on Ethiopia is any guide to his reasoning on matters of national security it seems he would have ordered Lincoln to be taken to court and convicted for defending the USA from division and, most importantly, for waging war with the Confederates, citing the human and material toll of the civil war.
Like in Fort Sumner, where a militia attack on federal forces ignited the American Civil war, it was an attack by a terrorist group called TPLF on the Ethiopian military establishment that started the Ethiopian war. This was a preplanned and coordinated attack to possess 80% of the Ethiopian army's capabilities, which was in the Tigray region, to defend the people from foreign aggression. The terrorists attacked, killed, and disrupted four entire divisions and declared victory to the world. One might wonder, how is it possible for a terrorist group to form within a national military to plan and execute such a daring but bloody takeover without the military-intelligence apparatus knowing about it? The answer lies in understanding that this terrorist group used to lead the country for 27 years. The majority of the national defense top brass, including the intelligence, was from the group: this included the majority of generals, colonels, mechanized commanders who were TPLF members. And these were the very soldiers who turned terrorists who turned their guns on their comrades. The attack was as unexpected as it was brutal. Soldiers were slaughtered while asleep by their TPLF member comrades. According to survivors ' testimonies, female members were raped, sodomized by bonnets; tanks ran over some.
The first few weeks after the attack, when America was electing its new president, leaders of this terrorist Group intoxicated by the honeymoon of "the preemptive strike victory" were openly pronouncing on regional television that they had executed one of most "impressive preemptive military strikes" by incapacitating the Ethiopian military's Northern Division. By the time, terrorists were armed with everything a national army could have, including artillery, missiles, radar capabilities, and mechanized divisions. It was a takeover pre-planned for three decades. Seiko Tuuray, the late spokesperson of the terrorist group, was on record boasting, "now The Tigray Military Force is the greatest military force in East Africa," by making and possessing the Ethiopian military capabilities its own. And Getachew Reda, the current spokesperson of the terrorist group, said then, "we can shoot down anything flying in Ethiopian skies. We have missiles that could hit Addis Ababa. And as we have hit Gondor and Bahir Dar and Asmara (-a city of a neighboring sovereign country) and we will continue."
What happened on November 04 was Ethiopia experiencing something akin to what America experienced at the beginning of the American Civil War. The former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia, Tibor P. Nade, who was in Ethiopia when the terrorist group ignited the conflict, after observing the attack on the ground have said unequivocally that "The TPLF started the war with a premeditated attack against the Ethiopian Army's Northern Headquarters- much like the American Civil War was started by the South Carolina militias attacking Fort Sumner." This was the fact. Unfortunately, like all wars, both wars were not waged by exchanging roses and pleasantries, they were fought on ideals drawn on the sand, and sacrifices in life and property were made.
However, there is also one noticeable difference between the Ethiopian terrorist TPLF attack on the Northern Command and the South Carolina militia attacking Form Sumner. The Ethiopian Constitution allows for any region to peacefully secede if the people wanted to. So unlike in the case of the American Civil War, if any region wished to separate from the union, they could have done so following constitutional procedures. This fact was not unknown to the terrorist TPLF, as its members were central in drafting and writing the current constitution. Their objective was not to honor the will of the Tigrayan people by allowing a referendum if that was their interest. TPLF knows that if the peaceful procedure were initiated and independence was presented as an option to the Tigray people peacefully, the cause would be rejected as the Tigrayan people are firm in their Ethiopian identity. The terrorist TPLF had to create a national scenario where the people would find themselves against the rest of Ethiopia. And there is no better way to do so than to commit a treasonous attack on the national military, take over 80% of a nation's military capacity, take the Tigrayan people hostage and plunge the country into war.
A new administration, old buddies
When the Biden Administration came to power, it came with people who used to consider the now Terrorist group TPLF as their best personal friends and allies in East Africa. But these former allies who ruled Ethiopia with an iron fist were not only on the run after igniting a treasonous war but are hell-bent on compromising the sovereignty and dismantling it by "every means necessary." Biden's advisors are more on talking and communicating terms with the people who are now designated terrorists than the new leaders of the country who came to power by the people's will. And as George Friedman writes, "Geopolitics is about memory. It is about remembering patterns of behavior and understanding why those patterns repeat themselves. " The Biden administration seems to be working with the memory of TPLF as the legitimate "representative of Ethiopia" because that was the group they used to work with under President Obama. As a result, the Biden Administration seems hijacked from the start by well-money connections and well-placed voices churning one-sided take of the Ethiopian conflict -siding with a terrorist group (TPLF). The current repeated calls by retired generals who, from the comfort of their high-paying jobs and academic podiums, try to prescribe military solutions wrapped in "humanitarian necessities" is a great red line of disaster for 115 million Ethiopians.
The Generals and their Misguided Narratives
Most of these Generals seem to lack a grasp of how the conflict was initiated (or intentionally don't want to recognize it) and how propaganda has been preplanned and coordinated to elicit the kind of response they are now proposing. It is next to a miracle that Ethiopia's new government received a country teetering towards ethnic implosion because of the TPLF's draconian rule for 27 years. They don't seem to appreciate how the new government of Ethiopia survived TPLF's sabotage. Finally, such a treasonous onslaught was like a miracle. The coordinated attacks by the Terrorist TPLF group were aimed at taking control of the military and exacting ethnic vengeance on others whom they considered collaborators for their loss of power. This was revealed, a few weeks into the conflict, when Ethiopian military officers and soldiers who were under TPLF siege managed to free themselves and retaliate with what little they had in hand, and Eritrean forces retaliated for the missile attacks on their cities, TPLF started ethnic massacres by killing more than 600 Amharas and non-Tigrayans in the town Mai Kadra. The Mai Kadra Ethnic massacre is -the largest recorded ethnic massacre related to the conflict- was executed by the TPLF Youth group called the Samre. Like any sovereign country, the government would have no option but to try everything possible to revert the danger to the country. Negotiation when people were being massacred, and a significant portion of the national military under siege would have been like dereliction of sovereignty for the government. It would have been more like George Bush being asked to talk to the Al-Qaida leadership to negotiate after the 9/11 attack before retaliations.
Interventions: Destructive good Samaritanism
As the conflict in Ethiopia enters its second year, leaving thousands of dead, displaced, and with no end in sight, calls for negotiations are gaining traction. But along with the call for talks, parallel calls and threats of American military intervention are also on the rise pushed by prominent American military voices. However, the almost altruistic calls for military intervention in the name of humanitarianism threaten to push the conflict into the abyss, making hundreds of millions of Ethiopians on edge. And what is worrying is the manner with which those proponents of intervention not only exhibit erroneous take of the causes of the Ethiopian conflict but are propagating a misrepresentation and framing campaign -deliberately or not- that seems to mimic the playbook that America and Europe used to leverage support U.N. to invade and destroy Iraq- on false and fake grounds. Notwithstanding the fake reasons given for the intervention into Iraq, the result has been a humanitarian disaster and the collapse of a country. Now the same Western intervention is being called on Ethiopia for the same reason of preventing "humanitarian disasters and the collapse of Ethiopia." The objectives seemingly noble, the specter of intervention by a foreign power on internal affairs of Ethiopia, has irked tens of millions of Ethiopians who came out to object to any such interventionist destructive "good Samaritans." Ethiopia won't be like Iraq!
The elephant in the room of our collective conscience
Call for military intervention bring to our collective conscience the many military interventions of America and Europe with or without the blessing of the U.N. in various mainly non-white and geopolitically important countries, resulting in more disasters than calm. From the French interventions in Francophone Africa that have kept those countries in perpetual war-like situations for the past half-century to the UN-sanctioned interventions in various African countries, such as the DRC, the balance sheet of interventions shows more deficit in terms of peace dividends. In contrast, all these interventions have evidence of ever-growing human, societal, regional, and continental ills. The West's approach to resolving conflict through military intervention in internal matters of sovereign states has been like forcing the egg to hatch by an external force which always ends up in ruins. Most interventions with the express objective of preventing "humanitarian crisis" in countries like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen only compounded the internal problem and caused state collapses.
The same Western establishment, as if for lack of mirror in their political wardrobe, seems to believe that one more intervention in Ethiopia could do the magic. This is being suggested just months after a disastrous exit from Afghanistan revealed to the world how the country was left more desolate, impoverished, and ruined than before the Western intervention.
"We came, we saw, and he died," interventionist mentality.
For Western politicians, interventions in the "poor" nations might be just another way of scoring local political points or winning elections but for the hundreds of millions who suffer the consequences of that decision is a question of life and death. What was a "Mission Accomplished" for George Bush about Iraq was, in fact, the beginning of the worst destruction that Iraq has ever had seen. What the "we came, we saw, and he died" statement for Secretary Hillary Clinton about the killing of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was, in fact, the beginning of the destruction Libya had never seen in its history. America's humanitarian interventions have always been clearer and shortest paths toward disaster, instability, state collapse than the promised peace, democracy, and territorial integrity. Some argue, often from a moralistic point of view, why do Western Powers not learn from the ravages caused by their disastrous interventions in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan? The answer is simple: a moralistic mirror in the dressing room of the western powers, only a pool of narcissus to reflect on the glory of profit at the expense of the pains of millions.
Conflicts can't be solved militarily but by the U.S. military?
This past week saw active and retired American generals calling for flexing the American military muscle to resolve the conflict in Ethiopia. They called for military intervention into a sovereign country to stop a conflict that they deemed "will not be solved by military action." Yet, three generals, namely Major General Charlese J. Dunalp Jr. (Retired), Admiral James Stavridis (Retired), penned articles that call for the U.S. army intervention in Ethiopia while General William Zana, US army chief in Djibouti, expressed readiness to intervene if asked to do so. The generals were saying not only that the American military could solve the problem of a military conflict but that the American military presence in a military conflict zone could be a pacifying act. That is despite Antony Blinken repeatedly saying, "this is a conflict that could not be solved by military means." The generals see American intervention not as military escalation but as a pacifying act. Unfortunately, that is a claim that any layperson who witnessed world politics and military interventions by the West in the past half-century could see is at least a laughable and at worst dangerous proposition to be proposed on Ethiopia in particular.
'West-washed' revisionist narratives on Ethiopia
What is worrying is the two articles written by the Retired generals are the wrong narrative and misunderstanding of the very nature of the Ethiopian conflict to start with. General Dunlap, who is now Law Professor at Duke Law faculty, presents his case for the intervention of the U.S. military in Ethiopia as an opportunity for the United States to renew its tarnished reputation. He writes, "As the Nation emerges from Afghanistan withdrawal with all its attendant recriminations, this is an opportunity to show the world the true nobility of the American spirit…and the capabilities of the U.S. military." I am not sure if the General understood that his call for the violation of the sovereignty of a "poor" country just to soothe the tarnished name and ego of the powerful country is morally corrupt.
The other General, Admiral James Stavridison, on his part, in his Bloomberg article, titled Ethiopia's Civil War Is a Problem U.S. Troops Can Help Solve, writes that "Sending troops to East Africa may not play well in U.S. domestic politics. But three decades ago, the world stood by and watched a brutal civil war unfold in the small African nation of Rwanda." The General's attempt to link the conflict in Ethiopia now with the case of Rwanda in the 1990s, despite sounding forward-thinking and generous, is riddled with irreconcilable paradoxes for any Ethiopian.
The first paradox is that the very political group, now terrorist, TPLF, has been the key architect in forcing a "pre-genocide Rwanda" like identity politics by making ethnicity the central organizing force in the country. Political parties, regions, even businesses were regimented into ethnic lines coupled with sanctioned and legitimized hate speech. Ethnic hatred has been the running mantra of TPLF for 27 years, and America knew it and did nothing. Suppose the General is interested in stopping ethnic hatred. In that case, they should have called for support of the new government trying to tone down the TPLF made and intentionally ignited ethnic timebombs. The General doesn't seem to have a clue that the founding document of the TPLF, which is now in the public domain, starts by designating a whole mass of people, the Amharas, as its eternal enemy.
Another paradox in invoking Rwanda by the General is if America is truly interested in preventing Ethnic cleansings and killings and mass arrests of people for their ethnicity,( though no such acts should be condoned and no group, person or party be free from facing justice) Ethiopians ask why was America full-heartedly supporting a draconian, suppressive, and ethnic-animosity-selling government of Ethiopia led by the now rebels, TPLF, for 27 years? Why try to make it sound like Ethiopia's woes started when TPLF was thrown out of Power? Millions of Ethiopians would ask the generals and America where America was when all the country's prisons were overflowing with Oromo youth? Where was America when the Amharas were systematically segregated and ethnically cleansed for 27 years? Where were you when TPLF normalized hate speech against the Amhara and the Oromo for 27 years in plain sight? Ethiopians know that America was there, knew, and gave a blind eye to the atrocities committed by TPLF for 27 years on Ethiopians because the now terrorist TPLF was their ally in the fight against Islamist terrorists. The Ethiopian people were collateral damage to America. If America is seriously concerned for the people of Ethiopia, where were the voices, the threat of sanction when the same people in the Biden administration were serving Obama and knew torture, sodomization, and rape was common practice in Ethiopian prisons most of the tortures were ethnically motivated. Why were you not interested in intervening then?
African Union, Foreign Military Bases and Peace
When millions took to the streets opposing American sanctions, the exclusion of Ethiopia from AGOA, and the coordinated media campaign, most in the West have tried to belittle it as a government-orchestrated mass event rather than an opportunity to learn from the dynamics of the situation on the ground as the people feel it. The cynicism and doubt most Ethiopians have on American intentions are of America's making. As an ally to TPLF, America has turned a blind eye to human rights violations by TPLF as an allowance for TPLF's role in the fight against Islamic terrorism. But now that anti-terrorism ally of America is a terrorist group and Ethiopians feel America did not want to honor the feeling of the Ethiopian people. The talk of intervention in Ethiopia would never be a stabilizing act. It would instead lead the already deteriorating conflict into the abyss. The threat by General William Zana, US army chief in Djibouti that his army is ready to intervene in Ethiopia if asked is a dangerous act of threatening a sovereign nation. What has come for Ethiopia, has come for Africa? The African Union should learn from the upsurge in military coups in many African countries through direct and indirect foreign hands and should devise a bold stance about how and to what ends should foreign military bases on the continent could and could not be used. If foreign military bases are to be used to topple democratically elected governments what is the point of African Union and Pan Africanism? Notwithstanding the very compromised position the A.U. finds itself in, due to its finances being subsidized by donor nations, the continental body should devise a way to be independent enough to cater to the threats posed by foreign military bases in Africa.
Peace and only peace should be the only option out of the current conflict and ending the misery of millions of Ethiopians should be the objective. However, the process should not be allowed to be co-opted by Western interests calling the shots and saying who should be leading any country.
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TAE
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