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Those developments are in the form of two significant agreements that Somaliland (an unrecognized republic in the north of Somalia that self-declared independence in 1991) struck with countries in the region. The developments could bring simmering conflicts to a boil or add significantly to regional instability in the Horn; on the other hand, they could potentially advance peace and prosperity in the region. The uncertainty about what will follow these agreements, even in the months after they were signed, is due cause for global leaders to monitor the situation closely.

A communiqué with Somalia

The first agreement is a communiqué, which followed a meeting between Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi and Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in Djibouti on December 28 last year. In the communiqué, the countries’ officials agreed to resume diplomatic discussions, implement previous agreements, resolve ongoing conflicts, and bolster cooperation on security and organized crime. 

While initially promising, the deal has raised tensions for civilians across the region. Some Somalilanders I spoke with saw the agreement—which referred to the breakaway territory as the “northern regions” instead of the “Republic of Somaliland”—as a threat to Somaliland’s perceived sovereignty. Having the agreement signed by Somaliland’s minister of the interior, Mohamed Kahin Ahmed, instead of the foreign minister further signaled that the agreement was being approached as an internal Somali affair rather than an agreement between two sovereign entities. On their end, some Somalis were displeased that the communiqué referred to Somaliland’s delegation as the Government of Somaliland (rather than the Somaliland administration).

Abdi’s term as president of Somaliland has also been marred by delayed elections, causing controversy and leading some to believe he has no mandate to make such decisions. Opposition parties such as the Somaliland National Party (Waddani) and the Justice and Welfare party (UCID) have capitalized on this, accusing the president of jeopardizing Somaliland’s sovereignty. Both Abdi and Mohamud returned to their cities under scrutiny.

The Somalia-Somaliland communiqué’s calling on both parties to resolve ongoing conflicts brings to mind conflict in the regions of Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn, where a violent war over sovereignty has tarnished Abdi’s (and Somaliland’s) international reputation. Some civilians in these regions would prefer to not be governed by Somaliland, but rather become their own federal member state of Somalia—a real threat to Somaliland’s fight for independence and a humanitarian burden to both Somalia and Somaliland. Resolution of these internal conflicts would benefit both Somaliland and Somalia.

An MOU with Ethiopia

The second agreement is a memorandum of understanding (MOU), signed by Abdi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on January 2, granting Ethiopian naval forces access to twenty kilometers of Somaliland coastline for fifty years. In return, Abiy agreed that the Ethiopian government would engage in an “in-depth assessment” of Somaliland’s recognition. Somaliland also received a stake in Ethiopian Airlines.

Ethiopia has been eyeing sea access since Eritrea’s 1993 independence left Ethiopia without a coastline and reliant on Djibouti for port access. Abiy has repeatedly called Red Sea access an existential question for his country, worthy of holding talks with Eritrea; eventually, rumors that Ethiopia may invade Eritrea to secure port access spread, escalating regional tensions. Reestablishing a presence in the Red Sea with the MOU would not only benefit Ethiopian commercial interests, but also revive Abiy’s political legacy, which has been tainted by his handling of conflict in Tigray and the development of new crises in Amhara and Oromia.

Abdi returned from Addis Ababa to see thousands lining the streets, waving flags and expressing a patriotic fervor. If Ethiopia (an influential member of the African Union) were to recognize Somaliland, it could be a game-changer for the breakaway region, helping advance its quest to be recognized internationally, particularly as it faces pushback from Mogadishu. On the social platform X, some pro-Somaliland users prematurely celebrated Somaliland becoming the fifty-fifth state in Africa—despite it not having yet won any additional recognition globally. On January 7, Abdi convened a meeting of Somaliland’s political stakeholders to discuss the agreement, which a Somaliland official said showcased the president’s inclusive approach.

Despite these signs of support, things have not been entirely smooth sailing for Abdi. Protests occurred in the Somaliland city of Borama, where hundreds chanted “our sea is not for sale” in opposition to Ethiopian troops in their territory. Moreover, just days after the MOU was signed, the Somaliland minister of defense resigned in protest. This domestic Somaliland pushback challenges and complicates Abdi’s efforts to sell this deal as a complete victory for the Somaliland cause.

Somalia sees this agreement as a violation of its sovereignty and Mohamud has already signed a law nullifying the MOU. This largely symbolic move is Somalia’s way of asserting its jurisdiction over Somaliland; Somalia views Ethiopian efforts to establish a presence in Somaliland as an attempt to illegally infringe on its territorial integrity and sovereignty. Somalia and Ethiopia have fought devastating territorial wars in the past, and this decision also invokes the trauma within this fraught relationship. Many in Somalia have boycotted Ethiopian Airlines. Somalia even forced an Ethiopian Airlines flight (which was carrying Ethiopian officials bound for Somaliland) back to Addis Ababa. If this deal fully materializes, it could undo progress Mohamud has made to reintegrate Somalia into international institutions, sort out domestic tensions, and fight terrorist group al-Shabaab: Somali officials suggested that al-Shabaab would take up arms following the MOU, with al-Shabaab leaders swiftly issuing a call to defend Somalia’s territory.

The global response begins to take shape

In the weeks since the signing of these agreements, Washington has seemingly stuck to its “one-Somalia” policy, with several statements by top US diplomats reiterating the United States’ support for Somalia’s territorial integrity. However, a US State Department official also said that the United States supported conversations between the people of Somalia and Somaliland about their shared future, leaving the door open for potential future support depending on the results of those conversations. This also comes on the heels of an informal softening of long-standing positions, as indicated by diplomatic visits to Somaliland, such as one by General Stephen Townsend, commander of US Africa Command, in May 2022.

Beyond the Biden administration, US Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN)—the first Somali-American to serve in Congress—gave a speech to Somali constituents largely in support of Somalia, invoking ire from both Republicans in Congress and Somalilanders with US ties. 

The United Kingdom, one of Somaliland’s closest Western partners, has also expressed deep concern over the MOU, encouraging restraint and acknowledging its support of Somalia’s territorial integrity. However, one member of parliament called for the United Kingdom to recognize Somaliland in light of these developments. 

The Arab League, led by Egypt (which has a complicated relationship with Ethiopia), has been steadfast in its support for Somalia. However, DP World, a Dubai-based developer that is already heavily invested in Berbera Port, has continued to express interest in developing the port alongside Ethiopia and Somaliland. This could be an indication that the United Arab Emirates could shift its policies vis-à-vis Somaliland and the Arab League. 

The African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) have joined the international community’s call for restraint and reiterated their support for Somalia’s territorial integrity. However, Somalia rejected African Union mediation, arguing that there was no room for mediation until Ethiopia retracts the MOU and reaffirms Somalia’s sovereignty. Meanwhile, Ethiopia sat out a recent IGAD meeting that was set to address conflict in Sudan and—to a lesser extent—tensions between Ethiopian and Somalia over the MOU. Though the Ethiopian government claimed its absence was due to the meeting clashing with a “commitment to a prior engagement,” Abiy was still present at a nearby summit for the Non-Aligned Movement the next day, suggesting that he snubbed the IGAD meeting.

Despite global reactions, the MOU has persisted, and progress toward Ethiopian port access continues.

The risk of the escalation of tensions across this region—which includes Sudan, the site of calamitous security, political, and humanitarian crises—is rising. If these tensions are managed poorly, conflict could spread across the Horn of Africa and then potentially even spill into the Red Sea. However, if managed properly, the tensions could subside, making way for prosperity and economic growth.

The security interests of many countries—particularly the United States—are at stake. As tensions flare between the United States and Yemen-based Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, Washington may be looking for ways to expand its military presence in the region beyond its significant presence based in Djibouti. Over the past two years, the United States has reportedly expressed interest in using Somaliland’s Berbera port and airfield as a base for the purposes of countering al-Shabaab. Though US visits to Berbera have been carefully coordinated with the Somalian government, this engagement could be interpreted as a major victory for Somaliland in bolstering its sovereignty. With Berbera, and an eagerness for international engagement, Somaliland could potentially help the United States gain a footing to protect vital maritime routes and diversify its regional footprint away from the already crowded military hub of Djibouti. However, since Somaliland remains unrecognized, the United States would first need to get Somalia’s approval—an arrangement that could be made easier by the cooperation outlined in the initial communiqué signed in Djibouti, although such easing could be jeopardized if tension around the Ethiopia-Somaliland MOU continues to increase.

Moreover, armed conflict involving Ethiopia, Somaliland, and Somalia could complicate security cooperation agreements between Somalia and the United States in the fight against al-Shabaab. This further emphasizes the importance of US leadership and diplomacy in ensuring this tension doesn’t escalate further.

The United States should use financial and diplomatic leverage to ensure that the governments of Somaliland, Ethiopia, and Somalia act cautiously in the coming weeks, while seeking to preserve US security interests in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa, specifically regarding Berbera and its counterterrorism efforts.

The agreements seem contradictory: One calls for cooperation between Somalia and Somaliland, to some undermining Somaliland’s sovereignty, while the other outlines political and economic cooperation between Somaliland and Ethiopia, which to Somalia undermines its sovereignty. But the agreements are each rooted in promoting regional cooperation, negotiation, and partnership. In lending focus to this region, international actors must emphasize the strategic benefit that comes with cooperation. This must be the path forward, lest the world see more conflict in 2024.

Maxwell Webb is an independent Horn of Africa and Middle East analyst who currently serves as the coordinator of leadership initiatives at the Israel Policy Forum’s IPF Atid program.

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1. What do you make of this peace deal, and what should we be watching to see if it holds?

Less than forty-eight hours before the two-year anniversary of the conflict, it is a step forward that has created great hope. It is also a salutary break for the civilian populations after almost two years of conflict. Since November 2020, the war has displaced more than two million Ethiopians and plunged hundreds of thousands into famine. But this agreement is not yet peace: It is the cessation of hostilities. The composition and determination of the members of the committee responsible for the implementation of the agreement will be decisive. Above all, major questions remain unresolved, including the question of Eritrea. The neighboring nation’s role in the peace deal is not clear after it joined the war on Ethiopia’s side, which is cause for concern considering all the crimes Eritrean soldiers have committed in Tigray over the past two years. Can there be peace without justice? This is the question that Tigrayan civilians must ask themselves these days.

—Rama Yade is senior director of the Council’s Africa Center.

The peace deal is excellent news; bringing an immediate end to this particularly cruel war is good for everyone. It remains to be seen, however, if the Tigrayans will uphold their promise to disarm, and if the Ethiopians will open access so that aid organizations can bring desperately needed help to civilians. We also have to watch the actions of the Eritreans, who are a party to the conflict but have not been included in the peace deal. Are they going to suspend their military operations? Will they go home and demobilize?

—Michael Shurkin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Africa Center.

2. What role will outside countries in Africa or the West, or institutions such as the African Union and United Nations, need to play going forward? What guidance would you give them?

This is a success for African Union head and Senegalese President Macky Sall, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who all helped broker the deal. The implementation of the road map will be crucial. While the agreement claimed that TPLF combatants will be “disarmed, demobilized, and reintegrated,” fighting has been continuing in Tigray, where Ethiopian federal troops, backed by the Eritrean army and forces and militias from the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions, have been advancing since mid-October.

—Rama Yade

The West and international organizations like the UN and AU can play a vital role in monitoring the three sides of the conflict (the third being Eritrea) and holding them accountable. They of course need to be balanced, but that does not mean they can’t be tough—they shouldn’t pull their punches.

—Michael Shurkin

3. How can and should Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed move forward with governing the country as a whole? What kind of mark does this conflict leave for him?

Among the main points of the declaration signed by the Ethiopian government and the TPLF, the two sides committed to “safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ethiopia” and “restore constitutional order in the Tigray region.” This is a fundamental question. It is up to Abiy to prove that the Nobel committee was not wrong by awarding him its most prestigious recognition: The Peace Prize.

—Rama Yade

Abiy has to try to calm militants on all sides and ensure that everyone benefits from what should come next: reconstruction and development. On a regional level, a successful end to the war does not resolve other issues such as Ethiopia’s development of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt and to a lesser extent Sudan oppose. That was put on the back burner because of the war but may now return to the fore.

—Michael Shurkin

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But today, the evolving crises in their countries have exposed Washington’s lack of a clear and coherent policy for the region. Whether in Ethiopia’s year-old insurgency or amid Sudan’s military coup, the United States was ill-prepared to respond.

As a keen observer of the region through my regular contacts with officials in both Ethiopia and Sudan, and as a longtime colleague of Hamdok’s, I’ve seen this dynamic up close. By not being visible and sufficiently engaged, Washington could lose the capacity to influence policy and action to address the region’s many vexing problems. 

As the HoA undergoes dramatic changes, including sustained economic growth, a rising middle class, and a transition to stable democracy, Washington would be wise to rethink its approach to regional cooperation and use of sanctions—among other issues—and lay out a more inclusive, values-driven, and future-oriented strategy for the region. 

‘Either you’re with us or against us.’ 

During the Cold War, US engagement in the region centered on containing communist encroachment. In the ensuing years, US policy became static over several administrations and lacked strategy and coherence—not a good fit for a rapidly changing region. Then, shortly after the collapse of communism, the tragic fallout from the US intervention in Somalia stunted enthusiasm for engaging more actively in the region. 

American attention was only refocused after a string of terrorist attacks—including the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the September 11 attacks—and incidents of maritime piracy. The superseding objective became disrupting local Islamic extremists linked to a global jihadi network, and the full might and resources of the United States and its Western allies descended on the region. 

But combating terrorism and promoting trade held preeminence over all pretense of interest in addressing what Africans deemed to be more pressing priorities, such as combating drought and desertification, alleviating poverty, and promoting good governance. 

The implicit US mantra of “either you’re with us or against us” coaxed countries to choose sides in a conflict which did not offer neutrality as a position. In return for prioritizing counterterrorism and trade, countries were offered ample humanitarian aid, assistance for democratic governance, and enhanced foreign direct investment (FDI). As the war on terrorism intensified, the United States established Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti in 2002 as the region’s operational centerpiece.

In the absence of an overarching framework to understand and address complex regional priorities, the United States pursued singular agendas and responded to challenges and crises when and where they arose—preferring to focus on individual countries rather than adopting a comprehensive regional strategy. This broad agenda was deficient in depth and obligation, and as a result, long-term vision and regional diplomacy declined. 

Without clear direction and purpose, Washington was accused of abetting African despots bent on prolonging their power, either through election-rigging or violating term limits, in exchange for their cooperation in the war on terror. This dented US credibility and its ability to inspire popular policymaking and civic-minded diplomacy among the local populations. 

For example, the United States cozied up to the Meles Zenawi regime in Ethiopia and that of his successor—fully aware of their stained human-rights records and reprehensible governance. A 2018 mass uprising that drove out the US-backed Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front caught Washington flat-footed and short on credibility to influence the turn of events. Abiy Ahmed, the charismatic new leader installed in Addis Ababa, lost no time in seeking broad international support and championing Ethiopia’s interest. 

Why messaging matters

Another consequence of the lack of a clearly articulated US regional policy is the inadvertent message Washington conveys to both democratically installed governments and insurgents-in-waiting: Coming to power through free and fair elections matters—but other interests and priorities take precedence over democratic governance. 

In Ethiopia, for instance, US hesitancy to vigorously condemn a rebel assault on a democratically installed government and constitutional order was the oxygen that fueled the conflict there. The muted response by Washington and Brussels to the aggression emboldened the rebels to set their eyes on Addis Ababa, and the forcible ouster of Abiy became their end game. 

On a continent where political leaders and regional institutions have, at least officially, banned all forms of unconstitutional power grabs, the subdued US response to the unfolding rebel attempt was diplomatically unsettling and politically misguided. 

Ethiopia: The trouble with sanctions

Today, Ethiopia is mired in internal conflict with Tigrayan forces seeking to forcibly replace a democratically elected government. Faulting the United States for overt and covert assistance to one side over the other, both warring parties are snubbing Washington’s appeals and warnings at will. Daily pleas from the Pentagon and White House to cease fire and come to the negotiating table continue to fall on deaf ears. Meanwhile, the new White House special envoy to the region, Jeffrey Feltman, learned the hard way that being the US president’s emissary no longer carries the same sway it once did—and he announced this month that he’s stepping down.

While the war has quieted down somewhat as the rebels have withdrawn to Tigray, sporadic airstrikes and artillery exchanges continue to cause collateral damage. In what is nothing less than a diplomatic mea culpa, US President Joe Biden spoke directly to Abiy by phone on Monday. Biden expressed his concern about recent civilian deaths from the conflict and Abiy briefed him on efforts to address humanitarian assistance, human rights, and reconstruction. Such a gesture, though highly welcome, is unlikely to have a significant impact on the outcome of the conflict and events in the region, given the United States’ limited leverage.

Before expending sufficient diplomatic energy to reconcile the conflict, the United States has expelled the Abiy government from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) for violating that trade pact’s prohibition on human-rights abuses—a clear case of punitive economic policy gone astray. 

First, many of the allegations have since been investigated by the United Nations (UN) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, which accuse all sides of the conflict of committing them. Investigators also accused all sides of blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid and stated that they could not verify whether starvation was used as a weapon of war, as previously alleged by the UN and the US State Department. Investigators were barred from entering certain parts of Tigray and proposed further investigation into claims of forced starvation by government forces as well as gross human-rights violations in areas under rebel control. 

Second, the enforcement of AGOA violations has been selective and inconsistent. Past US administrations have been mute in the face of similar violations committed by other AGOA beneficiaries. This is why the haste to terminate Ethiopia’s eligibility before giving bilateral and multilateral diplomacy a sufficient chance to succeed has far-reaching consequences, including on US business and strategic interests in the region. 

The American-Ethiopian Public Affairs Committee estimates that termination potentially means a loss of some two hundred thousand jobs, with young factory workers—mostly poor young women and the heads of households—hard-hit, along with the mostly small- and medium-sized enterprises that supply and service those factories. An AGOA termination “would deal a serious blow to the welfare of millions of low-income workers,” Mamo Mihretu, Ethiopia’s chief trade negotiator, wrote in Foreign Policy.

Moreover, the impact will disproportionately fall on the poorest of the poor, who can least survive such a punitive action and who can least influence the war. In the longer term, this will significantly set back Ethiopia’s long-term trajectory to become the region’s manufacturing hub. 

Beyond Ethiopia, the termination would also disrupt countless livelihoods in Djibouti, Kenya, and Somaliland—neighbors whose ports Ethiopia uses for the import and export of raw materials and finished products. 

It is not lost on US policymakers that effective economic punishments must be smart and purposely targeted. Coupling trade agreements with imprecise political conditions is counterintuitive and achieves neither objective. Coming at a period of turbulence in the HoA, the termination of the trade deal throws into question the resourcefulness of US foreign policy to resolve political disputes through mature diplomatic insight before resorting to punitive measures. 

It is worth pointing out that smart sanctions and other economic tools can address specific policy goals and objectives. But sanctions should never be the first tool out of the box to resolve bilateral disputes; rather, they should be a diplomatic standby of last resort. Nor should they be applied uniformly in vastly different circumstances around the world. 

In the final analysis, hastily designed and poorly targeted economic penalties attest to the failure of diplomatic endeavors and portray a global power gradually losing influence over events and actors on the ground.

Sudan: Tuning out the US

The unfolding crisis in Sudan, where longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir was ousted in a 2019 revolution, is proving to be just as risky for the United States. 

The Trump administration’s endorsement of a debt-relief package helped the country financially recover, while the Biden administration helped strengthen the transition by supporting a hybrid Sovereignty Council. The West, along with Sudan’s Gulf neighbors, lavished Hamdok (who resigned on January 2) with promises of economic aid and FDI—on the condition, of course, that he implement painful structural reforms including removing food and fuel subsidies, harmonizing the exchange rate, cracking down on corruption, signing the Abraham Accords normalizing relations with Israel, and transitioning to elections in 2023. 

Legions of US, EU and other international officials—including Feltman, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee, and US Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power—descended on Khartoum for endless consultations. The pace and substance of the transition excited the world about the promise of a new Sudan. Meanwhile, the country’s political and military posture, guided mainly by the generals in the Sovereignty Council, pulled further away from traditional allies in the Horn and closer to Egypt. 

They conducted provocative military exercises with Cairo just miles away from Sudan’s borders with Ethiopia and Eritrea—a move that ratcheted up regional tensions at a time when Egypt and Ethiopia are feuding over a dam on the Nile River. The Trump administration’s botched attempt to mediate the Nile dispute was oddly led by the US Treasury at the exclusion of the State Department. The White House attempt to coerce Ethiopia into signing a three-way peace agreement caused the latter to withdraw from the negotiations and disqualified the United States as an honest broker. The collapsed mediation process was replaced by an African Union (AU) initiative focused on the pursuit of African solutions for African problems. 

The US strategy in Sudan is being defined without input from Ethiopia and Eritrea, consequential neighbors with a long history of influencing peace in Sudan. Ethiopia and Sudan are presently in a low-intensity dispute over their long and unmarked border. This is not the first time such disputes have arisen, and both countries are committed to peacefully resolve the conflict through the Joint Border Commission. But, regrettably, neither party can mediate in each other’s internal matters. 

However, there is a bigger lesson here for Washington: Short-lived and frequently recurring rows among neighbors should not cause the United States to exclude regional influencers and neighborhood peacekeepers from its national and regional calculus, or from the list of countries to consult. 

Following a round of “successful” meetings with both sides of the Sovereignty Council, and hours after Feltman’s departure from Khartoum, the generals staged a successful coup d’état in late October. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan seized power, arrested the prime minister, dissolved the council and suspended the coalition government. 

Working with limited intelligence on the ground and fewer friends in the region, Washington strategists were once again caught off guard. Condemned by the United States and its allies—with the exception of Egypt—and threatened with sanctions and other punitive measures, the generals continued to pay only lip service, claiming that the army had acted to prevent a civil war.

Within weeks of Hamdok’s reinstatement as prime minister and amid a deadlock with the generals over the appointment of a technocratic government, the differences in the end proved insurmountable. He finally resigned his position on January 2, and in a televised address, he told his people that Sudan’s very survival was questionable and that he had tried “to avoid the country from sliding into disaster” and wanted to “give a chance to another man or woman.” 

The voices of democracy continue to denounce any power-sharing with the military and call on it to immediately hand over power to a civilian government. For its part, the military on December 30 announced the reinstatement of the notorious national intelligence service—now rebranded as the General Intelligence Service. This can only mean more civil unrest on the streets in the coming days and the grim prospect of the use of deadly force to squelch it. 

Once again, escalating tensions in Khartoum expose a US Africa policy with limited diplomatic sway and few allies in the region who could be implored to mediate peace in Sudan. The United States must expend robust diplomatic energy to fully grasp the problems in their totality. It must also work with countries in the region in pursuit of a lasting solution. Barring that, the threat of sanctions and punitive economic measures in lieu of effective diplomacy will simply ring hollow and not give it the eminence and influence it seeks. 

Meet the new powers

The US goal of regaining commanding heights in foreign policy within the first one hundred days of Biden’s administration was an ambitious target. It is now evident that it takes more than an “America is back” mantra to reverse Washington’s eroded leadership position in the HoA.

Non-traditional partners, driven by geo-strategic interests and economic opportunism, have branded themselves as credible alternatives in the economic, political, and security spaces.

Gulf countries, plus Turkey, India, and Iran, view the Red Sea as a lifeline of global maritime logistics and seek to gain a military and commercial foothold in the region. Turkey, in particular, is quickly gaining new commercial and military traction. Distant powers such as China and Russia view the Red Sea and countries in the vicinity as an opening into the rest of Africa, a potential source of tomorrow’s raw materials, and a market for their goods and services. Supporting voices in global politics and establishing strategic military footholds are also a consideration.

In return, these new partners offer African countries financial and technical assistance, defense agreements, and access to their markets. But most important—and perhaps a key differentiator from the United States—is their policy of “non-interference” in their partners’ internal affairs. While these partners are not even a distant second to the United States in terms of foreign aid and technical, financial, and military superiority, they provide sufficient support to cause African countries to believe they have a choice of credible alternative partners. 

For instance, with thirty-nine African countries signed up, China’s dominance in infrastructure through the Belt and Road Initiative is a case in point. This is an alarming trend the United States cannot afford to ignore. 

After decades of alliance with the United States on regional and global matters—consider, for instance, Ethiopia’s UN Security Council vote to approve the 1991 Gulf War when the evidence wasn’t compelling—most African countries regrettably claim they’ve gained little in return for their longstanding ties to Washington. In 2021, the same Security Council discussed the Tigray conflict almost a dozen times, but the United States did not once support Ethiopia’s position. 

A forward-looking US-HoA engagement policy must embrace strategic competition and cooperation with new partners that have gained a new foothold in the region. As in the recent past, containing the advance of an adversary—China, in this case—is no longer a sufficient objective for engaging with the region. 

In a geo-strategic theater with competition from China and other entrants, it’s essential for the United States to assert its values and clearly communicate the interests it stands for (including the red lines in any relationship that cannot be crossed). Africans must know this with a degree of certainty, and well beyond the four-year election cycles. Consistency and predictability are imperative in international relations. 

Since early December, the US embassy in Addis Ababa, out of an abundance of caution following the collapse of Kabul, has flooded US citizens with alerts about the deteriorating security situation and encouraged them to leave the city. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China flew into the same Addis Ababa and reaffirmed his government’s support for the government and people of Ethiopia, while also discussing other regional interests. Then after a sweeping visit to several countries in the region in early January, Wang announced that China would name a new special envoy to the Horn of Africa, garnering an enthusiastic reception. This is the contrasting friendship and influence that the United States is missing out on. 

The way forward

A progressive reset of US relations with the continent is long overdue. A new Africa policy between partners, anchored in a framework of shared principles and a vision centered on economic, social, and environmental justice, as well as the democratic aspirations of citizens, would be a good place to begin. There should be relationships in which both parties recognize that each side has something to offer and gain. 

Compelling Africans to choose between the United States and new partners is a relic of the Cold War; twenty-first century Africans are capable of defining and articulating their interests and partners of choice. The Prosper Africa trade initiative is an example of a positive pivot away from the traditional donor-recipient model to bilaterally negotiated trade and investment pacts. It allows countries to benefit from their US ties and also uphold their right to cooperate with other partners. But for this to work, all sides must actively invest in building the capacity of African countries and institutions to negotiate from a position of strength and close the knowledge and information asymmetry. 

A defining feature of the HoA is its high degree of interconnectedness, both organically and by design. In 2020, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia agreed to form a new regional bloc—the Horn of Africa Cooperation, with other neighbors to possibly join later. A regional bloc within the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)—built on a convergence of economic and social interests as well as political, military, and security priorities—it deserves weighty consideration in Washington as part of its HoA engagement strategy. 

Going forward, a US-HoA policy must pay particular attention to the role of African institutions at various levels. It must focus on strengthening the capacity of African-led regional bodies such as the AU, IGAD, and the African Continental Free Trade Area. Such institutions serve to develop and enforce neighborhood consensus and standards of good governance while also collectively repelling assaults on democracy and constitutional orders. 

Biden’s remarks at the February 2021 AU summit struck the right foreign-policy chords, centering on democracy, human rights, and mutual prosperity. The administration has since declared a policy focus on counterterrorism and security, climate change, the pandemic, inclusive democracy and constitutional rule, and rebuilding post-COVID economies. But these lofty pronouncements must now be backed by resources and action on the ground. 

An Afrobarometer survey in 2019-20 showed that Africans prefer to follow the United States’ development model rather than China’s by 32 percent to 23 percent. Meanwhile, 68 percent of African citizens prefer democracy over other forms of government. Despite its convergence of values with Africans, the United States still lags behind the new partners. 

The Biden administration is well-placed to reverse past missteps and set HoA-US relations on the right course. But the fast-changing region will not wait for the United States to catch up; US rhetoric must be backed with action and signal a perceptible change of course, anchored on mutual trust and tilted toward shared values. 

Building loyal allies and gaining influence in the Horn will take time. Even then, the United States may not win over all the countries nor solve all the region’s problems. But either way, tomorrow’s US foreign policy must sufficiently exploit the HoA-US values convergence, a unique advantage not enjoyed by new entrants. This requires a shift from the transactional brand of yesterday and building on shared values and principles. 

Gabriel Negatu is a nonresident senior fellow with the Africa Center, managing director at Invest Afrique Inc., and a former Eastern Africa director general for the African Development Bank.

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Last week, the White House unveiled the first-ever United States Strategy on Countering Corruption, which outlines a plan to curb abuse of US jurisdiction for illicit financial purposes. The announcement from the White House came just days before the Summit for Democracy on December 9th, giving political legs to overdue regulatory reform, such as tightening reporting requirements for the real estate sector, a notorious loophole to stash ill-gotten cash or to launder criminal proceeds. Real estate reporting requirements dovetails with ongoing efforts to implement the beneficial ownership legislation that came out of the 2021 defense authorization.

Preventative measures go hand in hand with sanctions enforcement. US authorities have had little ability to track whether sanctioned actors move money within the US despite best efforts by commercial banks. This is a question of government priorities. In focusing on punitive measures versus prevention, the US has effectively operated as if the hard work is issuing the sanction itself when in reality, that is the easy part. Implementation and compliance are actually where the success of any policy hangs in the balance, as well as the ability and willingness of the private sector to cooperate. 

Democracy Summit

The Summit pledged a hefty $424 million in anti-corruption assistance last week, while Treasury rolled out a series of high-profile designations against nationals from Angola, El Salvador, Guatemala, Liberia, South Sudan, and Ukraine. On the same day, the State Department—pursuant to its Section 7031(c) visa restriction authority—designated nine individuals over similar corruption charges. Amongst State’s designees were Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former Angolan dictator José Eduardo dos Santos and formerly the richest woman in Africa, and Oleksandr Tupytskyi, the former Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. 

In recognition of the annual global Human Rights Day, OFAC designated fifteen individuals and ten entities from Bangladesh, China, Myanmar, North Korea, and Russia over their involvement in widespread human rights abuses. Notably, these designations included two officials linked to the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau—the entity responsible for facilitating the ongoing genocide in China’s westernmost province. OFAC released Global Magnitsky sanctions every single day last week, underscoring that financial corruption erodes the validity of democratic governance and civil society.

Focus Africa

As the crisis in Tigray worsened in September, President Biden issued Executive Order 14046, authorizing sanctions on those responsible for the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Last month, OFAC sanctioned four entities and two individuals for undermining the stability and integrity of the Ethiopian state, including the Eritrean Defense Force and Eritrea’s ruling political party—the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, criticized EU member states for not following suit. But the EU did introduce a new Mali sanctioning authority as French troops withdrew from the region after eight years, implicitly replacing military involvement with the spectre of financial remediation.

The EU has also sanctioned eight individuals and three entities linked to the Russian private military contractor, Wagner Group (including a sanction against the group itself). The organization, led by Vladimir Putin’s close associate Yevgeny Prigozhin, recently expanded its operations to conflict zones in Sudan, Libya, Mozambique and the Central African Republic. According to EU officials, three of the Wagner mercenaries sanctioned were designated for their activities in Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. These sanctions were welcomed by Washington, where Wagner and its affiliated individuals have been sanctioned since 2017. But it was the Group’s expansion into Africa that in the end triggered the EU designation. 

Sanctions on African state or semi-state actors can be very impactful because many countries maintain limited access to Western financing, particularly through correspondent banking relationships. Sanctions by the US and Europe can sever financial systems overnight, but they also risk exacerbating humanitarian crises and incentivize banks to de-risk from countries or entire regions because they see greater liability than profit. Our projection map shows a complicated web of sanctions by a wide array of global actors. 

Belarus

After flying in over 8,000 migrants in an effort to force them into the Schengen area through Poland, the US, EU, and UK took coordinated action against those responsible in Minsk. In a remarkably quick response, the EU also agreed to impose sanctions on Belavia, the airline primarily responsible for flying the migrants in from the Middle East. OFAC joined its European partners with sanctions against 20 individuals, 12 entities, and three aircraft. After over a decade of Western sanctions and pause in IMF assistance, the US has relatively little leverage over Belarus and must decide carefully when to pull the levers it does have. US prohibitions on debt and equity in secondary markets and on the potash sector shows that a fabricated migration crisis was reason enough.

More crypto sanctions… 

In coordination with both Latvian and Estonian authorities, Treasury designated another virtual currency exchange. The designation against the Latvia-based Chatex follows an inaugural round against Russia-based Suex. According to Treasury, the two exchanges have direct ties with each other, and Chatex has been “using Suex’s function as a nested exchange to conduct transactions.” Both exchanges have been used to launder the proceeds of ransomware by cyber criminals. 

These actions are part of the Biden administration’s broader efforts to counter a number of recent ransomware attacks. As part of this package, OFAC also designated Ukrainian national Yaroslav Vasinskyi and Russian national Yevgeniy Polyanin, both of whom perpetuated recent ransomware attacks carried out by REvil—the group responsible for the attack against the IT firm Kaseya Limited in July of this year. These actions are further examples of sanctions used as tools of law enforcement. 

On the radar

As fears swell regarding a second possible incursion by Russian military forces in Ukraine, the United States and its partners are finalizing a slate of punitive measures they hope will deter the Kremlin from following through. Much analysis has been written over the past weeks that many of our readers are surely following. The most impactful is likely to be potential restrictions on Russian debt on the secondary market, which would inhibit the ability to clear dollar-denominated transactions. As touched upon previously in our Dashboard, sanctions against Russian oligarchs are also an untapped resource given their ties to Russian state assets. The US and EU partners are projecting a more decisive response now than in 2014– but escalation options are tricky to work out if the Kremlin doesn’t choose war, but something in between. And none of these options come without repercussions. Western investors see a downside risk now that they have re-entered Russian markets. As the US ramped up pressure on Iran, Venezuela and China over the past five years, investors came to view Russia as a relatively stable emerging market. In fact, US markets may be even more exposed to financial market restrictions than they were before little green men touched the Donbas the first time. 

Global Sanctions Dashboard

The Global Sanctions Dashboard provides a global overview of various sanctions regimes and lists. Each month you will find an update on the most recent listings and delistings and insights into the motivations behind them.

Explore Here

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

Learn more

The post Global Sanctions Dashboard: Holiday edition appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On December 13, Emma Ashford was featured in Inkstick’s Adults in a Room column, writing on the Biden administration’s review of sanctions policy.

“The Biden administration’s recently released sanctions review was emblematic of a core problem faced by advocates of sanctions reform. To the surprise of many, the review laid out extremely clearly some of the problems with existing sanctions frameworks. It then created a clear, if vague, set of guidelines for implementing future sanctions that are more likely to be effective, and less likely to have substantive humanitarian impacts. In a town where it can be hard even to get people to acknowledge that a policy has failed, this should be viewed as a win for reformers. At the same time, the review did not address the question of existing sanctions regimes.”

More about our expert

Former staff

Emma Ashford

Former Resident Senior Fellow, New American Engagement Initiative

New American Engagement Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Conflict Economic Sanctions

The post Ashford in Inkstick: Debating the efficacy of US sanctions on Venezuela and Ethiopia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The tide is turning quickly. Northern rebels are rapidly advancing on Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declares a state of emergency and issues a call to arms for regular citizens. The reversal in the country’s brutal year-long war comes as the United States is moving to revoke Ethiopia’s trade privileges because of the government’s human-rights violations in the Tigray region, detailed in a new United Nations report. What moves does Abiy have left? What role is US policy playing? What other dominos may fall in the region? Our experts keep you ahead of the curve on this fast-moving story.

• Cameron Hudson (@_hudsonc): Nonresident senior fellow at the Africa Center and former director of African affairs at the National Security Council

• Aubrey Hruby (@aubreyhruby): Nonresident senior fellow at the Africa Center and investor in African start-ups

• Rama Yade (@ramayade): Director of the Africa Center

On the march

• Originally involving limited strikes against Tigrayan separatist leaders, Abiy’s war has since spiraled out of control—with Ethiopia now facing potentially tragic consequences. “State-sponsored genocide and even state collapse remain frighteningly real scenarios,” Cameron tells us. 

• Abiy, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize-winner, appears to have overplayed his hand by underestimating his opponents, who have traditionally been among the Ethiopian army’s best fighters and tacticians. “The government has slowly seen its overwhelming strategic advantage eroded against a rump force more adept at insurgency combat and clearly more motivated by a fight for its literal survival,” Cameron adds.

• Meanwhile, a government blockade of the Tigray region has left nearly one million civilians in danger of famine as the conflict has expanded to neighboring regions—as “hateful and dehumanizing speech” villainizing Tigrayans more broadly suggests that Abiy and his loyalists may be “inciting genocide as part of [their] last-ditch defense effort,” Cameron believes. Case in point is Abiy’s speech today, in which he declared: “We will bury this enemy with our blood and bones and make the glory of Ethiopia high again.” 

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Sullied success story

• That’s all the more tragic considering Ethiopia has been one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Aubrey notes, averaging nearly 10 percent growth per year for the past decade. But the war’s crippling effect on the economy has led to soaring food prices while “scarce foreign exchange has halted production and curtailed access to basic imported goods,” she adds. The National Bank of Ethiopia ordered the suspension of commercial lending, drying up credit and choking off investment.

• In response to Abiy’s offensive, the United States slapped sanctions on his government in September and this week moved to terminate duty- and quota-free access to the US market as part of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Aubrey believes that while the trade restrictions probably won’t compel Abiy to end the fighting, they “will likely result in the loss of around two hundred thousand direct jobs, mainly for women working in factories, and a million or so additional jobs servicing export-oriented factories—another cause of suffering for everyday Ethiopians.”

• At this point, Cameron adds, any US effort to bring about a ceasefire through the threat of additional sanctions “rings hollow in what has emerged as an existential battle for survival for both sides.”

• And the “dire economic consequences” of the violence won’t stop at Ethiopia’s borders, Aubrey warns, with the recent military takeovers in Guinea and Sudan combining to spook investors: “The already-skewed perception of risk in African markets will sadly only intensify.”

A new geopolitical order

• A year ago, Abiy appeared to be aiming for a swift and limited “blitzkrieg” in Tigray, Rama tells us. But “from day one, it has been a regional war,” drawing in neighboring Eritrea and sending tens of thousands of refugees spilling across borders.

• The outcome is all the more jarring, Rama says, because Ethiopia has long been a “hub of stability in a volatile area” afflicted by conflicts in the Sudans, Somalia, and Eritrea. Now that Ethiopia has become the main source of instability in the Horn of Africa, she expects to see a broader “blast effect.”  

• Zooming further out, Rama points to how rampant instability in the region has created an opening for outside influence beyond traditional players like the United States and European powers. These new influencers, she says, include Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Israel, and China, which is heavily invested in a railroad linking Addis Ababa to the sea via its Belt and Road Initiative.

• “What the increasingly noisy presence of these (re)emerging regional powers reveals is not a simple destabilization,” Rama tells us, “but a new global geopolitical order” with a focus on Africa.

The post FAST THINKING: Ethiopia is on the brink appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Inflation stands at a record-high 34 percent, the nation’s debt has reached a crippling $30 billion, and efforts to privatize some of the country’s corporate crown jewels, such as Ethio telecom, have floundered amid allegations of genocide and predictions of mass starvation as the conflict over the country’s Tigray region rages on. With the country’s trade benefits under the US African Growth and Opportunity Act likely to be suspended by the end of the month, what was once one of the world’s fastest growing economies suddenly finds itself on life support.

Cheering crowds and soaring rhetoric cannot hide the fact that Abiy’s troubles run deeper than just one restive region.

Since war broke out nearly a year ago in the northern region of Tigray, Ethiopia’s ethnic patchwork has only unraveled even further. Ethnic-based violence in the regions of Benishangul-Gumuz, Somali, Oromia, Afar, Amhara, and Southern Nations all suggest that Abiy’s original political ideology of “medemer”—an Amharic expression to convey a coming together beyond ethnic identity—has failed. Facts on the ground demonstrate that a military response alone will not suffice in addressing these mounting security threats and the level of displacement they’ve engendered.

As part of his “new beginning,” Abiy pushed through a new parliament—94 percent of which is controlled by his Prosperity Party—as well as the appointment of new cabinet ministers at the finance, defense, and peace ministries, nominally from opposition groups, in a move spun by his office as his “commitment to inclusivity.” But in tapping close allies and former subordinates, the move has prompted many to instead view the personnel change as style over substance—a deliberate attempt to re-assert control over key ministries involved in the war effort in advance of a new offensive intended to achieve a total victory.

Abiy’s biggest promise this week to mollify domestic opponents and international critics has been to convene a national political dialogue, which he claims will address the shortcomings associated with his original vision of “medemer.”

But nothing suggests the dialogue will fundamentally alter the failed attempt to create a unitary Ethiopian state and dismantle the system of ethnic federalism that lies at the heart of Ethiopia’s current crisis. With his strongest opposition likely to be excluded from that dialogue—particularly armed groups from Tigray and Oromia, which have been labeled terrorist organizations—there is reason to question the sincerity of any reconciliation process that does not engage the specific grievances that caused Abiy’s foes to take up arms.

Lower on Abiy’s list of priorities, but no less important, should be an effort to re-establish some goodwill with the international community before actors such as the United States make good on the punitive measures they’ve long threatened. With the expulsion earlier this month of seven high-level United Nations (UN) officials from Ethiopia on grounds—labeled by the UN secretary-general himself as baseless—of meddling in the country’s internal affairs, Abiy has instead put himself on a collision course with countries that questioned the legality of that decision and have demanded the officials’ reinstatement.

Will Abiy budge?

If he fails to abide calls to bring back UN officials, it’s difficult to imagine that the United States won’t designate top Abiy aides under the sanctions regime it introduced last month. But it’s even harder to imagine Abiy publicly relenting at this point in the face of international pressure after ignoring so many off-ramps to avoid punitive measures.

His government’s continuing humanitarian blockade of Tigray—beyond the widespread human-rights abuses that prompted the US government to open a genocide investigation—means that any national reconciliation must be preceded by mediation, peace-building, justice, and accountability for all the transgressions of the past year.

Judging by the triumphalism of Abiy’s remarks this week, that feels like an unlikely scenario. As the rainy season ends this month, fueling fears of a massive new government offensive, the situation on the ground in Tigray is likely to get far worse before it gets better. As the already dire humanitarian and human-rights situations worsen, so too will Ethiopia’s foreign relations.

But with an electoral victory, a vast parliamentary majority, and a seeming mandate to lead, Abiy now has some of the political capital he might need to begin to escape from the corner into which he’s painted himself.

As a first step—and on the advice of the three African members of the UN Security Council—he could compel his compliant parliament to rescind the terrorist designations against the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Oromo Liberation Front, an essential first step toward ceasefire talks and eventual political dialogue. It is also entirely within his power to lift the blockade of Tigray and save as many as one million lives in the process.

To help him on this path, the African Union recently deployed a lifeline in the form of its new Horn of Africa envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo. Privately, Ethiopian officials seem open to an African solution to their decidedly African problem: They appear to have faith in Obasanjo’s ability to keep Western powers at bay while offering Abiy a face-saving way to de-escalate, going so far as to invite him to establish a backchannel to the TPLF. As he builds out his team, Washington would do well to communicate its support for Obasanjo’s mission—but also stay at arm’s length, since any American fingerprints on this process could well undermine it.

Abiy’s call for “a new beginning” suggests at least an acknowledgement that Ethiopia is at a perilous point in its history. Although he continues to blame and punish those who oppose him, we must hope he realizes that more of the same war-making, ethnic division, and human-rights abuses will only produce more of the same poor results for the economy and his foreign relations. Abiy still has the possibility to live up to the spirit of the Nobel Peace Prize he received in 2019 for making peace with neighboring Eritrea. Let’s see whether he can do the same within his own country.

Cameron Hudson is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center and a former director for African affairs on the staff of the National Security Council.

The post Time is running out for Abiy’s ‘new beginning’ in Ethiopia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Then came today’s executive order—the latest in a long series of escalatory efforts by the White House to push the belligerents toward ceasefire talks and to allow in humanitarian aid. Repeated press statements expressing the administration’s “grave concern” looked more like platitudes than policy, which is why it faced increasing pressure from human-rights activists to act.

The administration chose to issue what the Treasury Department calls an “empty EO,” meaning a sanctions regime is now in place but the executive order does not designate any individuals or companies. Instead, the Biden team has launched its final and most elaborate warning shot, effectively giving both sides a few more weeks to engage in serious negotiations, cease their attacks on civilians, and open up the free flow of humanitarian assistance before sanctions are imposed. US officials have been clear to say that designations will come “in weeks not months” if progress isn’t made quickly.

The order goes further than sanctioning only human-rights offenses, as is allowed under the Global Magnitsky Act. Instead, the order is purpose-built to create a sanctions regime specific to the conflict in Ethiopia, giving the administration broad authority to target asset freezes at not just those committing rights abuses, but also those blocking humanitarian aid, inhibiting ceasefire negotiations, undermining democratic processes, engaging in corruption, and targeting civilians and international aid workers.

While we don’t know who will be targeted, it will likely include a representative sample of all the warring sides, including Ethiopian and Eritrean government officials, Amhara state representatives and militia leaders, as well as Tigrayan political and military figures.

Abiy under fire?

If the United States chooses to sanction Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and his close associates before his expected reappointment as prime minister in the coming weeks, it could plant serious doubt about his leadership in the minds of his supporters. Such a move—though it’s unlikely—would probably also be met with renewed accusations that the United States was meddling in Ethiopia’s internal political affairs and effectively seeking regime change.

Because Washington has been accused of taking sides against Addis Ababa, today’s order takes great pains to appear even-handed by recognizing the complicity of all sides in committing rights abuses and prolonging the conflict. The order singles out not just Ethiopian and Eritrean government officials but also “the TPLF, the Amhara regional government or the Amhara regional or irregular forces,” essentially any party alleged to have committed abuses to date.

In a smart move, the administration also rolled out wide carveouts to those sanctions for “personal remittances to non-sanctioned persons, humanitarian assistance to at-risk populations, and longer-term assistance programs and commercial activities that address basic human needs.” That suggests it has learned from past cases, in which broad unintended consequences followed sanctions by hurting civilians.

Beyond the direct effect of sanctions, the reputational effect associated with them will also likely be substantial. Ethiopia will now be associated with neighbors such South Sudan and the Central African Republic on the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list of sanctioned countries—company it will surely not want to keep when just two years ago it found itself on a very different list: the International Monetary Fund’s ranking of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Although today’s announcement is a serious step forward on pressuring the Abiy government, it still leaves open the possibility that progress on the ground can be made over the next several weeks and that the worst of Washington’s sanctions can be avoided.

Timing is everything

As fighting has become increasingly widespread over the last few months, many fear the war could quickly escalate and get dramatically worse for non-combatants, who have borne the brunt of the violence.

Moreover, East Africa’s rainy season will end in a few weeks, allowing for heavy weapons and larger troop deployments to wider, previously unreachable swaths of the country. While the TPLF currently appears to be on its back foot, the coming start of the dry season will level the battlefield once again. US officials estimate that all sides are preparing major new offenses next month.

Ethiopia will also be concluding parliamentary elections, which were delayed this summer in several regions due to the fighting. This will be followed almost immediately by a party congress for Abiy’s Prosperity Party, which he hopes will not only renew his mandate but also give him support to press forward with the war. To that end, the Biden administration’s order leaves Abiy with a choice: Use that new mandate to push for total victory, or initiate some type of political settlement.

Lastly, coming just days before the start of the United Nations General Assembly—and as former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo heads to Ethiopia as the African Union’s new Horn of Africa envoy—today’s effort could catalyze a new and concerted international diplomatic push for ending the fighting.

All sides have expected this announcement for some time. Still, US-Ethiopia relations are sure to nosedive even further as a result. Just hours after today’s sanctions announcement, Abiy issued an open letter to US President Joe Biden in which he stridently proclaimed that “Ethiopia will not succumb to consequences of pressure engineered by disgruntled individuals.”

However, viewed from Washington, diplomacy alone hasn’t worked either. The question is whether Abiy will see this latest move from Washington as the end of the road—or as an exit ramp to avoiding even greater pain.

Cameron Hudson is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Previously he served as the chief of staff to the special envoy for Sudan and as director for African Affairs on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. Follow him on Twitter @_hudsonc.

Further reading

AfricaSource May 25, 2021

Africa is America’s greatest geopolitical opportunity. Does the US know it?

By Rama Yade

Biden can further build ties with Africa: He should do so not only because these countries have long been underrepresented within leading multilateral organizations, but also because they offer innovative solutions to global challenges including terrorism, climate change, migration, debt, and COVID-19.

Africa Economy & Business

New Atlanticist Apr 21, 2021

A world apart: How wealthy nations can strengthen the COVID safety net

By Jeremy Mark and Vasuki Shastry

The international community has delivered important progress in combating the impact of COVID-19, but much more is needed to assist low-income countries. While the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights are a good start, G20 nations must help restructure the debts of developing nations and fund vaccine distribution.

Africa China

AfricaSource Mar 3, 2021

The unintended consequence of Ethiopia’s civil war might be a border war with Sudan

Ethiopia is at war with itself—and the international community is struggling to respond. The stakes in Tigray are high and the civilian toll could be considerable. But there’s another scenario, with the potential to exact an even higher toll, that many observers are overlooking: conventional war that could break out at any moment between Sudan and Ethiopia and their many allied proxies.

Africa Conflict

The post Biden finally gets bold on Ethiopia. But will it bring peace? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This month’s topline events

Taliban Takeover. Afghanistan’s Western-backed government collapsed as the Taliban took control of Kabul and declared the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, while President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Nearly twenty years after being toppled in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban returned to power having capitalized on the Biden administration’s (and previously, the Trump administration’s) decision to withdraw all US forces from the country. After evacuating most of their citizens, as well as tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted their mission, US and NATO troops completed their final withdrawal at the end of August.

• Shaping the Order. The return of the Taliban is a tragedy for Afghans who sought to live in an open society and a setback to the advance of a rules-based order — underscoring that despite two decades of sustained US and NATO combat support and economic aid, the establishment of a stable, democratic government proved out of reach. The developments in Afghanistan could embolden America’s adversaries, as China and Russia sought to portray the United States as a weak and defeated power upon which US allies cannot confidently rely.

• Hitting Home. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan puts an end to US involvement in the “forever war” that most Americans felt had dragged on far too long. But the re-emergence of the Taliban could provide a safe haven to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups – potentially threatening the security of Americans in the region and even in the homeland.

• What to Do. The Biden Administration should make clear that its withdrawal from Afghanistan is not a sign of retreat from US global leadership nor an abandonment of efforts to advance democracy and a rules-based order. Building on Biden’s initial remarks after the fall of Kabul, the administration should reinforce its determination to work with NATO and its Asia-Pacific treaty allies to strengthen U.S. alliances, while taking affirmative steps to support front-line democracies, such as Ukraine, and pro-democracy movements around the world.

US-Israel Realigned. In his first meeting with Israel’s new prime minister Naftali Bennett, at the White House, President Biden provided a forceful recommitment to Israeli security, vowing that the US and Israel have an “unshakeable partnership.” The two leaders reportedly agreed on a common strategy to halt Iran’s nuclear program, creating a joint team at the national security advisers level, while Biden indicated his administration would be prepared to move to “other options” if diplomacy fails to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

• Shaping the Order. A strengthened US-Israeli partnership can serve as an anchor for stability in the Middle East, facilitating more effective cooperation to advance shared interests in regional security, nonproliferation, and a rules-based order. But the Israeli government’s unwillingness to relaunch peace talks with the Palestinians and work toward a two-state solution could be a thorny obstacle in the US-Israeli relationship.

• Hitting Home. A nuclear-armed Iran would constitute a direct security threat to the United States and its allies and could lead to a more dangerous world.

• What to Do. Working through their newly-created joint team, the US and Israel should expand cooperation to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, while countering Iran’s destabilizing influence across the region. To ensure a unified front, these efforts should also be coordinated with other regional allies, as well as the G7 or D-10.

Democracy Summit. The Biden administration announced that it plans to host a virtual Summit for Democracy this year, with invited heads of state coming together on December 9-10 to focus on three main themes: defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights. The White House aims to organize a follow-up summit one year later, in-person if feasible, providing a venue to take stock of commitments made during the initial convening.

• Shaping the Order. Coming on the heels of the fall of Afghanistan, the Summit could serve as a timely opportunity for the Biden administration to rally support for democratic norms and showcase common resolve among the world’s democracies, at a time when democracy has suffered significant setbacks around the world.

• Hitting Home. A more democratic world is likely to provide greater security and stability for the United States and generate increased trade and economic opportunities.

• What To Do. To ensure the Summit’s success, the Biden administration should limit the guest list to leaders of democracies (as opposed to friendly non-democracies) that are prepared to set forth meaningful commitments in support of the Summit’s core themes. The outcome should include a democracy charter, in which participating leaders pledge to take active measures to counter authoritarianism and bolster support for democratic norms.

Quote of the Month

“[W]e all recognize that the decision to leave Afghanistan was extremely difficult. It entailed risks. But that doesn’t change the fundamental value of U.S. and Europe being committed to each other, especially in a time where we see the rise of China and the shifting global balance of power that makes it even more important, both for Europe and United States, to stand together in an alliance as NATO.”

– Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General

State of the Order this month: Weakened

Assessing the five core pillars of the democratic world order    

Democracy (↓)

• The fall of the Afghan government, despite nearly 20-years of military and economic support from the US and its NATO allies, represents a significant blow to efforts to advance democracy, especially in the Islamic world.
• With President Nicolas Maduro tightening his grip on the country, Venezuela’s main opposition parties announced an end to their three-year boycott of elections, abandoning one of the main tactics of their ongoing struggle against the country’s dictatorship.
• Poles took to the streets to protest a parliamentary bill widely viewed as an effort by the country’s nationalist ruling party to silence government criticism by an independent television network (owned by the US-based media company Discovery), a leading source of news for many in Poland.
• The United States imposed a new round of sanctions against Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka—timed to mark the one-year anniversary of his fraudulent re-election. The US also issued new sanctions against Cuban officials involved in the crackdown on anti-government protestors in July.
• Overall, the democracy pillar was weakened.

Security (↓)

• The re-emergence of Taliban rule in Afghanistan could provide a safe haven to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups that could pose a direct threat to the United States and Europe, as well as India and other nations in the region.
• Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation and a longstanding US partner against Islamist militancy, descended into an escalating civil war between the ruling government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. In May, the Biden administration imposed sanctions against Ethiopian officials for their role in abetting human rights atrocities.
• Particularly in light of developments in Afghanistan, the security pillar was weakened.

Trade ()

• The United Kingdom indicated that it aims to start negotiations on a free trade agreement with India by the end of the year, while India also expressed interest in free trade agreements with the European Union and Australia.
• The global economic recovery from the pandemic has begun to wane, as the widespread outbreak of the Delta variant negatively impacted manufacturing centers in East Asia.
• Overall, the global trade pillar was unchanged.

Commons (↓)

• A major scientific study by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessed that human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and irreversible ways, underlining the urgent need for global action as the United Kingdom prepares to host an upcoming global climate summit (COP26) in November.
• In its first Indo-Pacific naval voyage in twenty years, Germany deployed a frigate intended to cross the South China Sea in the coming weeks, joining the US and other democratic allies in efforts to reaffirm freedom of navigation amid China’s maritime ambitions.
• Overall, the global commons pillar was weakened.

Alliances (↓)

• The US withdrawal from Afghanistan drew criticism from US allies, particularly in Europe, where many expressed disappointment with the level of consultation ahead of the decision to withdraw. President Biden sought to assuage allies in a special G7 summit meeting convened virtually by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the wake of the Taliban takeover.
• Frustrated with the continuing US travel ban on European travelers, the European Union recommended reinstatement of restrictions on US travelers, citing the significant increase in coronavirus cases across the United States.
• As discussed above, Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s visit to the White House strengthened relations between the two allies.
• On balance, the alliances pillar was weakened.

Strengthened (↑)________Unchanged ()________Weakened (↓)

What is the democratic world order? Also known as the liberal order, the rules-based order, or simply the free world, the democratic world order encompasses the rules, norms, alliances, and institutions created and supported by leading democracies over the past seven decades to foster security, democracy, prosperity, and a healthy planet.

This month’s top reads

Three must-read commentaries on the democratic order     

• Anne Applebaum, in The Atlantic, defends the value of fighting for liberal democracy, a potent ideology opposed by America’s adversaries.
• Anders Fogh Rasmussen, writing in Foreign Affairs, argues that despite the Afghan government’s collapse, America and its allies cannot abandon the fight for democracy.
• Kevin Rudd, in Foreign Affairs, suggests that the success of the Indo-Pacific Quad poses a threat to Beijing’s long-term ambitions to dominate the East Asian region.

Action and analysis by the Atlantic Council

Our experts weigh in on this month’s events

• Barry Pavel, in the New Atlanticist, suggests that a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan could be even more dangerous than it was prior to September 11, 2001.
• Dan Fried, in the New Atlanticist, suggests that despite its failure in Afghanistan, the United States can come back strong to advance the cause of freedom and democracy, just as it did after its debacle in Vietnam.
• Amanda Rothschild offers recommendations to the Biden administration in The Dispatch on how to avert a growing humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan.
• Dan Fried and Brian O’Toole, in the New Atlanticist, suggest that the new series of US sanctions on Belarus will not be powerful enough to rattle the autocrat Lukashenka.

__________________________________________________

The Democratic Order Initiative is an Atlantic Council initiative aimed at reenergizing American global leadership and strengthening cooperation among the world’s democracies in support of a rules-based democratic order. Sign on to the Council’s Declaration of Principles for Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace by clicking here.

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The post State of the Order: Assessing August 2021 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In his remarks, the Minister provided a readout of his February and April trips to the region, describing stakeholder meetings and the status of humanitarian access and reporting. He also commented on the negotiations surrounding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), due for its second filling this summer, and regional border disputes.

Throughout the subsequent discussion, participants engaged the Minister on election implications, expectations around Prime Minister Abiy’s post-election policy, the role of regional organizations, and the parameters for a credible national reconciliation. Hudson closed, remarking that the conversation is a reflection of the importance of US and EU cooperation on key regional issues.  

Further reading

New Atlanticist May 25, 2021

Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Africa’s most overlooked crises and opportunities

By Katherine Walla

Thomas-Greenfield spoke about US President Joe Biden’s outlook on Africa with Ambassador Rama Yade, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, at an event celebrating Africa Day and introducing the Africa Center’s new team and mission.

Africa Crisis Management

AfricaSource Jun 1, 2021

A US-Africa summit done right

By Aubrey Hruby

The last few decades of global Africa policy can be defined in a single word: summitry. After five years of absence from the summit stage, a revived US-Africa summit under the Biden administration is a no-brainer.

Africa Economy & Business

AfricaSource May 25, 2021

Africa is America’s greatest geopolitical opportunity. Does the US know it?

By Rama Yade

Biden can further build ties with Africa: He should do so not only because these countries have long been underrepresented within leading multilateral organizations, but also because they offer innovative solutions to global challenges including terrorism, climate change, migration, debt, and COVID-19.

Africa Economy & Business

The post Responding to acute challenges in the Horn of Africa, with Finnish FM Pekka Haavisto appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“May this convention of union last 1,000 years,” the Ethiopian leader said, while Angola and Mozambique (still Portuguese colonies) along with South Africa and South Rhodesia (under apartheid rule) were fighting for their freedom.

Since then, that union has been succeeded by the 55-member African Union, “inspired by the noble ideals which guided the founding fathers of our Continental Organization and generations of Pan-Africanists in their determination to promote unity, solidarity, cohesion and cooperation among the peoples of Africa and African States,” according to its Constitutive Act.

If Africa seems geographically distant to Americans, it shouldn’t; the United States wouldn’t be what it is today without the labor force of Africans brought to the country as part of a bloody multi-century transatlantic trade. As the US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield recently pointed out, that experience is “just three generations back from me.”

Rather than being defeated by this mass depopulation—which cost it one-hundred million of its own, directly or indirectly, according to the macabre accounting of W.E.B Du Bois—Africa survived. Now it is the new frontier, full of all the promise presented by its youth, its dynamism, and its universalism despite the persistent presence of poverty on the continent.

As it re-engages with the world, Joe Biden’s United States will find a vigorous and uninhibited Africa, at least in the civil-society sector and among young generations, that does not expect leadership from the United States but rather a win-win partnership. With each passing day, Africa grows more critical for the United States in national-security and especially economic terms.

US policy in Africa has been thrown off course by China, which is methodically implementing a grand, 21st-century Marshall Plan for the continent through its Belt and Road Initiative. And Beijing is hardly to blame. As home to a large share of the world’s water resources, untapped arable land, and by 2050 nearly 25 percent of the world’s population, Africa has emerged as the most important piece on the geopolitical chessboard. Without a drastic shift in strategy, the United States is on the verge of being on the outside looking in for decades to come.

China is playing the long game in Africa and has strategically invested in infrastructure projects including railroads, ports, dams, and hydropower-generation sources. But these investments could be the warm-up act for China’s entry into fields traditionally dominated by the United States—namely technology and banking—where it aspires to compete with American heavyweights like Microsoft, Boeing, Google, and General Electric. Such game-changing moves would play into China’s larger ambition of unseating the US dollar.

All of these measures reflect the coming surge in economic demand from Africa. As the population grows, so too does its pool of potential consumers and clients. The African middle class, which stood at 355 million people in 2010, will reach 1.1 billion by 2060.

From Morocco to Ethiopia, Africa has become the workshop of the world. It was home to six of the world’s ten most dynamic economies in 2018. The world’s largest free-trade zone—the African Continental Free Trade Area—was launched in 2019 to put an end to the dramatic effects of the old colonial policy that prevented Africans from trading with each other. A cosmopolitan billionaire class has sprouted, largely from the tech sector, as Africa has experienced the largest telecommunications revolution in the world. Kenya is a global leader in developing mobile-payment systems. Smart cities are cropping up in Ghana and Angola. And companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon invested two billion dollars in African tech ventures in 2019.

Encouragingly, the new generation of Africans driving this change do not want to live in a Leninist system. They want democracy, an open market, and free trade. This gives the United States an opening—if it is willing to act on it.

The Biden administration has sent strong signals that it is eager to engage. Biden earned positive reviews following his appearance at the 34th African Union Summit—his first international forum in office—during which he committed to stand as Africa’s partner and support African nations’ entrepreneurship and innovation.

A new policy toward Africa needs to chiefly reflect the realities that competition among global powers (Russia, Turkey, and others are vying with China for influence on the continent) and the major changes underway in African societies have a significant impact on the strategic long-term interests of the United States. The continent should be viewed through the lens of opportunity rather than risk. The Chinese have maximized the opportunity by being explicit with their investments, which prioritize long-term projects that minimize risk. As Senegalese President Macky Sall puts it, “What handicaps the continent is prejudice and the stigmatizing gaze on it. When it comes to investing in Africa, the perception of risk is always exaggerated, which further increases the cost of investment and debt. In fact, the risk in Africa is no higher than in many other parts of the world.”

China’s rapid advance in infrastructure investments will be difficult for Americans and Europeans to match. But Americans should invest in an area where they don’t yet have a competitor: cultural soft power. Fashion, entertainment, and even sports convey values of fair play, freedom, and success. During the Cold War, they enabled the American way of life to spread everywhere. Culture proved stronger than nuclear weapons. And that’s a good thing: Africa’s cultural industries are in dire need of investment. From the African Development Bank to the African Export-Import Bank, pan-African investors are working to address this. To launch this cultural and geopolitical revolution, the United States has a tremendous asset: its African American community, whose interest in the African continent is growing. Cooperation is beckoning from both sides of the Atlantic—from one new world to another.

Biden can further build ties with Africa by working to give its nations more influence on the global stage. He should do so not only because these countries have long been underrepresented within leading multilateral organizations—including the UN Security Council—but also because they offer innovative yet often unnoticed solutions to global challenges including terrorism, climate change, migration, debt, and COVID-19. African marginalization is no longer an option, and its nations will not soon forget who gave them a long-overdue seat at the table.

A new start with Africa is possible for the United States. It turns out that the world’s oldest continent is also the youngest. In this dual capacity, Africa has much to say. It’s time to listen to it.

Ambassador Rama Yade is the director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Follow her on Twitter @ramayade.

Further reading

AfricaSource Apr 23, 2021

Climate change will not be fixed without Africa

By Rama Yade

When Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi spoke at the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate this week, he had the force of the continent behind him. And his message was that developed countries must do more. As the summit comes to a close, the world still has so much to learn from Africa about how to tackle the climate crisis—if the world would only listen.

Africa Climate Change & Climate Action

AfricaSource Apr 6, 2021

Keys to African recovery: Vaccines, debt, and commodities

By Rabah Arezki

In the wake of COVID-19, African markets are consumed by uncertainty about the economic recovery. Because of its large population—1.2 billion people—developments in Africa will weigh heavily on the world. The recovery from COVID-19 in Africa will depend on three factors—vaccines, debt, and commodities.

Africa Coronavirus

AfricaSource Dec 22, 2020

African outlook 2021: The Africa Center reflects on 2020 and looks ahead

By Africa Center

African nations have mostly escaped the heavy death toll and hospital bed shortages faced by Western countries, but the COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a disproportionately severe blow to the continent’s economic ambitions. Fortunately, robust collaboration between African public and private sectors, and particularly innovative financing measures from African development institutions—including members of the Africa Center’s […]

Africa Coronavirus

The post Africa is America’s greatest geopolitical opportunity. Does the US know it? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This month, senior government officials who gathered virtually under the auspices of the IMF and World Bank authorized the issuance of $650 billion of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a reserve asset that will be exchangeable for hard currency. In addition, the Group of Twenty (G20) governments agreed to extend until the end of this year a moratorium on debt-service payments by the poorest countries on loans from G20 lenders. That moratorium already has freed up $5.7 billion for forty-three countries since it went into effect a year ago, with another $7.3 billion of deferral possible by the end of June, according to World Bank President David Malpass.

However, these measures will not be enough. Low-income countries were hit by the same recession that the advanced and emerging-market economies experienced in 2020, but the IMF projects that their rebound will be much slower. So the tens of millions of people in low-income countries who have fallen back into extreme poverty because of the pandemic have little hope for improvement in the coming year. More action is needed in several areas:

• No rich nations have stepped up to offer new country-to-country assistance to help poor nations counter the public-health and economic impacts of the pandemic. This presents a stark contrast to the willingness of Group of Seven (G7) countries to provide bilateral aid to African countries at the height of the 2008 global financial crisis.

• The G20 has made little concrete progress on implementing its framework for restructuring the debts of countries whose loan obligations have become unsustainable during the pandemic.

• The G20 so far has not responded to the failure of private-sector creditors—who hold a major portion of low-income country debt—to join its debt-relief and debt-restructuring initiatives.

• A broad swath of the globe has little prospect of gaining significant access to COVID vaccines before 2022, or even 2023, meaning that the virus and its variants could continue to spread, mostly affecting low-income countries.

These intertwined issues, if left unaddressed, could lead to a long delay in the resumption of growth across the developing world at levels that could offset the human impact of the crisis, meaning debt burdens will deepen. The IMF has offered a brighter economic outlook for 2021 than many would have expected a year ago, with global growth now expected to reach 6 percent this year, largely because of a resurgent US economy. But the fund issued a stark warning that the debts of countries that have achieved emerging-market status could become a serious burden if the pandemic continues. “The future presents daunting challenges,” wrote IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath. “The pandemic is yet to be defeated and virus cases are accelerating in many countries. Recoveries are also diverging dangerously across and within countries.”

The agreement to issue SDRs can help, although many bureaucratic obstacles remain. This summer the IMF will make available the equivalent of about $21 billion in SDRs to low-income countries as reserves—an allocation from the total $650 billion that represents their weighting in the global economy. But the assets will not be immediately available as currency. First, the fund’s membership will have to agree on the procedures for each country to make use of its allocations by exchanging them for other currencies. Second, the members will have to agree on how wealthier countries may redistribute their own SDR allocations to low-income countries. In the absence of significant bilateral assistance from wealthy countries—either grant aid or low-interest loans—the transfer of SDRs could be crucial to help low-income countries respond to the pandemic. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said that the United States looks forward to discussing ways to deploy SDRs to support low-income countries.

Debt restructuring remains another serious hurdle. Three African countries—Chad, Ethiopia, and Zambia—have asked to restructure their debt burdens under a Common Framework for Debt Treatments agreed to by the G20 last year, and more countries are expected to follow. But that process has remained stalled by procedural issues like the composition of creditor committees that would negotiate with the debtor governments. Governments involved in the negotiations over the Common Framework are still unsure how much money and influence China—the largest bilateral creditor to low-income countries, with hundreds of billions of dollars in loans—is prepared to commit to the restructuring.

There are also differences over the role of private-sector lenders, which range from Eurobond holders in Ethiopia, Zambia, and other countries to the commodities trading and mining giant Glencore, which holds the largest single portion of Chad’s debt. Private-sector lenders have declined to participate in the G20 debt-service moratorium in the absence of country-by-country negotiations, and their role in debt restructuring remains unclear.

While the private sector’s role merited several mentions in the communiqués issued this month by the G20 finance ministers and IMF, there was little evidence at the respective meetings that the governments were prepared to take a harder line against the financiers. However, officials have suggested that private-sector participation in the Common Framework will be an integral and unavoidable part of the G20’s overall strategy in dealing with debt distress. It is likely only a matter of time before we see the official sector deploy the necessary carrots (and sticks) to bring a recalcitrant private sector into the restructuring process. Over the past year, senior officials have spoken of mandating the participation of private bondholders in any restructuring of sovereign debts. Private-sector misgivings about the Common Framework forcing them to disclose proprietary information have also been discounted because officials see the public and private interest best served through greater transparency on all debt owed by low-income countries, but officials are prepared to be flexible about how certain categories of debt data are released publicly. 

Finally, there is the issue of “vaccination, vaccination, vaccination,” as Swedish Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson declared during an IMF press conference. Only a tiny percentage of COVID vaccines so far have been made available to developing countries. Pandemic-fighting tools for low-income countries, including the COVAX Facility to supply vaccines, face a $19 billion funding shortfall, even after the Biden administration, the World Bank, and other donors have chipped in $14.1 billion. India’s commitment to provide millions of shots to other countries has ground to a halt as it struggles with a severe resurgence of the virus, and questions have arisen about the effectiveness of China’s Sinovac vaccine, which has been supplied to countries from Indonesia to Turkey and Brazil. By some estimates, dozens of countries across the Global South will not receive adequate supplies of vaccines until 2023.

While the IMF has made important progress in finding ways to assist low-income countries during the pandemic, many others—especially creditor governments and private lenders—have failed to respond adequately. That means the developing world faces a deepening crisis just as some countries begin to gain the upper hand against COVID-19. Those diverging fortunes do not bode well for a global recovery.

Jeremy Mark is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Geoeconomics Center. He previously worked for the IMF and the Asian Wall Street Journal. Follow him on Twitter @JedMark888.

Vasuki Shastry, formerly with the IMF, Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Standard Chartered Bank, is the author of the book Has Asia Lost It? Dynamic Past, Turbulent Future. Follow him on Twitter @vshastry.

The post A world apart: How wealthy nations can strengthen the COVID safety net appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In recent weeks, the United States and its European allies have launched a diplomatic campaign to convince Ethiopia’s once-venerated prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, to relent in his campaign to vanquish militarily his greatest political threat in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). I once feared the onset of a bloody struggle for control over Tigray that would pit near-equally matched foes against each other in something approximating conventional, interstate war. But what has instead emerged is a widespread TPLF insurgency that could drag on and take as many lives through deprivation as it does through combat.

The stakes in Tigray are high and the civilian toll could be considerable. But there’s another scenario, with the potential to exact an even higher toll, that many observers are overlooking: conventional war that could break out at any moment between Sudan and Ethiopia and their many allied proxies. Indeed, it is this possible unintended consequence of Abiy’s “law and order operation” in Tigray that could well do the most extensive damage in the region. In contrast to the conflict in Tigray, however, it is not too late for the United States and its allies in the region and beyond to do something to prevent a border war that would amount to a historic strategic blunder.

The seeds of this potential calamity were planted at the start of the last century when the border between Ethiopia and Sudan was first agreed to, though never formally demarcated, by modern Ethiopia’s founding father, Emperor Menelik II, during the British-Sudanese condominium. Since 1993, a patch of agricultural land on the Sudanese side of the border, referred to as the al-Fashqa Triangle, has been occupied by Amhara farmers. Many of them were relocated there by the Sudanese government in recognition of historic claims to the area by this powerful minority group. Since 2008, a de-facto agreement has existed whereby Ethiopia has acknowledged the historic legal boundary putting al-Fashqa inside Sudan, while Sudan has granted Amhara farmers continued rights to cultivate the land. Efforts to definitively demarcate the border have been stalled since the last meeting of an ad-hoc border commission last year, but Sudan’s designs on the region have never abated. Indeed, as recently as August 2020, in remarks by the head of the Sudanese army and chairman of the transitional government’s Sovereign Council, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, to the Army General Command, he predicted that they would “raise the flag of Sudan above al-Fashqa… and not waste one inch of the homeland.”

What has broken that decade-plus status quo is the onset of conflict in Tigray and a series of strategic and tactical calculations by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Unlike many outsiders, senior-level Sudanese officials claim not to have been surprised by the brutal assault by the TPLF on the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) Northern Command outpost in Mekelle, the Tigrayan regional capital, on the night of November 4. Only a week prior, a delegation led by the deputy head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council and head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, General Mohammed “Hemedti” Dagalo, met with Abiy in Addis, where the restive Tigray region, mounting border tensions, and the stalemated negotiations over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) were all reportedly topics of discussion.

More surprising to the Sudanese was the Ethiopian government’s near-immediate need for supplementary troops—pulled in from Ethiopian deployments in Somalia and, most notably, the al-Fashqa Triangle—to respond to the TPLF attack in Mekelle. The subsequent entry into the Tigray conflict of Eritrean forces and Amhara state militias further indicated that the ENDF was unable to subdue the TPLF uprising on its own and was operating from a greater position of relative weakness than was perhaps anticipated. 

By December, as primarily SAF forces gathered along the Sudanese side of the border to monitor the crossing of Tigrayan refugees and possible retreating TPLF forces, SAF and ENDF troops found themselves in closer proximity than ever before—increasing the risk of clashes. Multiple ENDF surprise assaults on SAF army officers prompted SAF forces to move in on the night of December 29. In that incursion, SAF forces reportedly destroyed Ethiopian army outposts and administrative centers while also displacing Amhara farmers and destroying crops in their successful bid to reclaim the entirety of the al-Fashqa Triangle. 

Sudan has presented its tactical decision as a legitimate response in light of the ENDF’s own unprovoked incursions against Sudanese patrols and Khartoum’s historic and legal claims to the area. But there is no question that the SAF, which has witnessed its traditional importance in Sudan’s body politic decline substantially under the country’s civilian-led transitional government, see in their defense of Sudan’s territorial integrity an opportunity to once again assert its primacy as the protector of the Sudanese state. 

It is also true that in its effort to change facts on the ground, whether justified or not, the SAF has now further aggravated an inherently unstable situation in the region and may have disrupted the delicate balance among security forces inside Sudan that has kept the transition there on track.

As bellicose rhetoric by both sides has increased in recent weeks, Khartoum and Addis have come to frame the threat of territorial loss in national-security and even existential terms—similar in certain respects to how each side has recently described the contentious and protracted GERD talks. Sudan’s ambassador to Ethiopia was recently recalled to Khartoum, and various peace envoys and proposed mediators from the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, South Sudan, and the African Union (AU) have all largely seen their willingness to help the parties achieve a negotiated solution rebuffed. Even Eritrea, whose peace agreement with Ethiopia has emerged as more of a mutual-security pact, tried unconvincingly to paint itself as a peacemaker in a letter last week from President Isaias Afwerki to Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. Sudan’s newly appointed foreign minister, Mariam al Saddig, suggested in late February that Sudan would be open to talks under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). But that regional body, currently chaired by Hamdok and historically controlled by Ethiopia, has not yet offered its good offices and likely lacks the independence to offer impartial mediation.

In the absence of concerted external mediation, both sides risk turning their cold war much hotter. And with such intertwined politics and long histories, both sides have the points of leverage to do it. Ethiopia currently supplies the totality of troops (more than five thousand) to the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in Abyei, the highly contested region along the Sudan-South Sudan border that remains at the heart of the tensions between those two countries. Concerns abound that Ethiopia could withdraw those troops, potentially forcing the SAF to fill a security vacuum there that could well spark renewed conflict with Juba. There are also worries that Sudan could unilaterally expel those forces out of fear that Ethiopia could use these forces as a fifth column in the event of a sustained outbreak of violence along its border—opening a new front against Sudan and vastly expanding their zone of conflict. Addis, for its part, is right to fear Khartoum’s ability to re-arm and re-supply TPLF rebels should Sudan wish to open its own additional front in a border conflict.

Adding to the volatility has been an influx of allied armies and militias into the border zone between Sudan and Ethiopia. On the Ethiopian side, it is not just the ENDF, but also Amhara militias and Eritrean Defense Forces. Similarly, on the Sudanese side of the border, the SAF, the RSF, and local militias have also been identified in increasingly large numbers.

Given the lack of interoperability among many of these forces, coupled with the fact that the vast majority of this mobilization is occurring in a narrow band along the border that is only a few kilometers wide, the chances are high that the slightest misstep or miscalculation could result in a large-scale outbreak of violence and a rapid escalation among three national armies and many state and national militias. This is particularly true inside Sudan, where the SAF, the RSF, and local militias have even turned on each other in the past year in areas like Darfur and Kordofan when they have been deployed in close proximity.

Absent some kind of international monitoring, there are simply too many well-armed forces in too close proximity with too little experience working with each other to discount the risk of a cataclysmic conflict breaking out.  

The tense standoff has bred rumors that additional outside forces could light the spark that ignites that conflict. Egypt, which has grown increasingly frustrated with the state of GERD negotiations, is often identified as a prime potential instigator. But while there is no question that Egypt has sought to use its historic ties to Sudan to produce a GERD outcome to its liking, Egyptian officials privately express a clear-eyed understanding that an Ethiopia wracked by internal war and interstate conflict will be incapable of focusing on, let alone reaching, a binding political and technical agreement on the demanding issues that the GERD presents. 

So where do we go from here? It seems unlikely that ad-hoc bilateral demands for de-escalation and withdrawal from contested areas will be sufficient at this stage. Late last month, AU Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat dispatched retired Mauritanian diplomat Mohamed Lebatt to Addis and Khartoum to probe each side’s willingness to accept outside meditation on the brewing border conflict. While no progress was made, it is a conversation worth building on.

Coordinated, high-level outside mediation is urgently required to avert the potentially dire consequences of a conflict for not just the civilian populations in the border area, but also the countries at the center of the dispute and the Horn of Africa as a whole. Sudan recently proposed outside mediation for the final phase of the GERD negotiations that would include the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and the African Union. Some sponsorship of border mediation by this grouping—under the leadership of an eminent, empowered figure—is worth pursuing given the substantial risks to international peace and security and the potential for the parties’ largest donors to bring financial leverage to efforts to reach a resolution.

While all these disputes are linked, there is no single process, individual, or institution that will be able to untangle the overlapping and complicated politics of the competing conflicts. What is essential is coordination. Any process that can be put in place to help with the de-escalation of war in Tigray should be kept on its own track. So too with the GERD. And so too with a process for unwinding the military buildup and tensions on the border, which should be narrowly defined and time-limited so as not to be exploited as a potential leverage point in any other mediation processes. But these must all be coordinated by a central Contact Group with the power, leverage, and legitimacy to advance options for resolution and enforce outcomes that contribute to overall peace.

Such processes must be jumpstarted now to avoid a downward spiral, and there are several immediate steps that Washington can take to do just that. In a fortunate coincidence, the United States took up the presidency of the UN Security Council in March. The newly installed US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, should prioritize a special session of the Security Council to discuss the manifold crises emerging in the Horn of Africa, with added attention to the still-unfolding conflict in Tigray and the stalemated GERD talks. Given the many competing interests at play in the Horn from all manner of external powers, the session should include discussion of an International Contact Group that can promote dialogue and transparency and ensure that potential spoilers remain in the tent rather than outside of it.

To support and complement this effort, the United States should also appoint a Horn of Africa envoy who is capable of both setting the policy agenda in Washington and corralling leaders in Europe and the region in the near term. In the long run, an envoy can only succeed if he or she is equipped with a clear set of policy objectives and the tools to advance them. In contrast to its approach in the Great Lakes or Sahel regions, Washington has for too long viewed the countries in the promising but volatile Horn of Africa in a vacuum or else simply provided wide berth to the area’s anchor state, Ethiopia, to project its power and influence to police regional disputes. With Addis having lost the ability to play that role any longer, the burden has shifted to Washington to become more actively involved in protecting its interests in the region. 

That process promises to be complicated and messy. But preventing a war is surely more attractive an enterprise than ending one.

Cameron Hudson is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Previously he served as the chief of staff to the special envoy for Sudan and as director for African Affairs on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. Follow him on Twitter @_hudsonc.

Further reading

AfricaSource Dec 14, 2020

What Sudan’s terror delisting really means

The announcement today that the forty-five day notification period to Congress had elapsed and Sudan was finally off the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list is historic. It validates the new direction of the country, which it was set upon nearly two years ago by nationwide, peaceful street protests. More importantly, it represents a definitive break with Sudan’s troubled past—the true end of the Bashir era, which began more than thirty years ago—and holds out the hope for a more prosperous future for all Sudanese. The weight of the moment cannot be understated.

Africa Democratic Transitions

Event Recap Feb 23, 2021

Pan-African partnerships advance continental vaccine access

By Africa Center

On Tuesday, February 23, the Africa Center hosted a panel discussion on global vaccine inequality, featuring an esteemed panel of global health, finance, and advocacy leaders.

Africa Coronavirus

Event Recap Feb 10, 2021

WFP head offers readout on Horn of Africa trip

By Africa Center

On Wednesday, February 10, the Africa Center had the privilege of welcoming back Gov. David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), to the Atlantic Council platform for a private virtual briefing on his latest trip to the Horn of Africa, where he met with civilian and military leaders in Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Africa Conflict

The post The unintended consequence of Ethiopia’s civil war might be a border war with Sudan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Responding to questions, Dr. Nega described Ethiopia’s general election, slated for June, as a historic moment, with implications for the broader Horn of Africa region. He outlined his party’s unique non-ethnic platform and grassroots approach, while reflecting on the campaign environment, the timeline of the election, political participation, and how the United States and others could play a role in supporting the National Electoral Board’s capacity.

Dr. Nega concluded with the hope that by the end of June, the people of Ethiopia will have spoken and that the election results will reflect the will of the people. This would need to be built upon further but would represent a significant step in Ethiopia’s democratic growth.

New Atlanticist May 25, 2021

Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Africa’s most overlooked crises and opportunities

By Katherine Walla

Thomas-Greenfield spoke about US President Joe Biden’s outlook on Africa with Ambassador Rama Yade, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, at an event celebrating Africa Day and introducing the Africa Center’s new team and mission.

Africa Crisis Management

AfricaSource Jun 1, 2021

A US-Africa summit done right

By Aubrey Hruby

The last few decades of global Africa policy can be defined in a single word: summitry. After five years of absence from the summit stage, a revived US-Africa summit under the Biden administration is a no-brainer.

Africa Economy & Business

AfricaSource May 25, 2021

Africa is America’s greatest geopolitical opportunity. Does the US know it?

By Rama Yade

Biden can further build ties with Africa: He should do so not only because these countries have long been underrepresented within leading multilateral organizations, but also because they offer innovative solutions to global challenges including terrorism, climate change, migration, debt, and COVID-19.

Africa Economy & Business

The post Dr. Berhanu Nega speaks on expectations for Ethiopia’s upcoming elections appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In his remarks, Gov. Beasley briefed participants on the humanitarian situation in the Horn and the latest from his conversations with regional leaders. He placed considerable weight on the developments in Ethiopia, where his visit facilitated an initial agreement on humanitarian access. This issue of access remained a point of interest for participants, representing the US government, diplomatic community, and humanitarian NGOs. Gov. Beasley also reflected on Sudan’s progress and the continued humanitarian need in South Sudan.

Looking ahead, Beasley underscored that the WFP has helped get the ball rolling but that more progress will be needed, toward which the United States and others can play a constructive role.

New Atlanticist May 25, 2021

Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Africa’s most overlooked crises and opportunities

By Katherine Walla

Thomas-Greenfield spoke about US President Joe Biden’s outlook on Africa with Ambassador Rama Yade, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, at an event celebrating Africa Day and introducing the Africa Center’s new team and mission.

Africa Crisis Management

AfricaSource Jun 1, 2021

A US-Africa summit done right

By Aubrey Hruby

The last few decades of global Africa policy can be defined in a single word: summitry. After five years of absence from the summit stage, a revived US-Africa summit under the Biden administration is a no-brainer.

Africa Economy & Business

AfricaSource May 25, 2021

Africa is America’s greatest geopolitical opportunity. Does the US know it?

By Rama Yade

Biden can further build ties with Africa: He should do so not only because these countries have long been underrepresented within leading multilateral organizations, but also because they offer innovative solutions to global challenges including terrorism, climate change, migration, debt, and COVID-19.

Africa Economy & Business

The post WFP head offers readout on Horn of Africa trip appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In his remarks, H.E. Demeke focused on the government’s humanitarian response and the status of regional refugees, while providing an update on the government’s law enforcement operation. He was joined for comments by H.E. Redwan Hussein, state minister for foreign affairs and state of emergency spokesperson, and H.E. Tesfahun Gobezay, director general of Ethiopia’s Agency for Refugee and Returnee Affairs. Among other contributions, H.E. Tesfahun reported on the status of four key refugee camps near the border with Eritrea and the latest efforts to restore full access and services.

In the ensuing discussion, participants across government, the diplomatic corps, and relevant non-profit organizations engaged the Deputy Prime Minister on a variety of topics. These included issues related to humanitarian and journalistic access, the alleged role of Eritrean forces, the potential for border conflict with Sudan, and the timetable on restoring telecommunications to affected areas. Africa Center Director of Programs and Studies Bronwyn Bruton closed the session, thanking all speakers and participants for convening under the auspices of the Atlantic Council.  

New Atlanticist May 25, 2021

Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Africa’s most overlooked crises and opportunities

By Katherine Walla

Thomas-Greenfield spoke about US President Joe Biden’s outlook on Africa with Ambassador Rama Yade, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, at an event celebrating Africa Day and introducing the Africa Center’s new team and mission.

Africa Crisis Management

AfricaSource Jun 1, 2021

A US-Africa summit done right

By Aubrey Hruby

The last few decades of global Africa policy can be defined in a single word: summitry. After five years of absence from the summit stage, a revived US-Africa summit under the Biden administration is a no-brainer.

Africa Economy & Business

AfricaSource May 25, 2021

Africa is America’s greatest geopolitical opportunity. Does the US know it?

By Rama Yade

Biden can further build ties with Africa: He should do so not only because these countries have long been underrepresented within leading multilateral organizations, but also because they offer innovative solutions to global challenges including terrorism, climate change, migration, debt, and COVID-19.

Africa Economy & Business

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The post Hudson quoted in Bloomberg on increased border tensions between Amhara militias and Sudan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Africa Center’s Coronavirus: Africa page documented the early impact of the pandemic, and our virtual convenings with the leadership of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Food Programme highlighted the early successes and agency of African stakeholders in combatting the crisis. The likelihood of greater pan-African collaboration in the wake of COVID-19 was a key finding of the Center’s report on great power competition in Africa in the post-COVID landscape. That report was the result of a newly-launched collaboration with the Policy Center for the New South, which seeks to explore and reframe perceptions of Africa through a series of paired research papers written from both North and South lenses.

COVID-19 did not slow the pace of political developments in Africa this year. Sudan’s transitional government achieved a watershed when the US State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) designation was finally lifted and a massive aid package was bestowed on the nation in exchange for normalization of relations between Khartoum and Tel Aviv. The Africa Center’s convenings and analysis on this topic provided thought leadership across the political spectrum that helped steward the SST lifting to a successful conclusion. The Center’s robust analysis of the conflict in northern Ethiopia between the administration of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and members of the former authoritarian regime helped to shape perceptions of the dispute both regionally and in Washington, DC.

Looking ahead, it’s clear that in 2021 the new Biden administration will be challenged by the need to repair and reinvigorate key bilateral relationships on the continent (including Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa), and there is a major question mark over how many of the former administration’s initiatives will be abandoned. Prosper Africa’s launch was problematic, but in concert with the launch of the new US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and its equity capability, it signaled a concrete shift in US priorities to “trade, not aid” that was long overdue. The Africa Center marked that transition with a summit-level conference hosted in cooperation with the DFC, which laid out the United States’ all-of-government approach to Africa policy and, importantly, underscored both the strong bipartisan support for Prosper Africa’s expanded toolkit and the essential role of African development finance institutions in the process.

An event under the auspices of our new Afro-Century Initiative—which unites a coalition of African development finance institutions in an effort to forge a more authentic, optimistic narrative on Africa—capped the Center’s year of programming. An esteemed panel of economists and business leaders offered the following observations and predictions for what 2021 has in store for Africa’s economies:   

What to watch for in 2021:

• African markets have an advantage in 2021 and beyond, says Renaissance Capital’s Global Chief Economist Charlie Robertson, because the continent has been the least hurt by COVID-19 relative to other regions (a story similar to that of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis). Consequently, low interest rates in the West could push more institutional investors to chase high yields in Africa by increasing portfolio exposure in African fixed income and equities.

• Getting Africa to “catch up” is the wrong framing, says AfroChampions Co-Founder Edem Adzogenu. To him, the attitude must rather be: “can you turn in a completely different direction and perfect another model that passes the others but also learns from them.”

• The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) can be a “game-changer,” says the Africa Finance Corporation’s Chief Economist Rita Babihuga-Nsanze, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to build an enabling environment, especially when it comes to infrastructure.

• While China will remain a key financing partner, the scaling back of Belt and Road Initiative lending will provide space for new international lenders and other financial institutions to support the continent’s growth ambitions, says Standard Chartered Bank’s Chief Economist for Africa Razia Khan. According to Babihuga-Nsanze, African development finance institutions can play a critical role in closing the financing gap that emerges.

• Chinese growth—not lending—is going to lift the whole continent, says Robertson, but African countries need to invest in the right infrastructure. China’s GDP is likely to grow about $2.3 trillion next year and another $2.3 trillion the year after: equaling the size of the entire African market. This growth could help drive commodity price increases and create a lever for wealth creation in Africa, lifting the whole continent. Yet, key to cashing in on this Chinese growth will be Africa’s ability to build infrastructure to enable it, while forgoing projects that do not.

• Value addition and industrialization are two critical trends, according to Babihuga-Nsanze. The post-COVID reset will provide a push to shore up local supply chains and double down on the building of local industrial parks, which can promote investment.

• Ghana is a market set for growth, Khan and Robertson agree. But Nigeria must make good on its diversification promises, while South Africa’s political reforms will have investors watching.  

• Observers are missing the huge SME-driven informal sector, notes Adzogenu, as well as the huge creatives space. For African Development Bank Chief Economist and Vice President Rabah Arezki, the bottom-up wave of fintech and innovation will transform the continent, including in rural areas where growing digitization could be critical for improved agriculture. To Africa Center Senior Fellow Aubrey Hruby, digitization is the single most significant trend coming out of 2020 for Africa.

The last word:

• “For a continent that has the youngest population, [Africa] should be the center of the world. I mean this should be the center for the freshest ideas for innovation and everything, and the center for which people can come and bring their ideas to bring growth that will benefit the entire world as well.” –Edem Adzogenu, AfroChampions

Explore highlights from the Africa Center’s year of programming

New Atlanticist Oct 16, 2020

The US government makes its big push for investment in Africa

By David A. Wemer

Buoyed by bipartisan commitment and a new government agency, the United States has taken new and significant steps to help drive investment in Africa, strengthen the region’s dynamic economies, create lucrative opportunities for US and African businesses, and advance US foreign-policy goals in the region.

Africa Future of Work

New Atlanticist Jun 18, 2020

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta says his country needs ‘fiscal space’ amid the COVID-19 crisis

By Larry Luxner

“Coronavirus is mainly a health issue, and our key focus is ensuring that we keep our people safe,” Kenyatta said. “But this is also an economic crisis because it has resulted in some key sectors hugely affected by lockdowns. We were forced to close our airspace, which affected tourism, a very critical part of our economy.”

Africa Coronavirus

Report Nov 30, 2020

African agency in the new Cold War: Traditional power competition in the post-COVID-19 African landscape

By Bronwyn Bruton

In a resource-scarce post-COVID environment that will accelerate competition between traditional external powers on the African continent, some African nations will find themselves in the crosshairs of a new Cold War mentality that could threaten African agency, regionalization, and the blooming ethos of pan-Africanism. African leaders’ pursuit of collective interests will be decisive in setting the continent’s trajectory—toward a new African Century, or another period of thwarted ambitions.

Africa Economy & Business

AfricaSource Oct 16, 2020

Reducing Africa’s infrastructure deficit: An interview with AFC President & CEO Samaila Zubairu

By Africa Center

The Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), a pan-African development finance institution, has been developing and financing infrastructure, natural resources, and industrial assets to increase economic prosperity and growth across the continent since 2007. Watch Samaila Zubairu, president and chief executive officer of the Africa Finance Corporation, join Senior Fellow Aubrey Hruby for an interview to discuss AFC’s investment philosophy, innovation, and future growth, along with the critical role of African development finance institutions in improving economic prosperity.

Africa Economy & Business

AfricaSource Oct 15, 2020

An interview with US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy

By Africa Center

US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador Tibor Nagy, joins Atlantic Council Africa Center Director of Programs and Studies Ms. Bronwyn Bruton to discuss bipartisan support for increased US trade and investment in African countries.

Africa Economy & Business

AfricaSource Oct 16, 2020

Financing African trade and development: An interview with TDB Group President & CEO Admassu Tadesse

By Africa Center

The Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (TDB) has been financing trade and development projects and promoting economic integration and prosperity in the region since 1985. Watch an interview below between Mr. Admassu Tadesse, president and chief executive officer of TDB Group and Ms. Aubrey Hruby, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Mr. Tadesse covers what makes TDB unique and different, the role African development finance institutions (DFIs) play in returning the African continent to economic growth post-COVID, how TDB can interface with US investors, and ways DFIs can be catalytic in increasing capital flows to African markets.

Africa Economy & Business

AfricaSource Dec 14, 2020

What Sudan’s terror delisting really means

The announcement today that the forty-five day notification period to Congress had elapsed and Sudan was finally off the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list is historic. It validates the new direction of the country, which it was set upon nearly two years ago by nationwide, peaceful street protests. More importantly, it represents a definitive break with Sudan’s troubled past—the true end of the Bashir era, which began more than thirty years ago—and holds out the hope for a more prosperous future for all Sudanese. The weight of the moment cannot be understated.

Africa Democratic Transitions

New Atlanticist May 8, 2020

WFP’s David Beasley warns of dire famines in Africa, Mideast if COVID-19 supply chains damage continues

By Larry Luxner

Up to 300,000 people could starve to death every day if the COVID-19 pandemic ruptures global food supply chains—even more than the roughly 275,000 people who have died of the disease worldwide so far.

Coronavirus International Markets

AfricaSource Nov 13, 2020

Calls for negotiation are driving Ethiopia deeper into war

By Bronwyn Bruton

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Prize for his peacemaking with Eritrea, has confounded allies by resisting all attempts to dampen the ongoing military confrontation with a powerful northern insurgent group, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The TPLF effectively controlled the Ethiopian government from 1991 until February 2018, when it was driven […]

Africa Conflict

New Atlanticist Apr 29, 2020

Africa still sees a massive pandemic in its future, but partnerships may lessen blow

By Katherine Walla

With an uncertain future for the pandemic that lies ahead, the Africa CDC is encouraging pivotal partnerships to act quickly to secure Africa amid haphazardly understood policies, little access to water and sanitation, and resource constraints.

Africa Coronavirus

New Atlanticist Dec 8, 2020

Mo Ibrahim: Why Africa must emerge more resilient from the COVID crisis

By David A. Wemer

A well-known Afro-optimist, Ibrahim has invested in the continent’s democratic progress and has focused on tackling practical governance issues. While the pandemic has exposed such problems across the world, he noted, one of its lessons is that Africa must be “more self-sufficient” and “resilient.”

Africa Coronavirus

Event Recap Jul 10, 2020

Dr. Dambisa Moyo, panel reinvigorate debate on a Marshall Plan for Africa

By Africa Center

On Friday, July 10, the Africa Center hosted a panel discussion on whether the time has come for a Marshall Plan for Africa. The panel featured Global Economist and Author Dr. Dambisa Moyo, former US Congressman Dr. David Brat, and Africa Center Senior Fellow Ms. Aubrey Hruby. The virtual conversation was moderated by Africa Center Senior Fellow Mr. Gabriel Negatu, with opening and concluding remarks given by the Center’s Director of Programs and Studies Ms. Bronwyn Bruton.

Africa Corruption

The Africa Center works to promote dynamic geopolitical partnerships with African states and to redirect US and European policy priorities toward strengthening security and bolstering economic growth and prosperity on the continent.

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The first session, viewable here, focused on external influence in the Red Sea region. Africa Center Director of Programs and Studies Ms. Bronwyn Bruton moderated the panel, which included Africa Center Senior Fellow Mr. Gabriel Negatu, alongside PCNS International Relations Specialist Ms. Maha Skah and PCNS Senior Fellow Dr. Khalid Chegraoui. The event served as an opportunity to highlight the role of foreign actors in multiple arenas across the region, including in negotiations over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the lifting of Sudan from the US state sponsors of terrorism list, and maritime trade diplomacy, among other topics.

Dr. Chegraoui gave opening remarks by providing a comprehensive overview of how emerging powers—such as the Gulf countries, Turkey, Iran, and others—are wielding influence in different parts of the region, and how the new relations between Israel and Arab states could create a new security dynamic in East Africa. Mr. Negatu then followed up by discussing how the situation in Ethiopia marks the beginning of a post-TPLF-dominated Ethiopia, which creates the opportunity for an Ethiopia-Eritrea alliance that could redefine the region’s outlook. Though an inward-looking trend in Ethiopia, as the country reconstructs and rehabilitates the Tigray region, could open the Horn to further strategic competition as external powers look to capitalize. Lastly, Ms. Skah reflected on the role of Emirati port building, Turkey’s enhanced commercial role in Somalia, and how Horn countries are essential to Israel’s commercial and strategic interests, creating an impetus for further engagement. Ms. Bruton concluded the discussion by striking a hopeful tone that the shifting regional security arrangement will bring newfound economic prosperity to countries in the region.

The second session, viewable here, zeroed in on the Sahel region, another geostrategic flashpoint where external powers are wielding influence. PCNS Senior Fellow Dr. Khalid Chegraoui moderated the panel, which included Africa Center Senior Fellows Dr. Pierre Englebert and Mr. Abdoul Salam Bello alongside PCNS Senior Fellow Mr. Rida Lyammouri. The event presented an opportunity to discuss the ongoing security situation in the region, how local, state, and regional governments are responding, and the role foreign actors are playing in the military and economic spheres.

Mr. Bello opened his remarks by framing the conversation around population growth trends and how they are putting pressure on Sahel countries to provide basic services to their population. The role of state governments is weakened by their inability to provide security, education, healthcare, and jobs, creating a void for non-state actors—including prominent terrorist groups—to gain legitimacy by providing some basic services to populations in rural areas. Dr. Englebert then followed up by emphasizing how foreign military interventions in the region, such as France’s Operation Barkhane, are band-aid solutions to the structural crisis posed by weak state institutions. Dr. Englebert suggested short and long-term solutions to improve security and governance in the region, both of which include granting more agency and capacity to African institutions rather than relying on external powers. Mr. Lyammouri reiterated these points by emphasizing that international solutions to address the Sahelian crisis have largely failed, contributing to a pervasive sense of mistrust between citizens and state governments.

Dr. Chegraoui then stepped in to pose various questions to the panelists around where external powers—namely China, Russia, and the United States—are engaged in the region, if France can remain the major external player in the Sahel, and how the COVID-19 pandemic may affect humanitarian efforts. Dr. Chegraoui concluded the discussion by thanking the panelists and expressing his hope further collaboration between the Africa Center and PCNS.

AfricaSource Dec 14, 2020

What Sudan’s terror delisting really means

The announcement today that the forty-five day notification period to Congress had elapsed and Sudan was finally off the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list is historic. It validates the new direction of the country, which it was set upon nearly two years ago by nationwide, peaceful street protests. More importantly, it represents a definitive break with Sudan’s troubled past—the true end of the Bashir era, which began more than thirty years ago—and holds out the hope for a more prosperous future for all Sudanese. The weight of the moment cannot be understated.

Africa Democratic Transitions

New Atlanticist Dec 8, 2020

Mo Ibrahim: Why Africa must emerge more resilient from the COVID crisis

By David A. Wemer

A well-known Afro-optimist, Ibrahim has invested in the continent’s democratic progress and has focused on tackling practical governance issues. While the pandemic has exposed such problems across the world, he noted, one of its lessons is that Africa must be “more self-sufficient” and “resilient.”

Africa Coronavirus

AfricaSource Dec 9, 2020

Startup Acts are the next form of policy innovation in Africa

By Jordan Wolken

Africa’s COVID recession certainly hasn’t hit the continent’s tech industry. In fact, as countries adapt to the expanding digital universe created by COVID-19, technology ecosystems across the continent are booming—and global investors have noticed. Attempting to cash in, African countries are trying to bolster their own innovation ecosystems through supportive legislation.

Africa Economy & Business

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Once considered unlikely by regional experts, military confrontation along the Nile is a growing possibility, as a diplomatic solution to the Egyptian-Sudanese-Ethiopian stand-off recedes. Outside observers may not understand why Egypt considers the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) an “existential threat” to its existence, but, regardless, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his advisors see it as such.

A new Atlantic Council issue brief, “The Temperature is Rising, the Fever White Hot: The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam as Flashpoint between Egypt and Ethiopia,” authored by Christopher D. Booth, describes the relationship between water scarcity and government stability in Egypt. The current Egyptian government is aware of the the role that water scarcity may have played in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak, and of the continuing threat that water issues pose nearly ten years later, particularly in light of Egypt’s political and economic challenges. 

Booth warns that, given the inconclusive diplomacy of the West regarding the threat the GERD poses to Egypt, the Egyptian regime may determine that it has no other choice but to take up arms against its “oppressors” and roll the dice in an attack against the dam.

Related content

Fast Thinking Nov 20, 2020

FAST THINKING: Get up to speed on the crisis in Ethiopia

By Atlantic Council

A fast-developing crisis in Ethiopia has the crucial US ally edging closer to all-out war, just two years after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office promising democratic reforms and a year after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. So what happened? Today we’re turning to Cameron Hudson, an expert on the region and former US diplomat and intelligence officer, for a look behind the headlines.

Africa Conflict

Issue Brief Sep 29, 2020

The impact of COVID-19 on either shore of the Mediterranean

By Karim Mezran, Emily Burchfield, Paolo Alli, Emadeddin Badi, Haykel Ben Mahfoudh, Alessia Melcangi

This report draws on case studies of Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, and migration to the EU to illuminate the key challenges faced in the Mediterranean community, and warns of the undesirable outcomes ahead if international inaction toward the region persists.

Coronavirus North Africa

MENASource Jul 10, 2020

Nile Basin’s GERD dispute creates risks for Egypt, Sudan, and beyond

By Amal Kandeel

Competition for the Nile Basin’s freshwater has been growing markedly for three decades. In 2011, it intensified after Ethiopia started building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Ethiopia North Africa

Through our Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, the Atlantic Council works with allies and partners in Europe and the wider Middle East to protect US interests, build peace and security, and unlock the human potential of the region.

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The event served as an opportunity to discuss the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region between government-led forces and forces allied with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The event was opened by Africa Center Director of Programs and Studies Ms. Bronwyn Bruton, followed by introductions from Africa Center Senior Fellow Mr. Gabriel Negatu and moderation by Africa Center Senior Fellow Mr. Cameron Hudson.

H.E. Gedion provided opening remarks to frame the conversation around the Ethiopian government’s strategy to reclaim TPLF strongholds in Tigray, following the attempted seizure of military assets by TPLF forces earlier this month. Participants, representing the US government, Congressional offices, think tanks, and not-for-profits, then directed questions to both H.E. Gedion and Mr. Mihretu about limiting civilian casualties in the region; the conflict’s economic impact on Ethiopia; coordination with humanitarian agencies; and repatriating refugees who fled to neighboring Sudan. Mr. Hudson concluded the discussion reflecting on hope for peace, stability, and justice while pledging to maintain regular discussions regarding Tigray under the auspices of the Atlantic Council.

The Africa Center works to promote dynamic geopolitical partnerships with African states and to redirect US and European policy priorities toward strengthening security and bolstering economic growth and prosperity on the continent.

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A fast-developing crisis in Ethiopia has the crucial US ally edging closer to all-out war, just two years after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office promising democratic reforms and a year after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. So what happened? Today we’re turning to Cameron Hudson, an expert on the region and former US diplomat and intelligence officer, for a look behind the headlines.

• Cameron Hudson: Former director for African affairs at the National Security Council and senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center

The backstory

Abiy’s governing coalition has from the start faced resistance from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the core element of the former ruling party based in the country’s north. Months of tensions boiled over after an alleged TPLF attack on government forces. Abiy has dispatched troops to the northern region and hundreds of people have been killed in the fighting. The prime minister has so far refused calls for international mediation, calling the conflict an “internal law and order operation.”

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What’s Abiy up to?

• “He’s trying to reform the Ethiopian state. He came to power in 2018 with a popular mandate to break with decades of authoritarian rule and ethnic politics. But his vision of a pan-Ethiopian political and social movement has been stymied by the TPLF.”

• “Abiy has proven to be a perplexing figure. A PhD in peace and conflict resolution, his image as prime minister was made by early moves to make peace with neighboring Eritrea and the release of his own domestic political prisoners. But he rose to positions of authority through military intelligence under an authoritarian system.”

Did the Nobel Committee get Abiy wrong?

• “The prize was premature. In retrospect it represented more of a celebration of Ethiopia’s move away from authoritarianism and the prospects of a democratic transition and stable Horn of Africa than the fully realized product of his vision.”

What should we make of the TPLF?

• “There should be no love lost for the TPLF. Under their long rule, Ethiopian media was censored, political opponents were jailed, and a vast security state kept the country’s 110 million population largely in check. But they also present legitimate grievances with respect to Abiy’s reform agenda, which are shared in part by other ethnic groups.”
   
• “Unlike those other groups, the TPLF has the military hardware and the experience of as many as 250,000 battle-hardened troops to not only present an alternative political vision, but aggressively pursue it.”​​​​​​

• “While Abiy came to power through a popular protest movement, he does not govern with an electoral mandate. When he canceled national elections earlier this year due to the COVID pandemic—elections that would have legitimized and formalized not only his rule but his broader reform agenda—he became, in the eyes of the Tigrayan leaders, an illegitimate leader serving in violation of the constitution. In response, this fall, Tigray held its own regional elections, contravening federal authorities, and thus calling into question their own legitimacy in the eyes of Abiy’s government.”

What role does Ethiopia play in regional stability?

• “Ethiopia has been the lynchpin of security in the Horn of Africa region for the better part of two decades—whether contributing peacekeepers under UN and African Union mandates to conflict zones around the continent; partnering with the US on counterterror operations, most notably in neighboring Somalia; using its political leaders to intervene and mediate in hot conflicts in places like Sudan and South Sudan; or simply playing host to the African Union headquarters. Reversing this trend—or worse, seeing Ethiopia become a net exporter of violence and instability—will most assuredly have a devastating effect.”

What should we watch to understand where the conflict is headed next?

• “First, the degree to which ethnicity is being weaponized. Underpinning this entire conflict is Ethiopia’s troubled history of managing ethnic diversity. If the conflict spreads to Ethiopia’s other ethnic regions and we see score-settling based on ethnic divides, many are cautioning that we could quickly see the dissolution of the Ethiopian state, akin to the breakup of Yugoslavia.”

• “Second, many regional actors will have a stake in the outcome of an Ethiopian civil war—including Egypt, which has been in heated negotiations with Abiy over the use of Nile waters, and Eritrea, which fought a long border war against mostly Tigrayan troops and is now allied with Abiy. In a battle of near-equals, outside actors could be the difference-maker.” 

What can a Biden administration do?

“This conflict is a reminder that Ethiopia, along with Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, are the continent’s ‘too big to fail’ countries. Considerable diplomatic effort needs to be put into repairing the Trump administration’s ill-advised record of non-engagement in the region so that we once again have influence and credibility. Biden will face calls to appoint a first-ever Horn of Africa envoy, which makes increasing sense. The US needs a coherent strategy for this region and the capacity to carry it out.”

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But there is a worse alternative: and that is the very realistic prospect that the two sides will fight each other nearly to the death, then agree to negotiations that will allow both sides to heal and re-arm, until some provocation inevitably retriggers a new round of conflict, which will lead to another conflagration with immense costs to human life, and so on, as the cycle endlessly repeats itself. This is the scenario that has played out time and again in South Sudan, and it is by far the likeliest outcome of current demands for negotiation between the TPLF and the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF).

The reason for this is simple: the TPLF has good reason to think that it can attack the Ethiopian government forces, and yet not be held accountable by the Western democracies that wield so much influence in the country.

Despite the massive human rights violations that were associated with the TPLF’s rule—despite the authoritarianism and theft, the imprisonments and the torture that have been laid at its door—the TPLF’s international allies have never repudiated it, nor examined their inappropriate investment in the TPLF’s welfare. International analysts have pointedly and repeatedly failed even to raise the TPLF’s maladministration and intransigence in their assessments of this current crisis. This has created an attitude of impunity in the TPLF, but it has also undermined the Ethiopian leadership’s faith that international mediation and diplomacy can work on their behalf. And that is an awful tragedy, because if Abiy had any reason to believe that the international community could fairly and impartially mediate his conflict with the TPLF, he might actually be persuaded to stand down.

An unfinished revolution and the road back to insurgency

The TPLF took power in Ethiopia in 1987. Its leader, Meles Zenawi, effectively ruled Ethiopia unilaterally until his death in 2012, although he exercised his power through a four-party ethnic-based coalition called the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The EPRDF was successful in producing a period of seeming ethnic calm and economic prosperity in Ethiopia; but it lost popular elections in 2005, at which time it took an alarming authoritarian turn, and grew increasingly repressive. Under Zenawi and his successor, Hailemariam Desalegn, the EPRDF effectively outlawed the freedoms of assembly and speech, banned most civil society organizations, and imprisoned tens of thousands of youths, Muslims, political opposition members, and journalists. Many of these individuals were cruelly tortured in prison. During this time period, the EPRDF—under the TPLF’s influence—launched a misguided invasion of Somalia and refused to withdraw its forces from Eritrean territory, violating the terms of a peace agreement and the ruling of a United Nations-backed border commission. Both of these actions have produced profound instability in the greater Horn of Africa region—in Somalia, by bringing the extremist al Shabaab militia to power, and in Eritrea, by prolonging a two-decade period of cold war that has isolated and impoverished the Eritrean people. But because the TPLF was widely viewed as an ally of the United States’ war on terrorism, it was insulated from international criticism, and also benefited from immense flows of foreign aid, which in turn allowed it to build a massive military and intelligence apparatus that was helpful in controlling the Ethiopian population, and further prolonged the EPRDF’s nondemocratic rule.

After years of public uprisings, in which many Ethiopians lost their lives, Desalegn was forced to resign as prime minister and the TPLF lost much of its hold on power. The group was largely forced to withdraw to its northern enclave, where it retained an arsenal of weaponry vastly disproportionate to its presumed political constituency (which represents approximately 6 percent of Ethiopia’s population). Though these allegations have not been definitively proved—and should therefore be referenced with caution—the new Ethiopian government has repeatedly and credibly accused the TPLF of working to incite ethnic conflicts and to undermine the new political order. Tensions have continued to rise, and have been aggravated by the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has prevented the timely holding of national elections that might have produced some consensus on proposed reforms to the federalist system and the Ethiopian constitution.

In its impatience, the TPLF defied government orders and called Tigrayans to the polls. The lack of observers and the nature of the announced results—which showed the TPLF winning 98 percent of the popular vote—prevent this exercise from being described as an election.

The international community failed at that point—and at innumerable points leading up to it—to condemn the TPLF’s goading and irresponsible actions, and in particular, its blunt refusal to recognize the authority of Abiy’s administration. This international silence has persuaded the TPLF that it has retained the sympathies of its old international backers, and has inadvertently emboldened the hardliners at the top of the party. Prime Minister Abiy, who could have chosen to ignore what was at best a flimsy provocation, likewise chose to escalate rather than defuse the situation. He retaliated by cutting funding to the TPLF leadership. That in turn, appears to have goaded the TPLF into attacking an Ethiopian Defense Forces base located in the Tigray region. Non-Tigrayan soldiers, in a foreshadowing of ethnic-based violence by TPLF-aligned forces to come, were allegedly executed during the attack, and other federal soldiers still remain hostage.

And yet, at no point has any Western or African power called for the TPLF to lay down its arms. At no point have Western powers discussed leveling sanctions on the TPLF officials who authorized the attack. In fact, pointed op-editorials in premier publications have actually blamed the Prime Minister for “marginalizing” the TPLF from power, and held him equally responsible for the escalating tensions.

In fact, Abiy has been right to call the TPLF’s assault on federal forces a “red line” provocation. There is no government in the world that would tolerate such an assault. The moment that it took up arms against the federal government, and oversaw the execution of federal soldiers, TPLF forfeited its status as a political party and regional administration, and returned to its old roots as a rebel movement. There is thus no precedent in international law for calling its military assault an act of war. It is an act of insurgency; it is an act of armed revolt; and most dangerously, it is a revolt being prosecuted on ethnic lines, as the TPLF is politically isolated and lacks any political constituency outside of Tigray. TPLF forces—having consumed the narrative of ethnic-based persecution being fed to them by the TPLF leadership—have subsequently been implicated in the massacre of scores or hundreds of innocent non-Tigrayan bystanders at Mai-Kadra (though we should absolutely assume, given the previous conduct of the Ethiopian Defense Forces in Oromia and elsewhere, that there will be atrocities on both sides).

The urgent question is, how can the international community intervene to stop the fighting, and what actions can prevent a recurrence of the fighting?

Moving forward

First, the diplomatic community must recognize what is painfully obvious: that its lack of credibility has rendered it powerless to exercise influence on this conflict. This extends beyond the Western democracies to the African Union (AU) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), who are equally guilty of abetting the abuses of the TPLF, especially insofar as Somalia and Eritrea are concerned.

But the United States, in particular, has for too long failed to confront the abusiveness of the TPLF ruling cadre. US President Barack Obama’s repeated references to the Ethiopian government as “democratically elected” in spite of the flagrant rigging of elections—in which the unpopular ruling party always won between 97 percent and 100 percent of seats in the parliament—was widely viewed in Ethiopia as a betrayal of fundamental American principles. The international community has also maintained a pointed silence about the TPLF since Abiy took power. Time and time again, as the TPLF has been implicated in serious acts of provocation and violence, as the TPLF has rejected the authority of the central government—and the popular will that brought the new dispensation into being—Washington and its allies, particularly those in the chattering classes, have utterly failed to repudiate the TPLF.

If any of these international actors wish to stand as credible mediators, they must admit to their previous bias and address the threat that the bias poses moving forward. They must acknowledge and act on the recognition that the international silence on the TPLF’s conduct has played a significant role in creating the conditions for this current crisis.

Second, the international community must understand that Prime Minister Abiy and President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea have long understood that the TPLF would never be constrained or barred from a return to power by Ethiopia’s external allies. While analysts claim that “no military solution is possible,” the ongoing international toleration of the TPLF has convinced them that the very opposite is true—and that both Abiy and Isaias believe that they can quickly win this battle.

Abiy has been widely lauded for making peace with Eritrea after decades of near-war over a border dispute. But the alliance served a vital tactical purpose of containing the powerful TPLF in its northern corner, where it has been surrounded by unfriendly forces: the Eritreans, the rival Amhara ethnic police and militias, and the federal troops controlled by Abiy. This coalition of forces—as well as fears that too-aggressive action by the TPLF could trigger broad ethnic reprisals against the innocent Tigrayan population—combined for a few years to keep a northern insurgency in check. But the TPLF is thought to control several hundreds of thousands of soldiers and irregular militia, and has a powerful modern arsenal. Until now, Abiy has not had the military strength to confront it, even as the TPLF has been widely accused of fomenting ethnic unrest around the country.

But since the day he came to power, Abiy has been frantically working to reduce the TPLF’s stranglehold on Ethiopia’s military resources and manpower. He is a calculating leader, and his willingness to take action to confront the TPLF in its stronghold, after years of strategic patience, indicates that he believes that he can win. Here is why he may be confident:

First, the US Department of State has formally indicated its concern about reports of the TPLF attack on ENDF bases on November 3. This puts down a marker that the Trump Administration considers the TPLF to be the instigator of the current round of violence, and gives Abiy a political green light to quell the unrest. That may change when the Biden administration takes control of the US government, but Abiy surely expects the conflict to be over by then.

State Department personnel have also pointedly resisted the temptation to echo descriptions of the conflict between the TPLF insurgency and the ENDF a “civil war.” The term is widely being used in the press, but it is alarmist: Abiy’s assault on the TPLF is certainly a gamble, and there is a possibility that a prolonged conflict in the far northern corner of Ethiopia could eventually spark unrest elsewhere. But there is a better than even chance that the military confrontation will play out in a matter of days rather than weeks. Prime Minister Abiy’s round rejection of outside intervention suggests that he is indeed confident of this result. It’s also important to understand that the TPLF, regardless of its residual military strength, is a politically isolated faction with few internal or external allies. Its grievances are unlikely to spark widespread unrest, as long as the Ethiopian population can resist the temptation to act out reprisals on innocent Tigrayans around the country.

And in spite of speculation that the TPLF may attempt to push an attack towards Addis Ababa, the battle is unlikely to spread southward. Abiy came to power when millions on millions of Ethiopians took to the streets to overthrow the TPLF-dominated regime. Anger against the TPLF—and unfortunately, against the broader Tigrayan ethnic group, precious few of whom have truly benefitted from TPLF rule—ran so high in the months following Abiy’s rise that many feared that a genocide against the Tigrayans could be imminent. For all the popular disenchantment with Abiy’s government, a launch of TPLF forces towards Addis Ababa, for the explicit purpose of overthrowing the government by force, would almost certainly produce an avalanche of popular anger. Abiy seems to have done a pretty good job of convincing average Ethiopians that his military assault is indeed a law and order operation designed in the long run to reduce conflicts across the country. Abiy’s popular standing has also benefitted from the nationalist fervor rising over Egyptian threats against the GERD, and US President Donald Trump’s casual incitement of a conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia. (Another powerful reason, frankly, for the Ethiopian government to distrust any Western attempts at mediation.) The TPLF seems aware of this risk: apart from some bombast, its rhetoric has squarely emphasized a goal of self-defense.

A regional conflagration as a result of the fighting between the TPLF and ENDF is also unlikely. Neighboring states—all of whom have good relations with Abiy and poor relations with the TPLF—have so far resisted any impulse to insert themselves into the crisis. Sudan immediately closed its border with Tigray, and far more importantly, Eritrea has not launched troops into Ethiopian territory. (There have been unconfirmed reports of fighting between Eritrean and TPLF troops at various points along the border, but these have not been confirmed, and there is reason to think that Abiy and Isaias will resist Eritrea’s entry into the conflict unless it is absolutely necessary.) At a time of great uncertainty in Ethiopia, the restraint of the neighboring nations is a profoundly important asset: in Africa, “civil wars” are often sparked and aggravated by the meddling of foreign forces. Ethiopia’s strong relations with neighboring states are likely to prevent this outcome.

There is a risk that the TPLF may, out of desperation, attempt to push into Eritrean territory—as it did most recently in June 2016, at a time when the TPLF was at the height of its political and military power, in control of the entire Ethiopian military apparatus, and in possession of strong international support. (That attack also led to panicked headlines about the potential for a new war in the Horn.) But Eritrea successfully deflected the attempted invasion and is just as likely to be able to defend itself now. Plus, if the TPLF moves into Eritrean territory, Asmara will be able to justify a counterattack—and the TPLF will then be forced to fight powerful enemies on two fronts, with good reason to think that the ENDF and Eritrean forces would seek to coordinate their assaults. Again, that is not an outcome that the TPLF is likely to seek out.

This conflict has been years in the making, and it’s hard to see how it can be resolved through dialogue. By allowing most of the TPLF leadership to live unmolested in the north after losing power—without a truth and reconciliation commission, and with few attempts to hold the old regime accountable for human rights abuses or thefts of Ethiopian treasure—Abiy, willingly or not, had embarked on a grand experiment. The TPLF has not kept its side of that bargain. It’s true that if Abiy’s military gamble now misfires, Ethiopia and the rest of the region may be in for a miserable round of suffering. But neither can Abiy govern the country with an intransigent, heavily-armed spoiler in the north. There is no indication that any of these actors are willing to negotiate, and Abiy probably feels that this military confrontation is his best chance of achieving long-term peace.

Indeed, Abiy probably fears that if he fails to answer the TPLF’s overt attacks on the Ethiopian state and its citizens, it will cause him to lose control of his government. And all Ethiopia’s allies should fear that outcome, because we have no idea at all what might come next.

The most effective means of discouraging the continuation of this conflict is to finally put pressure on TPLF leaders—especially Chairman Debretsion Gebremichael—to stand down his forces in the interest of protecting the local population. Abiy urgently needs to be persuaded that he can rely on the international community—and not only his army—to ensure that the TPLF will be prevented from returning to power. Counterintuitively, the fastest way for the international community to do that is to stop calling for negotiations, and to start demanding accountability for the TPLF.

Calling for negotiations, as so many are advocating, will only encourage TPLF leaders to believe that violence will permit them to fight their way to a bigger chair at the table. That is not only a losing strategy in Ethiopia—it sets up an extraordinarily dangerous precedent for the next armed insurgency that wants to challenge central authority.

Bronwyn Bruton is the director of programs and studies of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Follow her on Twitter @BronwynBruton.

AfricaSource Nov 11, 2020

Experts react: Understanding the conflict in Tigray

By Africa Center

As conflict breaks out in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, Africa Center experts react and analyze what this means for the country and its neighbors.

Africa Conflict

New Atlanticist Oct 16, 2020

The US government makes its big push for investment in Africa

By David A. Wemer

Buoyed by bipartisan commitment and a new government agency, the United States has taken new and significant steps to help drive investment in Africa, strengthen the region’s dynamic economies, create lucrative opportunities for US and African businesses, and advance US foreign-policy goals in the region.

Africa Future of Work

Elections 2020 Nov 7, 2020

Joe Biden just won the presidency: What does that mean for America’s role in the world?

By Atlantic Council

Atlantic Council experts weigh in on what the outcome of the 2020 election means for US foreign policy and America’s role in the world.

Economy & Business Elections

The post Calls for negotiation are driving Ethiopia deeper into war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Hudson quoted in Der Spiegel on the implications of conflict breaking out in Tigray appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Gabriel Negatu: War in the Tigray region of Ethiopia

Cameron Hudson: What impact will the fighting have on the Horn of Africa?

War in the Tigray region of Ethiopia

On November 4, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a military offensive against forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which is the governing authority of the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray. Coming after months of rising tensions between the TPLF and the Abiy administration, the latest military action was precipitated by an alleged surprise night-time assault by the TPLF on a major Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) base in Tigray that resulted in the killing of non-Tigrayan soldiers and the attempted looting of heavy artillery and weapons. Declaring that the assault on the federal army base had “crossed the last red line,” Prime Minister Abiy maintains that his hand was forced by the TPLF leadership into sending the army “to save the country and the region.” More than a week on, the military operation is still reportedly targeting Tigray’s militia establishments and the TPLF leadership, and not its citizens—though there are worrying reports of civilian casualties, which are difficult to confirm due to an Internet and telephone blackout imposed by the government on the entire Tigray region. The Council of Representatives has also imposed a state of emergency on Tigray, effectively isolating it from the rest of Ethiopia.

For the judicious observer of Ethiopia’s ethnic politics, there have been signs of ominous tensions between Tigray and the central government since Abiy came to power two years ago. The TPLF had held a stranglehold on power for decades, since taking power in 1991. Following a months-long popular revolt that ushered him to power in early 2018, Abiy swiftly curbed the TPLF’s dominance over Ethiopia’s political and economic life, leaving its leaders feeling targeted and purged. The President of the Tigray region charged the Prime Minister with trying to ‘sideline and even criminalize’ the TPLF.

The TPLF had exerted power in Ethiopia through a governing coalition, composed of four ethnic-based parties, called the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). But in 2019, shortly after Abiy took power, the other three parties annulled the EPRDF coalition and moved to replace it with a single national Prosperity Party that was not organized on ethnic lines. The TPLF countered by breaking away from the new governing coalition and launching a vain attempt to unite opposition forces under a new federalist coalition. Failing that, it has now isolated itself from the political process.

In March, the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE), an autonomous body accountable to the House of Peoples’ Representatives temporarily postponed the national and regional elections scheduled for August 2020 due to COVID-19 concerns. Legislators from Tigray, including the speaker of the Upper House, withdrew from the national parliament in protest. Relations soured further in September 2020 when the TPLF, in open defiance of the constitution and federal government, held elections in Tigray and reported a 98 percent victory in the popular vote. (The election was not overseen by international observers.) The newly-installed regional legislators in Tigray immediately declared that the federal government lacked legitimacy to govern the country and refused to recognize it.

The national assembly then countered by annulling Tigray’s election results and refusing to acknowledge the newly-elected leadership. Federal funding to the region was also slashed significantly, limiting the flow of resources only to local governments to protect basic services, and bypassing the TPLF. The leadership in Mekele, the capital of Tigray, called the cessation of their funding a declaration of war. Days before the assault by federal forces, the region’s president, Debretsion G. Michael, warned the public that the Prime Minister was planning an attack to punish Tigray for its defiance.

Having controlled all facets of state power incontestably for the twenty-eight years prior to its ouster in 2018, the TPLF views Abiy’s democratic reforms and liberalization zeal with a great deal of edginess. His interest in reforming the federalist structure of the Ethiopian state—which divides Ethiopia into nine self-governing ethnic territories—especially threatens to undermine the order that has historically permitted the small Tigrayan ethnic group to wield a power disproportionate to its population. Abiy is an Oromo by origin, and thus a member of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, and his espousal of a broader nationalist agenda over narrow ethnic priorities is viewed by many of the smaller ethnic groups, and not only the TPLF, as eroding the right to self-rule, including secession, that is granted by the Ethiopian Constitution to ethnically organized regions. The TPLF is also uneasy with Abiy over his intentions to amend the Constitution, which provides the basis of the current ethnic federalism. 

Meles Zenawi, a founding member of the TPLF, created the Ethiopian constitution in the earliest days of his rule and the group’s present leaders sanction the constitution as a canonical text. They consider Abiy’s constitutional reform agenda as a ‘red line.’ The system of ethnic federalism under the EPRDF had privileged the TPLF as first among equals in a coalition government, according it an oversize share of political and economic power relative to its population size of 6 percent. Amending the constitution to redistribute power in proportion to population size would significantly reduce the TPLF’s share of power, which is something that Mekele is not prepared to concede. 

Lastly, Mekele remains highly suspicious of the recent Ethio-Eritrea rapprochement, which includes the signing of a peace agreement and a promise by Abiy to honor a long-violated United Nations ruling on the demarcation of the border between Eritrea and Tigray. Rivalry between Eritrea’s ruling party, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ, and formerly known as the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, or EPLF) and the TPLF runs deep, dating back to their time in the bushes fighting the Derg. Both Addis Ababa and Asmara stand hostile to the TPLF, albeit for different reasons. Abiy’s cozying up to Asmara without including Mekele is viewed as forsaking Tigray in favor of Eritrea. Consequently, the TPLF accuses Asmara of siding with Abiy to attack Tigray in an effort to settle old scores. Despite TPLF claims to the contrary, however, there is currently no evidence of PFDJ action in this war. This is far from saying Eritrea would not retaliate if provoked. 

Since losing power in 2018, the TPLF has worked to undermine Abiy’s reform efforts. Hard evidence is scarce, but the TPLF is alleged to be behind much of the internal tensions and ethnic violence that has plagued Ethiopia since the Abiy administration took control. Whether or not these reports are true, social media networks in Ethiopia are rife with accusations that the TPLF, working mainly through surrogates and break-away groups, has been fomenting conflict by organizing, training, and financing forces opposed to the federal government. (The recent school yard massacre of Amharas in the Wollega region of Oromia sparked exactly such a round of accusations on social media networks.)

International analysts may be right to fear that, if extended indefinitely, the present conflict may possibly rouse discontented TPLF surrogates in various pockets of Ethiopia to rise against the Abiy government. In the meantime, however, the declaration of war seems to have the opposite effect. Media accounts suggest the rest of the country is galvanized behind what the Prime Minister describes as a ‘rule of law operation’ to guarantee peace and stability and to bring a group that is widely perceived as the perpetrators of instability to justice. Certain ethnic groups along the border could also specifically benefit from the conflict. Amharas living in areas bordering Tigray, for example, harbor territorial claims over land illegally annexed by the TPLF while it assumed power. Such groups have been drawn into the present conflict on the side of the government and are already celebrating the recapture of annexed territory. As of now, no such claims have been made on the Afar-Tigray Border.

The breakout in fighting comes at a time when Ethiopia is contemplating several sweeping reforms. But the two years since the TPLF was ousted from power have not been long enough for Abiy’s brand of politics, and his transformational agenda, to set down firm roots. The democratic opening he has unleashed is yet to fully address the many ethnic grievances that were bottled up under the TPLF, and sporadic ethnic flare-ups continue to occur across the country, even as the region struggles to cope with rising COVID-19 infections rates with consequential impact on economic and social life. The security forces now under Abiy’s control have been accused of not responding appropriately to many of these conflicts. Lastly, Ethiopia remains in the midst of protracted negotiations with Egypt and Sudan over the Grand Renaissance Dam. The recent phase of negotiations resumed days before the breakout of hostilities, attended by water ministers from the three countries and experts from the African Union, European Union, and the World Bank.   

The war in Tigray is unfortunate and could have tragic consequences, almost certainly including the loss of innocent lives. It is important for both sides to take extra measures to protect civilians. Abiy’s protestations that this is a war against the TPLF and not the people of Tigray will be credible only if the government also ensures the safety and wellbeing of Tigrayans in other parts of the country. Many are not at all affiliated with the TPLF or the war efforts, but they may yet be subjected to unwarranted reprisals. But as of now, at least, concerns that Eritrea may be drawn into the war, or that the war may escalate into a regional conflict, are unfounded, or premature at best.

Gabriel Negatu is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center and former director general for eastern Africa at the African Development Bank. Follow him on Twitter @Gabnegatu.

What impact will the fighting have on the Horn of Africa?

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy’s November 4 decision to launch federal troops into the country’s western Tigray region have sent shockwaves across the Horn of Africa region and beyond. With a population of 110 million people, Ethiopia is the second largest country in Africa and borders six other African nations astride the Horn and East African regions. Chronic instability and acute humanitarian needs are rife across the region. A prolonged conflagration between well-armed factions inside of Ethiopia could send hundreds of thousands of refugees across borders, disrupt trade routes, and force Addis Ababa to abandon its role of regional anchor state, mediator, policeman, and peacekeeper. That would be a potentially cataclysmic scenario for a region ill-equipped to handle additional tumult or a humanitarian fallout that could affect more than nine million people, according to the UN this week. 

Nowhere are the threats of instability more acute than in neighboring Sudan, which two days after fighting began announced a closure of portions of its eastern border with Ethiopia, and reportedly began positioning more than six thousand of its own forces inside of Gedaraf state, which borders Tigray. Anecdotal reports from inside Sudan suggest that the normally heavy volume of trade at border checkpoints has already been curtailed, and that Tigrayan truck drivers are being prevented from bringing their shipments into Sudan out of fear that federal authorities in Addis could see this as an effort to aid in the Tigrayan resistance.   

Earlier this week, the first truckloads of Ethiopian refugees began crossing into Gedaraf state, according to local media, and will be housed in the first of what could be many new refugee camps being set up to receive people fleeing the fighting in Tigray. At the same time, shipments of arms and ammunition headed for Tigrayan forces were also stopped en route from Sudan, adding to the potentially explosive mix inside Sudan. Sudan’s far eastern states have already been witness to growing tribal and militia-led violence in recent months, and have even skirmished with forces on the Ethiopian side of the border. If Sudan has its own powder keg, it is here. A significant influx of weapons, fighters, and refugees to the area could well unleash substantial new tensions that Sudan’s transitional government has already been proven ill-equipped to handle.

In a table-turning moment last week, Sudanese Prime Minister Hamdok—who lived for the past twenty years in Addis and who benefitted at numerous points from Ethiopian mediation during Sudan’s still ongoing transition and internal peace process—reportedly reached out to his counterpart Abiy, as well as regional Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front leaders in their regional capital of Mekele, to urge caution and restraint. Sudan’s leading army general and leader of the country’s Transitional Sovereignty Council similarly offered to mediate a ceasefire and was rebuffed.

While neither of the two belligerents appear open to formal outside mediation at this time, Sudan is uniquely positioned to play such a role should an opening emerge. Riding high from the recent announcement to remove Sudan from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, and benefiting from renewed backing from Gulf state actors who approved of Sudan’s equally recent announcement of a rapprochement with Israel, Sudan’s Prime Minister has some political capital to spend. As the current Chairman of the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD, he is positioned to marshal the often-underutilized mediation and peacemaking resources of that body to assist. Furthermore, as a party to the ongoing negotiations over Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance dam, and as an important buffer in those talks between Egypt and Ethiopia, Hamdok already has some credibility in seeking to find common ground on issues striking at the heart of Ethiopia’s national security interests.

No less affected by the potential consequences of a war between the Ethiopian federal government and the TPLF, but in no significant position to assist on the political front, are Somalia and South Sudan, both of which have sizable refugee populations inside Ethiopia as a result of their own on-again, off-again civil conflicts. Neither nation is prepared to have hundreds of thousands of their nationals repatriated in the near term as a result of an Ethiopian civil war. 

Both Somalia and South Sudan have come to rely on a substantial Ethiopian peacekeeping presence to help reduce sectarian bloodshed in their own countries. Last week, Ethiopia withdrew approximately six hundred of the troops it has deployed in Somalia’s western border region (though it has so far left its troop contributions to the African Union peacekeeping mission to Somalia intact). Though they are reportedly being replaced with Ethiopian police units, a United Nations security report obtained by Reuters warned that these “redeployments from near the border with Somalia will make that area more vulnerable to possible incursions by Al Shabaab,” which is the al Qaeda-linked insurgency trying to overthrow the government in Somalia. As Somalia’s presidential elections draw near—they are now slated for early 2021 after multiple postponements—a security vacuum in Somalia produced by a drawdown of Ethiopian troops could rapidly undo years of international efforts to bring a semblance of security and stability to the long restive nation. Admittedly, this is a worse-case scenario that will only occur if the fighting between the TPLF and Abiy’s federal forces is prolonged and requires a greater redeployment of Ethiopian military resources than has yet taken place. But the threat is alarming.

Ethiopia’s hard security presence among its neighbors is a source of stability in the region, but even more at risk is Ethiopia’s well-earned reputation as a peacemaker and mediator. In a region with a troubled history of political, military, and humanitarian crises, Ethiopia in recent years has been a net contributor to regional stability—even as internal fault lines were emergent.

Cameron Hudson is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Previously he served as the chief of staff to the special envoy for Sudan and as director for African Affairs on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. Follow him on Twitter @_hudsonc.

AfricaSource Oct 19, 2020

Sudan is removed from the terror list. Now what?

After twenty-seven years on the US State Sponsor of Terrorism list, President Trump today announced, via Twitter, that Sudan’s terror designation was at long last being removed. While many details of the deal struck between the Trump Administration and the transitional authorities in Sudan have yet to emerge, the announcement by itself should be welcomed as a major achievement for both Washington and Khartoum.

Africa Democratic Transitions

New Atlanticist Oct 16, 2020

The US government makes its big push for investment in Africa

By David A. Wemer

Buoyed by bipartisan commitment and a new government agency, the United States has taken new and significant steps to help drive investment in Africa, strengthen the region’s dynamic economies, create lucrative opportunities for US and African businesses, and advance US foreign-policy goals in the region.

Africa Future of Work

AfricaSource Oct 15, 2020

An interview with US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy

By Africa Center

US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador Tibor Nagy, joins Atlantic Council Africa Center Director of Programs and Studies Ms. Bronwyn Bruton to discuss bipartisan support for increased US trade and investment in African countries.

Africa Economy & Business

The post Experts react: Understanding the conflict in Tigray appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On November 5, Foreign Policy published a biweekly column featuring Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and New American Engagement Initiative senior fellow Emma Ashford discussing the latest news in international affairs.

In this column, they discuss uncertain US presidential election results, the possibility that adversaries could take advantage of the United States while it is awaiting a definitive outcome, and the potential for civil war in Ethiopia.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

Former staff

Emma Ashford

Former Resident Senior Fellow, New American Engagement Initiative

New American Engagement Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Conflict Economic Sanctions

The post Kroenig and Ashford discuss US election results and the potential for hostile actions by adversaries appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Hudson joins the BBC to discuss the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam dispute appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ethiopia completed the dam during trilateral talks drawn-out since 2011 without compliance with international norms vis-à-vis Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia eventually rejected binding commitments towards its neighbors in February 2020. In June it declared its intent to fill the dam’s reservoir in July without an agreement in place. This prompted Egypt and Sudan to formally request UN Security Council (UNSC) intervention to forestall significant dangers to international peace and security from such unilateral action.

The GERD’s reservoir has the capacity to hold 88 percent of the mean annual flow of the Nile River, measured at Egypt’s southern border city, Aswan. It is reasonable for Egypt and Sudan, both peoples and governments, to be concerned by this fact alone. But it is not the only troubling issue. The GERD is located where it can dam the Blue Nile just before it leaves Ethiopia, thereby allowing it the infrastructural capability to control most of the Nile River freshwater that flows into Egypt and Sudan. This would affect the lives of over 140 million people in both countries.

Based on its specifications and sensitive location, leading international agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Development Programme, and World Bank would classify the GERD as high-risk infrastructure. It qualifies for rigorous technical planning and implementation processes—woven around universal human and environmental rights considerations—for all parties the dam will impact, inside and outside the host country. This techno-legal process’ purpose is to protect human security and peace. The process is partly based on international environmental law principles that are precursors to the realization of human rights law. Most of the world’s countries recognize these laws’ interdependence.

The multilateral techno-legal process that should have guided the implementation of the GERD as a transboundary project with multistate human rights and security consequences has been absent. Ethiopia has been developing the GERD without engaging downstream countries in material issues that affect them or allowing them a full, independent evaluation of the GERD through Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs). ESIAs are one of the ABCs in applied international environmental law and customary development law, are required by law, and are most useful before a country develops any project that necessitates it.

GERD necessitated transboundary ESIAs and still does. As the affected countries’ legal right, it does not expire, although its usefulness decreases when exercised later than prescribed by law. ESIAs are critical for avoiding or mitigating any significant foreseen harm. Absent ESIAs, harms cannot be fully understood, prepared for, or mitigated. That is why statements like “GERD can, could, may, might” abound in reference to inconclusive, scattered, and speculative estimates about its downstream impacts. Nothing definite, rooted in science, and comprehensive is available; no complete up-to-date information about a host of hydrological, environmental, and engineering concerns and parameters related to GERD have been made accessible in order to permit an independent investigation, as an independent panel of experts reported in 2013.

The GERD’s faulty unilateral development process exposes poor recognition of international law, whose relevant principles are codified in the 1997 United Nations (UN) Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. Its principles have been in use for hundreds of years before they were codified and are universally binding. 

Ethiopia also reneged on its pledge in the 2015 Declaration of Principles (DoP), which stipulated that ESIAs would be conducted and used to inform the processes of filling the GERD’s reservoir and operating the dam. The only accomplishment along this two-track pledge has been more of the dam’s construction work; Ethiopia has continued to rapidly build the GERD without the required, orderly multilateral legal process being in place.

Consequently, with necessary knowledge from a transboundary ESIA lacking, Ethiopia was able to circumvent another major legal obligation—making ESIA-informed adjustments in its project to avoid foreseen significant harm to the downstream countries and giving said countries time to prepare for or mitigate unavoidable impacts. Addis Ababa claims that GERD will only create shared transboundary benefits, but this has no factual basis since no transboundary ESIAs have been made. Furthermore, Ethiopian officials have repeatedly declared that the dam is a matter of “sovereignty.” However, the notion of “sovereignty” over a shared natural resource has no place in international freshwater law.

Ethiopia’s government is reneging on other international legal commitments it has made. I have privileged access to at least nine treaties spanning the late 1880s to the present, where Egypt’s Nile freshwater rights are protected. Addis Ababa is a signatory to two of them, once as a monarchy and once as a republic (the DoP aside). Ethiopia abolished its monarchial system in 1975, at which time the country had been a UN member state for 30 years.

Talks the US and World Bank mediated amongst the three riparian countries from November 2019 to February 2020 collapsed before the final meeting, when Addis Ababa rejected a binding agreement with Egypt and Sudan on the filling of the GERD’s reservoir and the dam’s operation. The abandoned agreement had been prepared based on proposals from the Egyptian, Ethiopian, and Sudanese legal and technical teams, with the World Bank’s technical input.

In April, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed abruptly announced that the filling of the reservoir will start by autumn, even without an agreement, which led Egypt to formally complain to the UNSC in May. UN Secretary General António Guterres called for the negotiations’ resumption in accordance with the DoP, which requires completing ESIAs before filling the reservoir and using them as reference for moving forward in compliance with international law. But talks collapsed again shortly after they resumed.

Escalating matters further, in June, Ethiopia’s foreign minister announced that the reservoir’s filling will begin in July. In response, Egypt immediately filed a request for intervention with the UNSC, citing Article 35 of the UN Charter that pertains to threats to international peace and security. In two letters to the UNSC in June, Sudan also voiced its deep concerns about Ethiopia’s rush to fill the reservoir without an agreement, citing very high risks to the lives of millions of Sudanese.

Unlike Egypt and Sudan, Ethiopia is not freshwater poor. River basins extend across 94 percent of its territory, including internal river systems within 28 percent of the country, whereas more than 50 percent of Sudan and 96 percent of Egypt’s territories, respectively, are desert.

Run-of-the-river dams could have provided Ethiopia with energy much sooner than the GERD will and without all the risks it has generated for countries downstream. Moreover, Ethiopia’s already excessive reliance on hydropower is risky due to uncertain climate change projections for rainfall patterns in East Africa. Ethiopia’s abundant solar power provides another alternative for peaceful energy development. Furthermore, if Ethiopia develops its massive unused geothermal resources, it would improve its energy security and alleviate the political strains and military tensions the GERD has created, according to Paul Sullivan, an international energy security expert at the National Defense University.

Ethiopia’s governments have had a troubling history with countries with which it geographically shares rivers and lakes, including Somalia, Kenya, and Sudan. But the GERD crisis sets a dangerous precedent in Africa—home to a quarter of the world’s transboundary rivers, which provide 90 percent of the continent’s freshwater. Africa is also home to most of the world’s poorest countries and two-thirds of the countries of Feed the Future, the US government’s global hunger and food security initiative.

GERD’s unprincipled development process increases risks of transboundary freshwater conflict and border confrontations in a strategic area of the world. Europe and the United States have stakes in a fair resolution to the Nile dispute. Egypt is pivotal not only to the MENA’s stability, but also to international trade. Egypt is an important African trade gateway and provides vital security to the country’s Suez Canal, through which Arab oil to Europe and the US passes. Stability improves Cairo’s ability to reduce illegal cross-border activity between Libya and Somalia and to Asia’s war zones. Sudan is fragile. Aggravating freshwater scarcity could spark local or endo-ethnic tensions and push it over the edge. This could widen turmoil in Africa.

A reliable strategy for peacefully resolving the GERD crisis should be based on incentives for Ethiopia to respect international riparian and development law. This still includes allowing a transboundary ESIA to be conducted, ensuring that intolerable downstream impacts are avoided, permitting time for adjustment plans to be implemented, and comprehensively ending the secrecy and unilateralism that has shrouded the GERD—which is inherently multilateral in its scope and impacts—since its inception.

Amal Kandeel is an Egypt expert and water policy analyst, and the former director of the Climate Change, Environment, and Human Security Program at the Middle East Institute.             

MENASource Aug 25, 2016

Egypt and Ethiopia: Fears of Drought and Dreams of Development

By Mohamed Mahmoud

The sign above a modest, one-story shop features a photo of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam next to an image of gold and dollars: revenue expected from the dam, the great dream in Ethiopia’s imagination. For Egyptians, that same dream stirs fears of drought. Tsegaab Getachew, a 29-year old Ethiopian tour organizer, hopes that the […]

Ethiopia North Africa

MENASource Oct 29, 2019

NATO countries should help Egypt mitigate security challenge near Libyan border

By Amal Kandeel

Egypt is facing multiple security challenges for which a military solution is deficient. A complex interplay between internal and external challenges, as well as human and security challenges, is evident in western Egypt and within the area bordering Libya. The mix of harsh climatic conditions, inhospitable terrain, and lagging economic development, on one hand, and […]

Libya Middle East

MENASource Sep 26, 2018

Egypt’s options in the development of the Ethiopian dam

By Hafsa Halawa

For decades, Egypt focused primarily on its foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa, and in the process neglected its Horn of Africa policy. Meanwhile, Ethiopia began construction on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Nile River. Problems along the Nile continue for Egypt as droughts, rising temperatures, and general effects of climate change demand a response to Egypt’s growing water needs.

North Africa

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On March 31, the government of Ethiopia indefinitely postponed historic elections that were scheduled to take place in August.

The postponement of these elections is noteworthy for many reasons. To start, Ethiopia is the first African nation in what is likely to be a wave of countries—including Burundi, Malawi, Tanzania, and possibly Côte d’Ivoire—that will be forced to set back highly contentious political contests in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, with significant implications for the outcome.

Ethiopians have been waiting for the August elections with bated breath, as they were expected to produce the first competitive polls since election results in 2005 were violently overturned by Ethiopia’s ruling party (a minority-led cabal that had held power since 1991, and was finally overthrown in February 2018 after years of national uprising). Much hinges on the outcome of these first elections since Ethiopia’s popular revolt: the winning party or coalition will set the terms of a national reconciliation process, oversee the drafting of a new constitution, and further the privatization of Ethiopia’s industries. The new leadership will also determine the fate of Ethiopia’s controversial system of ethnic federalism—which was ostensibly designed to protect the autonomy of Ethiopia’s many different “nationalities,” but has been in practice a system of ethnic segregation and the means through which the few have ruled the many. The next election is also expected to serve as a critically-important referendum on the ethnic federalist system, with voters choosing between “nationalist” parties that have been organized on ethnic lines and want to preserve the federalist structure, and a new set of pan-Ethiopian parties (including Prime Minister Abiy’s Prosperity Party and Berhanu Nega’s Ethiopia Citizens for Social Justice) that promote a unitary social system.

Since the fall of the old order, the security situation in much of Ethiopia, especially in the southern Oromia region, has markedly deteriorated. Inter-ethnic competition has surged, as communities attempt both to settle old scores and to seek new power within the emerging political order. Even before the elections were postponed due to coronavirus, it was unclear whether they would take place without  significant violence accompanying the polls. For that reason, some Ethiopians may well be breathing a sigh of relief over the delay. Indeed, most of the opposition groups—including the National Movement of Amhara (NaMA) and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), both leading rivals to Abiy’s party—were quick to signal their support. This is not only because they recognize that campaign rallies, voter registration, and other electoral processes would speed the spread of the virus; many opposition leaders had already feared that the timeline to elections was too short to produce a level playing field.

If anything, the postponement of elections is likely to undermine Dr. Abiy’s odds of retaining his office. Like the American president Donald Trump, he will be forced to confront elections in the midst of whatever suffering and economic wreckage the pandemic has caused, and he will be judged on his administration’s response. How successful will he be in facing down this pandemic?

On the plus side, Ethiopia is one of the better-developed nations in Africa. It has for decades been a top recipient of foreign aid; in consequence, it has disciplined security services that can be mobilized to assist the pandemic response, and it boasts a relatively well-developed health system. Though only major cities have hospitals staffed by full-time doctors, there are health centers and clinics distributed throughout the country (though far fewer than needed in rural areas). These clinics will not be able to provide respirators or intensive care to those worst-afflicted by the coronavirus, but they should be capable of performing diagnostic tests and distributing medicines and vital health information on preventing the spread of COVID-19. Ethiopia will also benefit from a mature cadre of politicians who can be relied upon to put public health above their personal political ambitions—Abiy’s decision to postpone the election, and the opposition’s embrace of that move, are both proof of that. Abiy’s international star power, though often regarded as a mixed blessing at home, may also prove to be a vital asset during this crisis, if it enables him to drum up more support from the G20 for Ethiopia and other African nations. Africa faces a critical shortage of personal protective gear, respirators, and other vital medical supplies, and the only place to get them is abroad; so Abiy’s stature in the international community may make the difference between life and death for many.

On the downside, Abiy’s administration has a poor track record of managing humanitarian crises. One of Abiy’s earliest stumbles was his inadequate response to a displacement crisis in the early months of 2019, when more than two million Ethiopians were driven from their homes by ethnic conflict and the general breakdown in law and order that accompanied the dismantling of the old, iron-fisted security apparatus. Abiy was widely panned for ignoring the plight of those internally displaced persons.

Abiy’s administration has likewise come under criticism for what many consider a belated response to the threat of the coronavirus. To be fair, Ethiopia was quick to adopt protocols for dealing with coronavirus: it quickly adopted airport screening measures, it was one of the first African countries to obtain the capacity to test for COVID-19 (Ethiopia started testing on February 7, long before the United States brought testing online), and it had established a hundred-bed quarantine facility and 24-hour information hotline by mid-February. Ethiopia also closed its schools and prohibited large gatherings at about the same time New York and Washington, DC did, in mid-March. (A good timeline of Ethiopia’s prevention measures can be found here.) Authorities in Addis Ababa have also provided handwashing stations across the city.

Ethiopia did not, however, join the vast majority of other nations—both in Africa and across the West—in banning flights to and from mainland China as the coronavirus began to spread across the world. The decision to keep operating the flights was based partially on sheer economic necessity—even with the continued flights to China, CEO Tewolde Gebremariam claims that the airline has sustained losses of $190 million due to the coronavirus travel slowdown. (Tewolde also recently pointed out that the ongoing flights permitted Chinese billionaire Jack Ma to make a $3.6 million contribution of needed medical supplies, including one hundred thousand N95 masks, to Ethiopia.) But the decision to continue flights to mainland China also hinted at Beijing’s outsized influence in Addis Ababa and sparked outrage across the continent—given Ethiopia’s role as a transit and economic hub, it was reasonably feared that Addis Ababa could turn into a vector for spreading the virus across East Africa and beyond. Abiy’s government later came under fire for continuing flights to Europe, even as Italy and Spain became new epicenters for the coronavirus. It was not until late March (on the 20^th and 29^th) that Ethiopian Airlines suspended flights to 110 countries affected by coronavirus, including Italy, Spain, and parts of China. (It continues to fly to Beijing—the list of suspended flights is here.) At the time of the flight suspensions, Ethiopia had recorded twenty-six cases of COVID-19; all of them originated abroad, but none of the infected individuals, surprisingly—very surprisingly—was reported to have traveled in China.

As he attempts to delay the onset of the coronavirus epidemic in Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy is walking a tightrope. His country has been on the verge of breakdown since the national uprisings two years ago, and the coronavirus crisis is likely to prove deeply destabilizing. Pandemics breed death, poverty, suffering, and paranoia everywhere, and Ethiopia will be no exception. Dr. Abiy has already been lambasted, even in the immediate wake of winning the Nobel Prize, for his extended shut-downs of the Internet, and for his harsh crackdowns on rebels in his native Oromia region. Jawar Mohammed, an influential Oromo political rival, has already claimed that the Internet shutdown has dangerously limited access to information about COVID-19. Those who suspect Dr. Abiy of authoritarian tendencies are likely to be alarmed—justly or otherwise—by the restrictive measures required to combat COVID-19. As in the United States, tribal tensions will be inflamed by the perception that some districts have better access to federal resources than others. And the heated atmosphere of misinformation in Ethiopia’s social media space is also likely to be a serious impediment to stability and to the health response.

Perhaps most worryingly, the novel coronavirus is poised to strike Ethiopia at a time when the nation’s political survival rests on the government’s ability to enlarge and redistribute the country’s economic pie. Under the old regime, the vast majority of Ethiopians felt starved of economic opportunity. New revenue is desperately needed to employ and appease the many millions of youths who feel that their futures have been short-changed by the previous regime, and who have the power to re-take the streets at any moment. No political transition will succeed without their consent, and their consent depends upon having more to eat than they had before. So a crippling global recession could not have hit Ethiopia at a more deadly time.

The specter of a collapsing Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa is almost as frightening a prospect as the novel coronavirus itself—and Abiy’s economic trade-offs, including his questionable decision to continue flights to China amidst the spreading pandemic, need to be viewed in that light.

Bronwyn Bruton is the director of programs and studies of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Follow her on Twitter @BronwynBruton.

Questions? Tweet them to our experts @ACAfricaCenter.

For more content, go to our Coronavirus: Africa page.

AfricaSource Apr 7, 2020

Using Google reports to estimate Africa’s response to COVID-19: Key findings

By Luke Tyburski

On April 2, Google published community mobility reports, showing how different countries and regions are adapting their movements to the coronavirus. By graphing this data, we get a unique glimpse into the state and diversity of African responses.

Africa Coronavirus

AfricaSource Mar 24, 2020

What does the coronavirus mean for Africa?

By Bronwyn Bruton

Will the novel coronavirus prove even more deadly and disruptive in Africa? It depends on the country. Bronwyn Bruton identifies the key questions and sets the stage for the Africa’s Center’s ongoing commentary on the crisis.

Africa Coronavirus

AfricaSource Mar 24, 2020

African elections in the time of coronavirus

By Luke Tyburski

African elections slated for 2020 are already being affected by COVID-19, with the potential for delays and disruptions to have significant impact on election credibility, political trust, and adherence to term limits across the continent.

Africa Coronavirus

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In a year of high-profile elections across the continent, logistical preparations are already ongoing and were meant to be ratcheting up in places like Ghana, which is slated for presidential polls in December, and Ethiopia, where parliamentary polls are set for August. Both countries still need to prepare the voter roll, but bans on public gatherings have flipped electoral timelines on their head. Ghana’s Electoral Commission has announced an indefinite delay of the voter registration exercise, though it promises to resume as soon as possible. With elections approaching sooner and facing a larger population, Ethiopia’s logistical dilemma is even greater. Registration was intended for April with campaigning to begin in May, both well within the window in which COVID-19 looms large.

While election delays would likely prompt bigger headlines than truncated registration periods, the importance of these pre-election logistics cannot be overlooked. The international community should be especially vigilant under these circumstances and be willing to speak up sooner rather than later if countries pursue untenable schedules that imperil the underlying credibility of the polls.

Unfortunately, decisions to delay or revise election programming are bound to be politicized. Opposition groups across the continent are already using governments’ virus response as a means to criticize ruling parties. The General Secretary of Ghana’s main opposition party, for example, has claimed that the ban on public gatherings is a conspiracy to rig the election. This comes as many elections on the continent already face significant trust deficits and a status quo of losing parties crying foul (based on evidence of irregularities or otherwise). In 2019, all nine of the presidential contests on the continent were marred by alleged irregularities, with losing parties taking the results to court in all but Senegal and South Africa. Coronavirus disruptions and accompanying disputes risk further cementing this sub-optimal status quo.

An element of African elections that had been improving as of late is adherence to term limits. This past year, Mauritania’s leader stepped down abiding by term limits, and looking ahead, Presidents Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire and Nkurunziza of Burundi have agreed not to run for additional terms in 2020. Burundi goes to the polls in May, while Côte d’Ivoire will do so in October. While there have been no definitive signs of these politicians altering course at the time of writing, the potential for coronavirus-related states of emergency to be abused cannot be ignored. Further scrutiny should be placed on Burundi, where even if Nkurunziza keeps his promise, his ruling party may be incentivized to skew the playing field toward their new candidate, who analysts say may be the underdog in a free election. The polls are unlikely to be fully credible, and certainly will not be sufficiently observed, but careful attention should be placed on further attempts to restrict campaigning, which would disproportionately hurt the opposition.

Of particular note is Guinea’s decision to go ahead with elections on Sunday, March 22, which included parliamentary polls and a boycotted rubber-stamp referendum on a new constitution that will pave the way for President Alpha Condé to stay in power. With two confirmed cases, and neighboring countries having already limited public gatherings, Guinea’s decision to go ahead has understandably been met by scrutiny. It is hard not to read the situation as an example of political imperatives trumping health directives, and the election’s fallout will advise others as a test case of election administration under coronavirus.

Guinea’s health situation should be watched carefully in the coming days, with the potential for political and social tensions to rise if cases balloon following a day of crowded polling stations and intra-country travel associated with administering the election. Such a scenario would reflect badly on President Condé, whose politics-as-usual post on election day (below) is in stark contrast to the Twitter content of other African leaders, who have taken to the platform to advocate social distancing and hygiene practices.

Lastly, while presidential contests will be the most publicized, it is worth bearing in mind that parliamentary and local government elections could also be disrupted in places like Gabon (late 2020), Mali (May), Namibia (November), Senegal (late 2020), and Somalia (December). In many places, the average citizen deals more with these types of officials in day-to-day affairs and service provision, meaning that disruptions could be impactful.

With these themes in mind, the Africa Center will continue to follow elections around the continent this year in the time of coronavirus. Be sure to follow our page for updates as they emerge. 

Luke Tyburski is a project assistant with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.

Questions? Tweet them to our experts @ACAfricaCenter.

For more content, go to our Coronavirus: Africa page.

AfricaSource Apr 2, 2020

Coronavirus deals a blow to Ethiopia’s elections

By Bronwyn Bruton

On March 31, the government of Ethiopia indefinitely postponed historic elections that were scheduled to take place in August. This makes Ethiopia the first African nation, in what is likely to be a wave of countries, forced to set back highly contentious political contests in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, with significant implications for the outcome.

Africa Coronavirus

AfricaSource Mar 26, 2020

COVID-19 in the DR Congo

By Private: Pierre Englebert

As of March 24, the Democratic Republic of Congo had only forty-eight confirmed cases of coronavirus, with three dead of the disease. But although Congo is only in the very first stages of the pandemic, the contrast between the degree of state capacity and social discipline that it takes to stifle the disease and Congo’s record on these two counts is particularly worrisome.

Africa Coronavirus

AfricaSource Mar 30, 2020

Coronavirus comes to Sudan

Not yet one year into a historic political transition and in the midst of an economic collapse, Sudan’s future was already hanging in the balance. The addition of a national and global public health crisis now has the potential for a ‘make or break’ impact on the country.

Africa Coronavirus

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His reforms may have been symbolic—critics have called them superficial—but there is no question that his leadership channeled the anger of the streets into a productive passion for reform, quelled protests, and thereby spared Ethiopia from a wave of unrest that many feared could have culminated in a bloodbath. For that, he certainly should be revered inside Ethiopia, and he deserves the recognition and gratitude of the Western powers, which were spared a nasty reckoning with the consequences of the disastrous regional policies they have pursued since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

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Dr. Berhanu summarized the current situation in Ethiopia as one of hope and anxiety. He claimed many Ethiopians remain optimistic that a real transition to democracy is possible, but also cautioned against the impatience of the youth population for sweeping immediate change, characterizing the popular intent as “revolution” rather than “reform.” He also spoke extensively about the challenges involved in staging credible elections by May 2020, describing the difficulties of resolving ethnic-based conflicts and tribal alliances without constitutional reform. Dr. Berhanu noted that the ECSJ is the first political party to not be constituted on ethnic lines with representation in almost all of Ethiopia’s 547 constituencies.

Ms. Bronwyn Bruton, Africa Center director of programs and studies and deputy director, moderated the ensuing discussion, during which participants engaged Dr. Berhanu on the role of outside mediators in Ethiopia’s political reform process, the status of conflict- and drought-IDPs, and Ethiopians’ perception of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

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Brazil – October 28

Brazil is poised to elect a populist as its next president. If Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party (PSL) defeats Fernando Haddad of the Workers’ Party (PT) in a runoff vote on October 28 it will be the first time since 2002 that the PT has lost a presidential election.

Bolsonaro is the odds on favorite going into the vote. In the first round on October 7, he won more than 46 percent of the vote, just shy of the overall majority needed to avoid a run-off. Haddad was a distant second with just short of 30 percent.

Bolsonaro’s potential election is seen as a sign of Brazilian dissatisfaction with the political establishment and hyper polarization. He survived a stabbing on September 7, which hobbled his ability to campaign in the late stages of the first round. Haddad has suffered from growing dissatisfaction with his PT, which has been blamed for economic mismanagement and whose former leader—Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—has been ensnared in a corruption scandal.

“Many, if not most, Brazilians will choose to abstain from voting rather than vote for either candidate in the second round, and many more will vote for Bolsonaro simply to keep the PT away from power,” according to Roberta Braga, an associate director in the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

Hesse (Germany) – October 28

Normally a state election would not turn too many heads, especially in Germany where Chancellor Angela Merkel has governed for thirteen years. Following a dismal showing by her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party’s sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), in Bavarian state elections on October 14, however, eyes are fixed on Hesse with concerns that another poor result could throw Merkel’s coalition into question.

In addition to CSU’s poor result, the Social Democrats (SPD), who are in a governing coalition with Merkel, also lost significant support in Bavaria, falling all the way down to fifth in total seats. Polls in Hesse currently show SPD tied with the Greens at 21 percent, a result that could cause infighting within the SPD and potentially force SPD leaders to withdraw from the governing coalition in Berlin.

Perhaps more worryingly for Merkel, her CDU party has its party congress in December and another poor result for her party in Hesse (polls predict it could be a double-digit percentage drop) could spark calls for her to step aside.

Georgia – October 28

Voters in the Caucasus nation will go to the polls for the final time to elect a president on October 28. Following a constitutional change last year, Georgia will begin moving toward a parliamentary system of government, with the office of president becoming largely symbolic and, beginning in 2024, elected by members of parliament and government officials, rather than the whole electorate.

The top contenders include Salome Zuravbishvili, a former foreign minister who would be the first woman to hold the post; Grigol Vashadze, another former foreign minister; and Davit Bakradze, a former speaker of parliament and presidential candidate in 2013. Polls show a close race and it is likely that no candidate will reach the majority needed to avoid a run-off.

Making history: Ethiopia got its first-ever female president this week. Ethiopian members of parliament elected Sahle-Work Zewde, an experienced diplomat, to the largely ceremonial position.

David A. Wemer is assistant director, editorial at the Atlantic Council. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAWemer.

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A series of historical reversals then occurred: telephone lines were unblocked for the first time in decades, airplanes started flying between Asmara and Addis Ababa, and families that had been separated for twenty years—since 1998, when the border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia broke out— were joyously reunited.

History was made again on September 11 as Abiy and Isaias ceremoniously reopened several border crossings, including at the Debay Sima-Burre border point, which sits on the road to the Eritrean port of Assab. Opening this crossing will give Ethiopian exports new access to the Red Sea, with economic dividends in store for both countries.

But even as both governments have rushed headlong toward peace, Ethiopia’s former ruling party has threatened to be a spoiler. That group, the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), controls key territory along the Eritrean border and has deep influence over the local population on the Ethiopian side of the line. Because of this, peace festivities have been tinged with uncertainty over when, and whether, Abiy would actually be capable of prying Ethiopian troops—many of whom are presumed loyal to the old guard—away from Eritrea’s border.

As the weeks have dragged on, concern inside Eritrea (and within its restive diaspora) has grown. Though desperate for peace, Eritreans have withstood two decades of harsh martial law in their efforts to protect the country’s territorial sovereignty, and the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from the border, especially from the flashpoint town of Badme, remains of paramount importance. For most Eritreans, there can be no peace without it.

But there may have been a significant development on that front on September 11, though it was overlooked by most reporters. In his remarks, Abiy actually seemed to suggest for the first time that Ethiopia may begin some sort of a demobilization process for the troops stationed on the border, and that Eritrea would join in.

“As of today,” Abiy stated, Ethiopian troops stationed on the border “will be gathered to camps and ease tension that was extreme. The same will be done from the Eritrean side.” He then mentioned the possibility of training or livelihoods programs for the troops. It was a strange and vaguely worded statement, but he seemed to be suggesting the start of a demobilization and reintegration program for the troops stationed along the border. If so, that would be game-changing news. It would indicate that Abiy believes he has succeeded in wresting enough power from the TPLF hardliners that he is able to disarm their troops.

The withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from the border will also have enormous implications for Eritrea, which has effectively been in a state of emergency since 1998. The decisive end of the war will require the Eritrean government to normalize its military conscription program, which is currently indefinite, and to implement the country’s long-shelved constitution (political repression and the indefinite military service have, along with a range of economic factors, led to large outpouring of refugees from Eritrea.)

That presents challenges to the Eritrean government because before either of those things can happen Eritrea’s economy will need hard kickstarting. After all, the government says that 80 percent of Eritrea’s military conscripts are not actually under arms, but are instead working as bureaucrats, teachers, construction workers, and in other occupations at sub-market wages. For Eritrea, “demobilization” will mostly mean not putting down weapons, but transitioning those positions into market-wage, at-will jobs.

Eritrea’s military conscripts can’t be eased into the private sector economy until the economy is rolling again. And currently, the government can’t afford to pay public servants a living wage. The imperative of boosting Eritrea’s economy before any political improvements are made explains why both Abiy and Isaias are so focused on resuming economic ties and trade lines between their countries. It also explains why both of them have hesitated to give a timeline on troop withdrawal. But events on September 11 suggest that the troop withdrawal—and with it, the normalization of politics on both sides of the border —is getting much closer.

Bronwyn Bruton is deputy director and director of programs and studies at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Follow her on Twitter @BronwynBruton.

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For decades, Djibouti was the undisputed winner of Ethiopian-Eritrean hostility and the latter’s international isolation. The New Jersey-sized country of just under one million people has unique geostrategic advantages—its coastline spans the meeting of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a chokepoint through which significant amounts of the world’s energy supply and commerce pass every year. While ports exist in Sudan, Somaliland, and Eritrea, Djibouti’s developed facilities, political stability, and investment-friendly atmosphere have proven more attractive than anywhere else in the region. As a result, Djibouti has enjoyed a near-monopoly on moving goods to and from landlocked Ethiopia.

The United States also has longstanding security interests in Djibouti, including the only permanent US military base on the continent—a vital component of US counterterrorism operations in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Some 4,000 US military personnel are stationed at the American base, which extends to the nearby airport used to launch both armed and reconnaissance drones that operate in Somalia and Yemen. Underscoring the country’s strategic importance to the Pentagon, US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis visited Djibouti in April 2017, just months ahead of the opening of China’s first overseas military base there. Additionally, France, Japan, Italy, and Saudi Arabia have bases of various sizes and capabilities in Djibouti.

Ethiopia and Djibouti have traditionally maintained a close political and economic relationship out of mutual necessity. When the Ethiopia-Eritrea border war broke out in 1998, Ethiopia lost access to Eritrea’s port, an existential crisis for a landlocked country. Since then, Ethiopia has overwhelmingly relied on Djiboutian ports to process its imports and exports: some 95 percent of Ethiopian imports transit through Djibouti. Djibouti, too, relies on its larger neighbor, from which it imports freshwater and electricity. Profits from Ethiopia’s use of Djiboutian ports—estimates top $1 billion annually—are a key source of Guelleh’s government revenue. But Ethiopia finds this arrangement deeply flawed, and is interested in more diverse, and better, deals for port access. The United States, as well, is deeply dissatisfied with Guelleh’s partnership. Specifically, his penchant for extracting costly rents from as many foreign militaries as possible, including allowing a Chinese military base just kilometers from the US one, has left the United States discontented.

Eritrea and Djibouti have a more restive history, and unresolved tensions could flare up again. Djibouti’s western border with Eritrea has been militarized since the end of border clashes in 2008. Qatar attempted to mediate the dispute, and it even managed to facilitate a 2016 prisoner swap before withdrawing its peacekeepers from the Eritrean-Djiboutian border in protest of both countries’ decision to side with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the Gulf crisis.

Djibouti’s shipping and land lease profits directly supplement Guelleh’s tight political control over the country. The Chinese will reportedly pay $20 million a year until 2025 for their base, though that figure does not include more than $1 billion in Chinese loans. The Americans pay some $70 million annually for at least another six years, and the French pay another $30-plus million yearly for their military facility. These profits contribute to what appears to be a booming economy: Djibouti’s annual GDP growth is expected to remain around 7 percent into the near future. But despite Djibouti’s ostensible riches, most of the country remains desperately poor, underdeveloped, and subject to Guelleh’s authoritarianism. Nearly a quarter of the population lives in extreme poverty, and Djibouti ranks abysmally on political rights and civil liberties.

Ethiopia-Eritrea peace talks are bad news for Guelleh, who has staked his country’s growth on its role as the port of choice for economic giants like Ethiopia. Assuming normalization efforts continue, Ethiopia could soon have the option to use Eritrea’s ports, which are closer and more convenient than Djibouti. While it is unlikely that Ethiopia will cease using Djiboutian ports altogether, it will have options—and thus will be less inclined to settle for usurious port usage rates. Eritrea may even prove a welcoming partner to foreign militaries, as the country previously allowed Emirati use of its port at Assab to prosecute the war in Yemen. One constraint on Ethiopia’s turn away from Djibouti, however, is its imperative to pay back nearly $3 billion in Chinese loans for the newly opened Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway.

Lastly, if foreign militaries follow Ethiopia’s lead and diversify their security partners, Guelleh will rapidly lose a key source of income, making the four-term president vulnerable to longstanding grievances about his government’s corruption and repression. Once his resources dry up, the little political support he has been able to cajole or co-opt will likely follow.

In recent years, the UAE’s increasing interest in the Horn of Africa adds a new complication to Djibouti’s predicament. The UAE has acquired rights to a naval base in Eritrea, a military base and commercial port in Somaliland, and a multi-purpose port in Puntland. But relations between Djibouti and the UAE have been fraught since February 2018 when the Djiboutian government cancelled the contract of Emirati firm Dubai Ports World (DP World) to operate Djibouti’s main container shipping terminal. Early reports suggest that the UAE might have even played a role in the rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The UAE’s growing partnership with Ethiopia—which recently acquired a 19 percent stake in the Berbera port alongside DP World and Somaliland—is also noteworthy evidence of regional diversification.

While it is unfortunate that Guelleh perceives normalization with Eritrea as a zero-sum game, he has some reason to be nervous that Addis Ababa and Asmara are warming up to one another. The faster they normalize relations, the faster Djibouti’s strategic advantages disappear—and with them, Guelleh’s cash flow. Resolving a decades-long conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea would strengthen overall regional stability and open new doors for economic trade and prosperity. But there are very real losers in that scenario, and the opportunity to spoil the well-deserved peace should be carefully scrutinized.

Kelsey Lilley was associate director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Follow her on Twitter at @KelseyDegen.

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The leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea on July 9 signed a declaration ending the state of war between the two countries.

The summit between Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, on July 9 marked the first time that the neighbors’ heads of state have met in nearly two decades.

Nearly 100,000 people were killed in a border war between the two Horn of Africa neighbors from 1998-2000. Ethiopia and Eritrea had been in a state of “no war, no peace” ever since.

Bronwyn Bruton, director of programs and studies and deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, discussed this important development in the Horn of Africa with the New Atlanticist’s Ashish Kumar Sen. Here are excerpts from our interview.

Q: What have the leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to and why is it significant?

Bruton: The peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea in some sense is completely shocking because it has taken so long to get to. But it is important to bear in mind that the reason it has taken so long is entirely because of a small group of people inside Ethiopia—the old liberation fighters from the Tigrayan ethnic minority—who have refused to make peace in violation of  international law since 2002.

Ever since an international boundary commission ruled in 2002 that flashpoint territories belonged to Eritrea, Ethiopia has put up one excuse after another to avoid giving that territory back. This refusal to surrender the territory has been partially pragmatic and partially a matter of pride. After fighting alongside Eritrea to liberate Ethiopia from the communist Derg party, the leaders of the revolutionary movement felt indebted and consented to Eritrea’s independence. But then the Tigrayans were blamed by the majority tribes for “losing” Eritrea and, along with it, Ethiopia’s only access to the sea. It was considered to be one of [the late prime minister of Ethiopia] Meles Zenawi’s greatest failure—a black mark hanging over his and his party’s head. So the Tigrayans have always conspired to get Eritrea back and it has been a matter of national pride.

Q: How after years of stalemate has this declaration happened so quickly?

Bruton: Since the Tigrayan elite has lost power, sanity has simply prevailed. Once you take the issue of Tigrayan pride out of the equation, the plain logic of this situation is that both Ethiopia and Eritrea stand to gain immeasurably from peace—not only in terms of the massive economic benefits, which will accrue to both sides, but also in terms of regional peace and stability. Both Eritrea and Ethiopia have pursued proxy warfare in the absence of a regular armed conflict. Now that that’s done, the entire Horn of Africa region stands to benefit.

Q: What specifically does this mean for Ethiopia and Eritrea?

Bruton: It is not entirely clear what it means right now. Events have unfolded at breakneck speed, and it appears that many of the details have yet to be determined. What the leaders of both Eritrea and Ethiopia have jointly stated is that a full normalization of relations will occur, and in the short term that will involve opening the border, giving Ethiopia access to the ports, reopening the embassies that have been shuttered since 1998, and resuming flights between the capitals. People will apparently be able to cross the border at will—and no mention has been made of any tariffs on goods. (That was one of the sources of conflict before the war.)

Q: What does this development mean for the United States?

Bruton: For the United States it presents some challenges. In the first place, it is a magnificent opportunity because it will allow for increased stability. On the other hand, the United States has set up a kind of alternate reality in the Horn of Africa for many years, in which Eritrea was a “spoiler,” and was sanctioned, while the Tigrayan minority regime in Ethiopia was held up as a model partner and the shining white knights of US counterterrorism efforts. Now the Tigrayans have been thrown out of power, and overnight, democracy and peace seems to be spreading magically across the Horn of Africa—showing what might have been achieved so much earlier, if only the United States had not fought so hard to keep the old authoritarian regime in power. Neither the Eritrean government nor the Ethiopian people are likely to forget the US role in their long years of suffering, so Washington has some real repair work to do. In this one respect, it may actually be helpful that the Trump administration has put so much distance between itself and the Obama administration’s approach. They can try to disown the old policies and get a fresh start. But it may or may not work. By all appearances, Abiy intends to be a truly democratic, populist leader, and as such he may or may not be interested in courting US favor by pursuing Washington counterterror objectives across the region, at the risk of Ethiopian soldiers’ lives. That remains to be seen.

Washington will also have to contend with a newly invigorated Eritrea, which is poised to take a leadership role on the regional stage. There’s a strong upside to that: Eritrea could be extremely helpful in resolving the conflict in South Sudan, for example, and could help the United States make progress in Somalia. But Eritrea is likely to seek progress by pointing out how badly US policy has performed in those countries, and by suggesting entirely new approaches that the United States may or may not find palatable. Eritrea, for example, has always talked about the importance of negotiating with all the actors in the Somali conflict, not just the pro-government actors—including parts of the terrorist group al Shabaab. That is the right approach to take, in my view, but something that the United States has fiercely resisted, and may continue to resist now, even in the face of an overwhelming lack of progress in resolving the conflict in Somalia.

The bottom line is that a partnership between Isaias in Eritrea and a true democratic leader in Ethiopia will allow for the creation of a more authentic regional voice to counter American assumptions about the Horn. Washington is likely to find itself out of the driver’s seat at a time when it’s already worried by the growing Arab influence in the Horn. This is a reality that’s evident in the peace process itself: it’s something that Ethiopia and Eritrea sorted out completely by themselves, with precious little reference to the United States. To the extent that any outside actor is receiving credit for massaging the peace process along, it’s Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that people are pointing to. That is unfortunately the “new normal” that Washington is going to have to contend with—it used to be the only game in town, and now it’s not even the biggest game in town. In terms of influence, it’s lining up behind China and the Gulf States.

Q: How should the United States respond to this development?

Bruton: The United States will certainly celebrate the end of the border conflict, but I fear that it is poorly positioned to capitalize on the development because the Trump administration is so distracted by other events.

The United States is going to be challenged because a lot of the newly empowered actors in the Horn of Africa—including the Ethiopian opposition that is now in power and the Eritreans—have long regarded it as a malign influence. The United States has put all of its military, political, and economic weight behind the Tigrayan elite and this Tigrayan elite has brutalized the Horn of Africa. They have robbed the Ethiopian people, they have kept Eritrea in a state of emergency for twenty years, they have imprisoned journalists and democrats as terrorists, they have invaded Somalia. They have done a whole host of awful things that the United States has either actively supported and condoned.

Now that the balance of power has shifted, the United States has to come to terms with what it has done. It is going to have to envision a new way forward that is much more constructive and much more collaborative than the strategy that it has used in the past. It now doesn’t have an authoritarian regime doing business with it [in Ethiopia].

Ashish Kumar Sen is deputy director of communications, editorial, at the Atlantic Council. Follow him on Twitter @AshishSen.

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Ms. Bronwyn Bruton, Africa Center director of programs and studies and deputy director, introduced Bekele and Eskinder and moderated the discussion.

In their prepared remarks, Bekele and Eskinder expressed cautious optimism for Ethiopia’s prospects under the new prime minister, Dr. Abiy Ahmed, who was elected in April and has promised an ambitious slate of political reforms. Eskinder proposed that there should be an unofficial grace period of Abiy’s first one hundred days in office, but both speakers noted the urgency of the people’s demands to lift the state of emergency (which has been in place since February). Bekele and Eskinder also called for an all-inclusive dialogue with the opposition, leading to free and fair elections in the near future. Both demanded support from the international community to ensure a successful democratic transition.

In the off-the-record discussion that followed, Bekele and Eskinder engaged with senior US government officials, congressional staffers, and representatives of advocacy organizations.

Before the event, Bekele and Eskinder detailed their hopes for Ethiopia’s future on Facebook Live:

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As its name suggests, the GERD is not just an infrastructure project, but was also conceived as a statement about Ethiopia’s vision for and commitment to its own development.  From the onset, the construction was financed by neither international finance institutions nor donor countries, but by bonds purchased by Ethiopians at home and abroad. The project itself is directly managed by Ethiopian Electric Power, with the Italian construction firm of Salini Impregilo and the Metals and Engineering Corporation of Ethiopia as the two main contractors and a Franco-Italian joint venture of Coyne et Bellier and ELC Electroconsult retained as consultants. As I learned during a visit last month to the site in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of western Ethiopia near the border with Sudan, of the roughly 9,000 people working on the project, only about 250 are expatriates, hailing from some two dozen countries—the overwhelming majority of those employed are Ethiopians, including Engineer Semegnew Bekele, the overall manager, who was my guide.

As a feat of engineering, the GERD is awe-inspiring. Spanning the Blue Nile, the source of some 85 percent of the combined river’s flow (the White Nile, which begins in Lake Victoria, contributes just 15 percent of the total flow once it meets the Blue Nile in Khartoum, Sudan), the 145-meter high roller-compacted concrete structure is 1,870 meters across that, along with an additional saddle dam spanning 5,200 meters, will eventually contain a reservoir covering 1,874 square kilometers. The two outdoor powerhouses are equipped with sixteen power-generation units, for an installed capacity of 6,450 MW.

The GERD is hardly Ethiopia’s first hydropower project—the country has honed its skill with numerous earlier projects, including the Gilgel Gibe I, II, and III dams on the Gilgel Gibe and Omo Rivers in the southern Ethiopia—the dam is its most significant undertaking to date and will be Africa’s biggest electric power producer and the seventh largest in the world. By providing a constant supply of clean and affordable power to the nation, Africa’s second most populous, the GERD has the potential to accelerate Ethiopia’s transformation from a largely agricultural economy to an industrial powerhouse (already, due in large part to East Asian investments, Ethiopia has in just a few years become a major exporter of shoes made from the country’s abundant animal hides).

In addition, the GERD will have spillover effects benefiting the wider region. The extensive transmission lines, many of which are already in place, connecting Ethiopia with Sudan, Djibouti, and Kenya will make power available to these neighbors. With the potential to produce even more power from the abundant water flows from its highlands, Ethiopia will be in the position to meet a large part of the energy needs of Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa through cheaply and cleanly generated electricity. Moreover, the completed dam’s promise of regulated water throughout the year will be a boon to neighboring Sudan’s agricultural potential, especially in the Gezira region south of Khartoum, between the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile (the area hitherto has been subject to an annual flood followed by harsh dry seasons), as well as increasing the energy the downstream country will be able to produce with its existing hydropower installations.

All this is not to say that the GERD is not without controversy. Egypt, whose President Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi was seeking the ratification of a second term in office in voting held March 26-28, has expressed alarm over the possibility that the dam would result in a diminution of the amount of water it has historically taken from the Nile under a pair of colonial-era treaties that Ethiopia was never a party to, declaring that the river was “a matter of life and death” for his country and that “no one can touch Egypt’s share of the water” (some experts have suggested that the real preoccupation is that if Sudan is able to use its full allocation under the pacts because of the regulated flow that the GERD will ensure, then Egypt would find the amount of water available to it would be reduced significantly, even if still the volume that crossed its border was the amount stipulated). Fortunately, now that the Egyptian electoral campaign has wrapped up—and with it, some of the heated rhetoric that has been thrown about in recent months—it appears that the sides are ready to resume discussions, with the foreign affairs and water ministers of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan scheduled to convene in Khartoum later this week.  

The challenge will be navigating between the apparent conflict between the interests of two of Africa’s oldest and puissant states and arriving at a win-win solution. A guiding principle for such a resolution is already contained in the Cooperation Framework Agreement that six countries in the Nile Basin (Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda) have signed: “Nile Basin States shall in their respective territories utilize the water resources of the Nile River system and the Nile River Basin in an equitable and reasonable manner.  In particular, those water resources shall be used and developed by Nile Basin States with a view to attaining optimal and sustainable utilization thereof and benefits therefrom, taking into account the interests of the Basin States concerned, consistent with adequate protection of those water resources.  Each Basin State is entitled to an equitable and reasonable share in the beneficial uses of the water resources of the Nile River system and the Nile River Basin.”

J. Peter Pham is vice president of the Atlantic Council and director of its Africa Center.

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Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn resigned unexpectedly on February 15 in the wake of violent anti-government protests. The government then imposed a nationwide state of emergency that lawmakers endorsed earlier in March.

While Tillerson urged Ethiopian citizens to be patient with their government and refrain from violence, he also unequivocally condemned the state of emergency.

 

The secretary’s statements provide much-needed clarity from the United States, according to Bronwyn Bruton, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.

While past US administrations took a softer approach to abuses committed by the government in Addis Ababa, US President Donald J. Trump’s administration has begun to look at Ethiopia, and other partners in the Horn of Africa, from a much more pragmatic and transactional point of view, she said.

“They’re businessmen,” Bruton said of the Trump administration, noting that this approach has proven helpful as the US seeks to navigate the current crisis in Ethiopia.

Bruton joined Kelsey Lilley, associate director of the Africa Center, for a Facebook Live discussion on March 8 on Tillerson’s trip to Africa and the US role in Ethiopia.

According to Lilley, while the Trump administration’s strong stance is a positive development, the United States must keep in mind that African nations have options when it comes to their international partners.

To drive home this point, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, too, was visiting Ethiopia at the time Tillerson was present. That may be pure coincidence, said Bruton, but the United States should take note that Ethiopia does not remain dependent on the United States.

Rachel Ansley is assistant director of editorial content at the Atlantic Council.   

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This decision is counterproductive to the government’s stated goals of political reform and inclusive governance. It undercuts Ethiopia’s security by emboldening those who believe that violence is the only way to achieve fundamental political reform in Ethiopia, but it also negates the national and international goodwill generated by the country’s unprecedented recent release of hundreds of high-profile political prisoners.

A rapid pivot is the best hope for the ruling coalition Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to preserve prospects for long-term peace in Ethiopia.  

The United States should urgently press Ethiopia to walk back this state of emergency and start good faith negotiations. This could include intra-party moderates like Lemma Megersa, the reform-minded, charismatic, and widely-adored president of the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization—one of four ethnically-based regional parties that make up the EPRDF coalition. Lemma is widely considered the sole “acceptable” choice for the prime minister position. But this dialogue must also include credible, longtime political opponents, including the top tier of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress, Dr. Merera Gudina and Bekele Gerba (both of whom were recently released from prison).

The Ethiopian government first declared a state of emergency in 2016 after months of prolonged anti-government protests. Demonstrations began in a small town in the country’s largest region, Oromia, and quickly spread across the region and vast swathes of western Ethiopia, including the capital Addis Ababa. A complex cocktail of grievances against the government, including inequitable land distribution, uneven economic growth, corruption, ethnic marginalization, and harsh crackdowns by federal security forces, fueled the 2016 protests and have only increased in the past year. The protest movement turned out tens of thousands of primarily peaceful demonstrators, hundreds of whom died after violent confrontations with security forces.

More importantly, as demonstrations spread, competition between two extremes escalated. On one side are fierce advocates of non-violent protest and civil disobedience—Bekele, for example, spent his two stints in prison translating the works of Martin Luther King, Jr. into the Oromo language. His influence on demonstrations in Ethiopia in recent years is evidenced by the widespread use of a gesture—crossed wrists raised above one’s head in an X—of many demonstrators participating in peaceful marches, sit-ins, walk-outs, or commerce strikes. After his release from prison last week, he was welcomed by crowds of thousands, and he urged supporters to refrain from violent and destructive activities. He also called for Ethiopian unity across ethnic lines—an important gesture from an Oromo politician given a recent reported uptick in ethnically-motivated violence.

Advocates of peaceful change, like Bekele but including thousands of other local political leaders, activists, community organizers, and regular citizens, are Ethiopia’s best chance to reform in a way that makes the country more inclusive and, ultimately, more prosperous.

The alternative is far darker.

There are also less patient voices, who believe that the government’s regular and brutal crackdowns on peaceful protesters signaled that the opportunity for peaceful change is over. As the 2016 demonstrations escalated, worrying reports of attacks on ethnic minorities and looting or destruction of foreign-owned property (many of whom are perceived to be beneficiaries of the government’s inequitable land and development policies) spread.  

It is the latter, more dangerous group which is bolstered by the new state of emergency. The EPRDF’s abandonment of its promise to negotiate lends credence to their argument that the only way to change Ethiopia is through another revolution—a prospect that should be ringing alarm bells from Addis Ababa to Washington.

The ruling coalition took power in 1991 after a devastating civil war, and its repression is the only style of governance that many of its 66 million citizens under twenty-four years old have ever known. Unlike their parents, these young people don’t remember Ethiopia’s Dergue dictatorship—a period called the “Red Terror” and marked by a chilling campaign of state-sponsored killing of real or perceived political opponents. Many of Ethiopia’s older generation benchmark the EPRDF’s repression in comparison to those darkest of times; their children, on the other hand, have escalating EPRDF repression as their only reference.

If these violent revolutionaries win out in the internal struggle of Ethiopian demonstrators, the results will be catastrophic. The only way to undercut their argument is for the EPRDF to show—through quick and decisive action—that the door is not yet closed to peaceful change.

Ethiopia’s recent release of a series of high-profile prisoners—many of whom were arrested on questionable terrorism grounds or for political activities considered unfriendly to the government—followed a promise last month by the country’s prime minister to do so. The move demonstrated to the Ethiopian public, some 105 million people spread across nine ethnically-diverse regional states, that the EPRDF intended to reform. Considering the near-absence of trust between the government and much of Ethiopia’s population, governmental follow-through was thoroughly welcomed and celebrated. These releases also generated massive goodwill toward a country that has at the same time been a darling of the West on security cooperation while simultaneously ranking as one of the most repressive countries in Africa. Lifting the state of emergency in addition to these prisoner releases could signal seriousness about reform, a goal shared by many US and international organizations who could offer financial and technical support to the country.

Ethiopia’s government is up against a ticking clock. Allowing the state of emergency to stay in place sends a clear signal to Ethiopians that the opportunity for negotiation is over, and that the prisoner releases were just a blip. The United States should telegraph both this danger—but also the dwindling opportunity to change direction—clearly and urgently to the highest levels of the EPRDF. To many in Ethiopia’s restive regions, the alternative is a revolution.

Kelsey Lilley was associate director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. She tweets @KelseyDegen.

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A previous state of emergency was declared in October 2016 and lasted for ten months. That SOE failed miserably to achieve the ruling party’s objectives. It did not stem the tide of popular protests: public uprisings have not only continued, but have spread across the Oromo state and beyond to the Amhara regions of the country, and they have become coupled with growing ethnic conflicts that further threaten the stability of the state. The SOE did not discourage the government’s opponents: instead the brutal crackdown, which involved the arrest of nearly 20,000 people, many of them minors, succeeded only in persuading many previously nonviolent protestors that peaceful demonstration against the regime is futile, and that there is no recourse but the violent overthrow of the state. The last SOE has also fatally undermined the international standing of the ruling party, diminishing its political capital abroad, leading to calls for United Nations investigations into the regime’s human rights abuses, and causing experts and policymakers to question – albeit thus far behind closed doors – the wisdom of ongoing intelligence and security cooperation with the Ethiopian state.

The Ethiopian People’s Democratic Revolutionary Front (EPRDF) must recognize the danger and futility of the declaration of a new state of emergency. To the protestors, some of whom have peacefully campaigned for many years for democracy and who were both encouraged and emboldened by the release, the declaration of martial law will be perceived as an abandonment of the government’s promises to engage in dialogue and reform. It may be regarded as a declaration of war on the people of Ethiopia. It will escalate, not mitigate, the intense political and security crisis that Ethiopia faces today.

It is not too late for the EPRDF to reconsider the decision to declare a state of emergency in Ethiopia. Moderate voices within the ruling coalition have wisely called for the appointment of a prime minister who can represent the aspirations of the Oromo population and translate their demands into real reforms. The wisdom of such an appointment, and the cancellation of the SOE, would be universally applauded and would dramatically enhance the EPRDF’s credibility, both at home and abroad. 

To that end, Ethiopia’s partner nations should act rapidly to express support for the EPRDF’s previous steps towards reconciliation, and their condemnation of the declaration of martial law. Ethiopia’s political unrest has reached its crisis point: inaction now will lead to disaster. 

Bronwyn Bruton is deputy director and director of programs and studies at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. 

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Atlantic Council Vice President and Africa Center Director Dr. J. Peter Pham welcomed participants and introduced Dr. Workneh, noting that the meeting was happening one day after the Ethiopian government freed thousands of prisoners and just hours after Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn announced his resignation.

In his remarks, Dr. Workneh gave an overview of Ethiopia’s foreign policy in a regional context, including the country’s role in the South Sudan peace process via the Intergovernmental Authority on Development. He then gave an update on the political situation in Ethiopia, remarking on the government’s agreement—amid massive popular pressure—to make substantial political reforms and allow for more inclusive, democratic governance.

A discussion followed the Minister’s remarks, in which participants pressed Dr. Workneh on Ethiopia’s governance and political challenges. He reiterated the historical uniqueness of a voluntary leadership transition, and suggested that the process to select a new prime minister would be a timely one. He also promised that Ethiopian authorities would review some of the legislation that has drawn criticism from the international community for its negative impact on civil society activities.

From his role as a leading mediator of the High-Level Revitalization Forum for the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan, he observed that the international community is frustrated and “angry” about the impasse in South Sudan, and noted that the recent US arms embargo on South Sudan sent a very strong signal.

Dr. Workneh noted that Ethiopia intended to work closely with Sudan and Egypt to settle the timeline for filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which will provide much-needed hydropower to Ethiopia and the broader region. Lastly, he remarked on the spillover effects from the Gulf crisis in the Horn of Africa, declaring that Ethiopia remained neutral amid the diplomatic dispute.

Accompanying the foreign minister to the Atlantic Council were Ambassador of Ethiopia to the United States H.E. Kassa Tekleberhan, Director General for American Affairs at the Foreign Ministry Amb. Birtukan Ayano, as well as other officials. Also in attendance and participating in the discussion were a number of current and former US government officials, business leaders, and numerous representatives of human rights and advocacy organizations.

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Though in the midst of crisis, Ethiopia is enjoying a moment of triumph and optimism. The protest movement that has forced Hailemariam’s resignation, though marked by occasional violence and the destruction of property, have been remarkably peaceful constrained, given the many hundreds of thousands who have marched and the brutality of the Ethiopian army’s attempts to quell them. They have also succeeded beyond anyone’s expectation: not since the end of the apartheid period in South Africa has any autocratic regime voluntarily agreed to release thousands of political opponents and to open civic space. But will it last?

Prime Minister Hailemariam has cast his resignation as a peace offering to the protestors and has promised dramatic reforms. But he has long been despised by hardliners within Ethiopia’s ruling elite, which is composed of members of the tiny Tigrean ethnic group and their closest allies. These hardliners have insulted the prime minister so viciously in cabinet meetings that he has reportedly sometimes been reduced to tears. These hardliners have long wanted to oust Hailemariam in order to replace him with someone more forceful, and preferably with a member of the Tigrean ethnicity. (Hailemariam, though widely regarded as ineffectual and an instrument of the Tigrean elite, was chosen to fill the prime minister post partially because he is not Tigrean, but a member of a small southern clan – thereby providing an illusion of inclusivity.)

If Hailemariam’s departure is intended to make way for the appointment of an Oromo leader to the prime minister post, then the move will go a long way to diminishing tensions in Ethiopia. The protests have been driven by the perception that the Oromo, a population of some 40 million people and the largest ethnicity in Ethiopia, are systemically excluded from political and economic power. In response to the prisoner releases on February 13 and 14, an organized regional strike that sent tens of thousands of people onto the streets earlier this week has been suspended. That suspension represents a positive reciprocation by the Oromo opposition, and is a hopeful sign that negotiation can succeed, if tensions can be kept in check. But protests and violence are continuing in pockets of Ethiopia. If the ruling party chooses to replace Hailemariam, as feared, with a hardliner representative of the Tigrean elite, or – worse – if it reinstitutes martial law by calling another state of emergency, the situation could easily explode.

Anxiety over the decision is running high: it is to be hoped that American and European policymakers are now using all of their influence to ensure that the ruling party continues on its course of conciliation and dialogue. At the same time, this crisis will test the heroic Ethiopian dissidents who have just been released from prison: can they prevail for calm?

There are many pitfalls ahead, but the next few days will determine whether the Ethiopian nation will proceed down the path of peace and dialogue, or blunder haplessly into widespread civic unrest and bloodshed.

Bronwyn Bruton is deputy director and director of programs and studies in the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Follow her on Twitter @BronwynBruton.

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The protest movement playing out in Ethiopia is one of the most consequential conflicts on the African continent – more than any other, it has the potential to upend US policy in the Horn of Africa. It could disrupt counterterrorism efforts in Somalia and reduce the number of peacekeeping troops in South Sudan. But alarmingly, it has barely registered in Washington policy discussions or in the American press.

Ethiopia’s Oromo population is celebrating a victory today that is probably unprecedented in African history. Without extensive violence or bloodshed, and while almost all of its leading voices languished in jail, a grassroots protest movement has managed to force one of the most powerful regimes in Africa to surrender to its demands. As an organized strike involving tens of thousands of Oromo youths drew closer to the capital city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopian authorities agreed to release a host of important political prisoners, including Bekele Gerba, a compelling activist whose release from prison the government has fiercely resisted. (Just the week before, Bekele had been sentenced to an additional half-year behind bars, for the crime of singing a protest song in front a judge.)

In honor of Bekele Gerba’s release, the Oromo strikes were suspended, and the crowds in the street turned jubilant. Then, on February 14, authorities stunned and delighted the protestors further by releasing other extremely prominent dissidents (including among others the blogger Eskindir Nega, opposition leader Andualem Aragie, former Gambella Governor Okello Akway, and the Muslim religious freedom activist Ahmedin Jebel), some of whom had been imprisoned on “terrorism” charges for years.

Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalagn had promised the release of a large number of political prisoners in early January, and did later release a number of political activists, including opposition leader Merera Gudina. Government officials claimed at the time that the move was intended to widen the political space and foster a genuine dialogue with the political opposition and with the ethnic-based protest movements. But skeptics (including the majority of protestors) saw the move as largely symbolic, and perhaps even calculated to sow discord within the opposition, as some individuals were released and not others, and particularly as the most influential figures remained behind bars.

After the events of February 13 and 14, however, there can be little doubt about the seriousness of the Ethiopian authorities. The severity and persistence of the protest movements have clearly become an existential threat to the regime, and the need to diffuse the protests’ momentum is imperative enough, apparently, to overcome differences of opinion between the so-called “moderate” and “hardliner” factions with the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which is the most powerful faction with the ruling party.

The TPLF’s alarm is well-founded; the only question is whether its belated concessions to the protestors, after years of growing unrest, may be too little, too late. Anger at the perceived economic and political dominance of the small Tigrean ethnic faction is a moving force behind the protests, and the threat of a genocide or other targeted ethnic violence against Tigrean individuals appears to be escalating. Fearful Tigrean citizens have reportedly relocated in large numbers from the Amhara and Oromo regions of the country, and attacks on Tigreans (a rarity in the past) are reported. At the same time, violent clashes between other ethnic groups, particularly the Oromo and Somalis, have dramatically increased. Tensions are high across the board; the protestors are flush with victory; and the newly-released scores of political dissidents may vie for prominence. Is there any chance of the protests subsiding?

Probably not, though it is surely the TPLF’s hope that Bekele Gerba, Ahmedin Jebel, Eskindir Nega and their colleagues will prove to be wise and moderating voices in the coming dialogue. They have in the past not only been decisively less radical, but have been firmly committed to non-violence – unlike the radio and social media personalities, some of the based in the diaspora, that have risen to prominence in their absence and are now driving the opposition discourse in real time.

Having achieved so much through protest, it is unlikely that the Ethiopian people will accept half-hearted reforms. Speculation is rampant, for example, that Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalagn – who is not Tigrean but is widely regarded as an instrument of the TPLF elite – will be replaced with an Oromo at the ruling party’s upcoming conference in three weeks’ time. (Lema Megersa, president of the Oromia Regional State, is a prime focus of this speculation.) These rumors are mere speculation, but have taken on the force of expectation, and disappointment could easily lead to another round of protests. Another round of civilian deaths at the hands of Ethiopian security forces, or the declaration of another state of emergency, could have the same effect. Next time, the Ethiopian government’s concessions may not be enough to halt the protests. If dialogue fails, and the security forces are unleashed, the resulting conflict will be bloody and awful – and will certainly not succeed in ending the uprising.

Implications for US Policy

Washington, of course, has every incentive to avoid such a scenario.

The United States has much at stake in Ethiopia, whose troops and cooperation have been essential to Washington’s efforts to stabilize Somalia and South Sudan. American strategy in the Horn of Africa is deeply flawed and is demonstrably failing to achieve its objectives (as the situation in both countries continues to deteriorate). But no alternative policy proposals are on table, and a sudden collapse of Ethiopian capacity to support American policies with African boots on the ground would be catastrophic. The African Union mission in Somalia, already on its last legs, would probably not survive a sudden and wholesale withdrawal of Ethiopian forces – and countless civilian lives in Southern Sudan would be endangered. A disordered Ethiopia is of course more vulnerable to incursions by the al Qaeda-linked Somali terror group, al Shabaab, which has already managed to establish a vibrant offshoot in Kenya amid similar social conditions (a large population of unemployed youths, a disenfranchised and villified Muslim population, and rampant police brutality).

Unfortunately, few countries are more poorly positioned than the United States to play a constructive role in Ethiopia’s future. This stems from Washington’s long history of providing budgetary support to the Ethiopia’s ruling party, the close cooperation between the two countries’ military and intelligence services, and the long-standing refusal of American officials to criticize the human rights record of the regime or to challenge the imprisonment of thousands of civilians.

Washington’s silence on Ethiopia’s deteriorating human rights and security situation is a result of many factors. First and foremost, of course, the Ethiopian regime has served as Washington’s indispensable partner in the “war on terrorism” since the early 2000s. Second, the former prime minister and architect of the ruling party, Meles Zenawi, cultivated warm personal friendships with senior American policymakers who subsequently championed the regime and shield it from public criticism. Third, as is the case in Rwanda, Western policymakers paraded Ethiopia as an “African success story” as a means of facilitating continued aid and investment to the continent, and drawing attention to the human rights narrative was inconvenient. Fourth – and not least important – public criticism of the Ethiopian regime was found by American diplomats not to work very well: over the years it has resulted in numerous journalists, diplomats and American non-governmental organizations being expelled from Ethiopia over the years, without causing a whiff of improvement in the regime’s conduct. And Ethiopia’s ability to restrict access to the African Union (AU headquarters are located in Addis) has led many otherwise reputable analysts and journalists to practice self-censorship. Ethiopia has also proved very willing to retaliate against diplomatic pressure by holding American security interests hostage: in September 2017, for example, when the House Subcommittee on African Affairs attempted to pass a resolution drawing attention to Ethiopia’s human rights abuses, Ethiopia’s then-ambassador to the United States, Girma Birru, visited the Subcommittee members and threatened to withhold counterterror cooperation in Somalia. Faced with this threat, the Subcommittee immediately abandoned the resolution. (The Subcommittee threatened yesterday to bring the resolution to the floor for a vote on February 28, unless the Ethiopian government gives UN investigatory teams access to the country.)   

The most credible voices among the protest movement have already condemned US inaction, and would not consent to a dialogue with US officials – indeed, they argue that engaging with Washington would erode their credibility, and they are probably right. Washington can of course attempt to pressure or persuade the TPLF to undertake credible and meaningful reforms – but Washington’s chequered diplomatic history with Addis suggests that such efforts are unlikely to bear fruit. It is also unclear what reforms would appease the public: while there have been calls for Ethiopian security forces to leave the Oromo and Amhara and other regions (including the Somali or “Ogaden” zone), absolutely no one is demanding fresh elections (which have historically been heavily rigged) or other staple democratic measures to restore the peace.

The next month, and days, will be decisive. The Ethiopian regime will either commit to its current course and expand on its commitment to reform, signaling this commitment perhaps by offering the prime ministership to an Oromo leader. Or it will double down on its previous course, and declare a state of emergency. But this would be a deadly decision, as a new state of emergency would surely be regarded by opposition leaders and the protestors as a declaration of war.

Ethiopia’s only hope for peace is a series of rapid and sincere concessions by the TPLF elite, which must certainly involve a meaningful redistribution of political and economic power. The Ethiopian public has tasted its power, and one way or another, the status quo will not survive.

Bronwyn Bruton is deputy director and director of programs and studies in the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Follow her on Twitter @BronwynBruton.

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In November, after months of disagreement over the release of an environmental impact study, Egypt withdrew from technical negotiations on the GERD’s construction. Cairo worries that the project gives its upstream neighbor Ethiopia too much control over the Nile, which is Egypt’s primary freshwater resource. Meanwhile, an escalating diplomatic crisis between Egypt and Sudan, ostensibly over water issues but exacerbated by fallout from the Gulf crisis, has hardened the divisions between Egypt and an emerging Ethiopia-Sudan alliance.

The project, which Ethiopia reports will be completed in 2018, has been a sticky regional issue since the country first announced its intentions to dam a tributary of the Nile River in 2011. Because the White and Blue Niles snake from the Great Lakes and western Ethiopia toward Khartoum, where they converge, the river’s management inevitably includes nearly a dozen countries with equities in the future of this region’s water—none of whom can agree on how to manage the basin.

In its diplomatic efforts, Egypt cites two colonial-era treaties as proof of its right to the lion’s share of the Nile. Both Ethiopia—which was excluded from both agreements despite the fact that it is the source of some 85 percent of the Nile’s waters—and Sudan, which was colonized at the time of the first agreement, reject those treaties.

Egyptian Fears

Egypt fears that the GERD will compromise both its freshwater supply and electricity production of the Aswan High Dam. To Egypt, whose ancient civilization was wholly dependent on the Nile and for whom the river remains deeply meaningful, the prospect of Ethiopia being able to control the Nile is distressing.

As a result, Egypt has deemed access to the river a top national security issue. In 2013, Egyptian officials were caught on camera discussing a range of military options to sabotage the GERD, lending credence to rumors about Egypt’s hostile intentions toward the dam. Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi defiantly declared that he would keep “all options open” to maintain Egypt’s water supply, and in November 2017, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi reaffirmed that stance, warning that “No one can touch Egypt’s share of water.” Rumors spiked again after a foiled March 2017 attack on the GERD, which Ethiopia blamed on rebels from its longtime foe Eritrea (Egypt and Eritrea’s warming relations and recent claims of Egyptian troops deploying to Eritrea remain the subject of intense Ethiopian scrutiny and suspicion).

Regardless of the outcome of GERD negotiations, Egypt faces looming water shortages exacerbated by population pressures, climate change, and an inefficient irrigation system. The Aswan Dam, a key driver of Egypt’s objection to the GERD, is itself a source of waste. Due to its location in the middle of the desert, some estimates suggest that an astounding 25 to 40 percent of the Nile evaporates each year from the reservoir at Lake Nasser.

Sudan: Stuck in the Middle?

Egyptian ire is also directed at Sudan for aligning with Ethiopia. While initially opposed to the GERD, Sudan has recently changed its tune after successive Ethiopian efforts to convince its East African neighbor of the project’s benefits.

In addition to an Ethiopian promise to sell Sudan a portion of the GERD’s power to jumpstart its economic ambitions, the country’s agricultural sector will also reportedly benefit from more stable river levels and decreased seasonal flooding—made possible as Ethiopia regulates the amount of water released from the dam’s reservoir. Sudan is hopeful that these improved conditions will allow it to capitalize on its 19 million hectares of underutilized but arable land.

A tit-for-tat diplomatic dispute between Egypt and Sudan has escalated since last summer as the two countries continue to trade immigration and trade restrictions. Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s state visit to Sudan in December and Sudan’s agreement to lease a key Red Sea island to the some-time ally of Qatar and Iran was not well received in Egypt, which has backed the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf crisis. Egypt is no doubt also alarmed by the appearance of divided loyalties from the Gulf states, which were traditionally allies in opposition to the dam, but are now investing in soon-to-be fertile agricultural land near the Nile in Sudan as a hedge for their future food security needs.

Ethiopian Ambitions

The Ethiopian government trumpets the GERD as transformative—a symbol of Ethiopia’s burgeoning economic “renaissance.” If estimates are correct, the dam could triple the energy supply to Ethiopia’s mostly rural population of 100 million and still leave $1 billion worth of energy to sell to its neighbors annually. The project has a $5 billion price tag—a hefty sum for a country at the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index. While the GERD is largely financed without foreign assistance, China loaned $1 billion to Ethiopia for power infrastructure related to the project.

For some, the GERD is a source of Ethiopian pride. Billboards showing off gleaming renderings of the dam blanketed Addis Ababa, and Ethiopian citizens and its sizeable diaspora have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through buying GERD bonds. Successful completion of the dam is also a much-needed win for the country’s embattled ruling party, which is trying to manage widespread political disenchantment and widening ethnic fissures after an increasingly repressive two decades in power.

But not all Ethiopians agree, including those who have been pressured into purchasing bonds, those displaced by similar “transformative” development projects, and those concerned about the unknown environmental impacts of the project.

Ethiopia expects to complete construction on the dam this year, though it doesn’t have to wait long to begin filling the GERD’s 74 billion cubic meter reservoir, which will allow power generation to begin. This is perhaps the most fraught time for the region, as filling the dam quickly will sharply affect the volume of water flowing to Egypt. Ethiopia maintains that filling the dam over five or six years will not significantly affect the volume of the Nile, except to make it more stable and predictable – but it is clear that the Ethiopian and Egyptian expectations of a “reasonable” timeline do not align (Egypt has suggested that the process take twelve to eighteen years). International assessments split the difference, suggesting that responsible filling should take between five and fifteen years.  

Colonial Legacies

Egypt’s legal challenge to water rights to the Nile rely on two treaties from 1929 and 1959. The former, signed by Egypt and Britain on behalf of its colonies, gave Egypt veto power over future developments that might impact its share of the Nile.

The 1959 agreement, signed by Egypt and a newly-independent Sudan, allotted specific amounts of the Nile, measured in billions of cubic meters, to Egypt and Sudan. But according to Sudanese officials, the irregularity of the Nile’s flow has prevented Sudan from ever using its “full” share of the Nile. In practice, Sudan’s under-utilization of the river has given Egypt access to more than its “share” of the Nile’s waters, pointing to the possibility of a looming Egyptian water crisis irrespective of GERD negotiations.  

Ethiopia was excluded altogether from both the 1929 and 1959 agreement—a particular offense considering that Ethiopia’s Blue Nile makes up nearly the entire volume of the Nile proper. Other upper riparian states like Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania, which were still colonies at the time of signing, also reject these treaties.

Since GERD negotiations began, Egypt has been distracted by a series of internal political crises, allowing Ethiopia to quietly forge ahead on the GERD’s construction, build a supporting political alliance with Sudan, and alter the de facto water landscape in East Africa. As Egypt’s presidential elections approach and related domestic pressure mounts, the dam has snapped back into focus. Time will tell whether the region’s impending water crisis will metastasize into broader geopolitical conflict—though current indications don’t look good.

Kelsey Lilley was associate director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. She tweets @KelseyDegen.

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Taye discussed the sustained protests that have taken place across Ethiopia for more than a year, as well as the recently imposed state of emergency. He acknowledged what he described as the five principal grievances motivating the demonstrations: the lack of an inclusive political process; questions over regional power decentralization and “self-administration”; unfulfilled demand for services and infrastructure at the local level; rising unemployment, particularly for Ethiopian youth; and the limited ability of the Ethiopian government to “harness” the demographic dividend.

In response to the ongoing unrest, which has resulted in the death of hundreds of protestors, an unknown number of security forces, and millions of dollars in property damage, Taye noted that the government felt it had no choice but to implement a six-month state of emergency, which he specifically noted was not intended to be punitive. He noted the following factors in the decision to impose the state of emergency: “destructive elements” have usurped the legitimate grievances of protesters; demonstrations have led to significant damage to both public and private property; the need to restore security and stability, especially in the rural areas; the need to prevent armed groups from unleashing a “coordinated” campaign under the guise of the demonstrations; the need to end violent incitement of inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflict; and to eliminate the “strong evidence” foreign involvement in the unrest.

Taye also stated that the government would be initiating a national political dialogue aimed at addressing some of the issues behind the unrest and promised it would be inclusive.

Also in attendance was His Excellency Girma Birru, ambassador of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to the United States, Ambassador Tebege Berhe, director-general for the Americas at the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and various current and former US government officials and representatives of civil society. 

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Further complicating the issue, however, are accusations by Ethiopian officials that Egypt is behind recent anti-government protests. “Countries displeased with our determination to build the great Renaissance Dam…have for a long time conspired with diaspora extremists to destabilize our country,” Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn told parliament in early October, pointing a finger at “certain Egyptian institutions.” Communications Minister Getachew Reda also accused “elements within the Egyptian political establishment” of training and financing the rebel Oromo Liberation Front (OLF)—designated a terror group by the Ethiopian government and accused of provoking the unrest. Egyptian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid denied the accusations in a statement reaffirming “Egypt’s absolute respect for Ethiopia’s sovereignty, and non-intervention in its internal affairs,” a position reiterated by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Recent controversies aside, an Egyptian Irrigations Ministry official and technical expert familiar with negotiations over the dam says, “Egypt’s position is that we disagree with the dam’s current dimensions.” He spoke on the condition of anonymity due the sensitive nature of the issue. He adds, “We’d agree with it if those were changed.” GERD Project Manager Simegnew Bekele says the dam is only intended to generate electricity, it will not reserve water, and the flow of water to Egypt will never stop. Despite these assurances, Egyptian experts fear that Egypt will experience a water shortage when the dam’s reservoir—which will hold 74 billion cubic meters of water—is filled. Egypt fears that the 55.5 billion cubic meters of Nile water it is entitled to yearly will be affected by the dam when its reservoir starts to fill with water. The Nile provides just less than half of Egypt’s required 120 billion cubic meters of water annually, and Egypt is already facing a water shortage, confirmed by statements by government officials.

Nonetheless, Ethiopia is continuing construction on the Renaissance Dam, which aims to generate 6,000 MW of electricity. Bekele says this would enable the country to achieve its sustainable development goals and combat poverty, which he describes as Ethiopia’s primary enemy.

In Cairo, an Egypt diplomat familiar with the issue says Egypt’s efforts for compromise were rejected. “We presented four alternative proposals for four different dams of the same cost, which would be more secure and have less impact on Egypt,” he told MENASource. “But Ethiopia rejected all our proposals, and insisted on building the dam.” In January, Ethiopian state media said the country had rejected an Egyptian redesign proposal increasing the number of gates from two to four, which Egypt said would allow for increased water flow to downstream countries. Bizuneh Tolcha, an official at the Ethiopian Ministry of Water and Irrigation, was quoted as saying, “The decision to build two openings came following intensive studies, and Ethiopia does not need to redesign the dam project.”

The Egyptian diplomat is also critical of Ethiopia’s decision to start construction before agreed upon studies on the dam’s safety mechanisms and water are complete. Two French consulting firms signed contracts with Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan in September to conduct the studies, which initial reports suggest will take 11 months to complete.

Mohamed Nasr Allam, who served as Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation from 2009 to 2011, has been openly critical of the agreement with Ethiopia, expressing concern over what he describes as the future negative effects of the dam. He says Egypt fears that filling the Renaissance Dam’s reservoir will cause Lake Nasser, the lake behind Egypt’s Aswan High Dam, and Egypt’s water reserves, to shrink. Allam says this will reduce the amount of electricity produced by the Aswan Dam, and cause millions of feddans of agricultural land to go fallow, drinking water stations to go dry, and Egypt’s water table to drop. Italian and Turkish experts working on the dam site, however, tell MENASource that at least 80 percent of construction on the dam is already complete.

Despite these concerns, a senior Egyptian diplomat in Ethiopia considers it a “possible opportunity” for cooperation between the two countries. “Politics is the art of possibility,” the diplomat says, speaking to Egyptian journalists also on the condition of anonymity. “Our job is to turn every event into a possible opportunity.” He adds, “What’s important now is that we’re looking for opportunities for cooperation. Potential, concrete, shared interests” in dealing with the dam.

Speaking in Cairo close to the Nile, a third diplomat close to the negotiations tells MENASource, “The Nile will always come from Ethiopia, until the end of days. That’s why we need to work on building a good relationship with Ethiopians over time.”

“Water poverty must be taken into consideration,” he adds, particularly as “Egypt’s share of 55 billion cubic meters was determined when the country’s population was under 20 million people. How much should our share be when our population reaches 90 million?” Currently, average per capita water use in Egypt is less than 650 cubic meters per year. Studies indicate that this will drop to 350 cubic meters by the year 2050.  The global water poverty line is an average per capita use of about 1,000 cubic meters per year.

Aside from the Nile, Egypt and Ethiopia are connected by strong religious ties between the Coptic Orthodox and Ethiopian Orthodox churches. The Ethiopian Orthodox church historic ties with its Egyptian counterpart dating back to the 14^th century before officially separating in the late fifties, and efforts have been made to use that relationship to improve bilateral ties. 

Commerce also serves as another key connection with an existing foundation to build on. Bilateral trade between Egypt and Ethiopia amounted to about 300 million dollars in 2015. Ethiopian Ambassador to Egypt, Mohamed Dardeer, is quoted in independent daily newspaper Al-Youm Al-Saba’a  saying his country aims to increase that figure to 500 million by the end of 2016, and Solomon Afework, President of the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectorial Associations says that between 1992 and 2014, Egyptian investors established 58 investment projects in Ethiopia worth 35 billion dollars. According to the Ethiopian-Egyptian Business Council, current Egyptian investments in Ethiopia amount to approximately 2 billion dollars.

The Egyptian diplomat with a positive outlook tells MENASource that the Ethiopian market is currently a very good investment opportunity for Egyptian companies. These investments, he says, can create “shared interests” between the two countries, and through this, overcome the dispute over the dam. He believes this may be a way for Egypt to participate in Ethiopia’s “renaissance,” which could benefit both countries and limit the potentially negative effects of the dam.

Meanwhile on the ground, far from diplomatic and commercial channels, humanitarian activities like those of British-Egyptian surgeon Magdi Yacoub send a positive message to Ethiopia. In late July, a medical team composed of 25 doctors led by Yacoub conducted 67 pro-bono heart operations in Ethiopia.

Egypt’s engagement in economic activities and significant commercial cooperation with Ethiopia can create real shared opportunities. Forging stronger bilateral ties and engaging in soft power could encourage Addis Ababa to consider Egypt’s position in negotiations over the technical management and operation of the dam.

Mohamed Mahmoud is an independent journalist based in Cairo. 

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In their remarks, Dr. Merera and Eng. Yilkal cited rising costs of living, limited employment opportunities for a growing youth population, and a restrictive political and media environment as impetus for the ongoing demonstrations. They condemned the government’s violent crackdown on primarily peaceful demonstrations, which began in November of last year.

Dr. Merera and Eng. Yilkal highlighted their recommendations to the government for a peaceful and prosperous way forward in Ethiopia, which included permitting peaceful protest, halting the unlawful killing of citizens, releasing political prisoners, and ceasing deployment of the military to disperse demonstrations. Both rejected what they considered “cosmetic” reforms from the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and suggested that more substantial changes were needed to prevent the country’s fracturing.

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Ethiopia continues construction on the Renaissance Dam, which aims to generate 6,000 MW of electricity. It would enable the country to achieve sustainable development goals and combat poverty, which GERD Project Manager Simegnew Bekele says is Ethiopia’s primary enemy. Ethiopian officials say it would enable the country to sell electricity to neighboring countries, including Sudan, Djibouti, Kenya, South Sudan, and Egypt, they describe as an economic achievement for the country. At present, Ethiopia’s electricity generating capacity is about 2,060 MW—sufficient only for about 30 percent of its citizens’ needs, as over 70 percent of the country’s population is not adequately connected to the grid. 

The Ethiopian Perspective

Sitting on the ground to charge his cell phone in the western region’s Asosa Airport, about 300 km from the dam, Getachew says, “Ethiopia needs the dam to generate electricity, so we can achieve real development. This region can become an excellent tourist destination, but without electricity that won’t be possible.”

During a brief visit to Ethiopia, it appeared that the majority of Ethiopia’s roads do not have streetlights. The country of 100 million suffers from frequent blackouts, with power outages described in local Ethiopian media as business as usual. 

Getachew, the father of a 9-month old child, manages a tourism company in Addis Ababa, where his income is about 20,000 Ethiopian Birr (about US $1,000). He hopes to double this amount soon—and places much of that hope on the Renaissance Dam. “Having energy will enable us to develop infrastructure and utilities, build resorts, and attract first-rate tourists,” he says. 

Most Ethiopians—government employees in particular—contribute a percentage of their income to the dam, which they consider “a national project.” This percentage varies per person, and is paid either monthly or yearly. The national pride is not unlike that of Egyptians who raised $8.5 billion in eight days, with 82 percent of the money raised through individual purchases of investment certificates. 

“The dam will generate wealth and good salaries for us,” Getachew adds enthusiastically. He contributed a yearly percentage he did not specify. “It’s a dream for me, and for my child’s future.”

Getachew explains that most hotels in Ethiopia lack warm water, laundry services, fast food, and most importantly, reliable Wi-Fi service due to insufficient electricity. This dark reality was clear during a visit to Ethiopia: during just one night at the Blendana Hotel in Asosa, the hotel suffered from several power outages. 

The Egyptian Perspective

These rose-colored dreams in Ethiopia of a better future in which high rates of development are achieved, contrast with real fears in Egypt of the specter of a possible drought that could afflict the country if Ethiopia completes construction of the dam. Egypt fears that the 55.5 billion cubic meters of water it is entitled to yearly will be affected by the completion of the dam when its reservoir starts to fill with water. 

The country depends nearly entirely on the Nile River for its agriculture, industry, and drinking water. 

Egypt, in fact, needs about 120 billion cubic meters of water annually. In addition to the 55.5 billion cubic meters of water from its share of the Nile, another 20.5 billion cubic meters comes from recycled treated wastewater and agricultural drainage water, and groundwater, according to a report published by the Center for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE) in March 2015.These figures reveal a significant water shortage in Egypt, confirmed by statements by Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation officials. 

Consequently, the construction of the Renaissance Dam raises serious fears of water scarcity and drought. Egyptian media coverage of the construction of the dam has been wrought with fear, mistrust, and doubt about its impact on Egypt’s share of the Nile’s water. Fear mongering headlines were common in both state-run and independent media under former president Mohamed Morsi, and the media and experts continue to warn against the consequences the dam will have on Egypt. It was described in 2013 as catastrophic for Egypt, and following a recent visit by an Egyptian media delegation to the site of the dam, state-run Al-Ahram published an article saying that the visit was not enough to allay Egyptian people’s fears. This is in turn reflected in citizens’ attitudes about the dam. 

In a lavish house in central Cairo’s suburb, Zamalek, just a few meters’ walk from the Nile, Salma Salem expresses her concerns about her children and grandchildren’s futures if Egypt suffers from drought. “Damming the Nile means stopping the regular flow of water to Egypt, or at least that control of the water is no longer in our hands,” Salem says.

“It’s clear that the government has failed to deal with this crisis,” she adds. “It looks like we and our children will pay the price.” 

After several years of disputes and stalled negotiations, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi signed a preliminary agreement with Ethiopia and Sudan in March 2015. The agreement allowed for the construction of the dam, but did not resolve several points of contention, nor does it outline how disputes would be resolved. In a recent interview, Sisi again broached the issue. He said that negotiations between Ethiopia and Egypt were continuing in a reassuring manner, and called on people to respond with calm and confidence, adding that the Nile waters will continue to flow. Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry has also sought to downplay fears. Acknowledging that risks to Egypt do exist, Shoukry said in June, “We are discussing them with our Ethiopian and Sudanese partners,” in order to reach an agreement. 

Some are reassured by statements by Sisi, who enjoys great popularity in Egypt, that he would not easily abandon Egypt’s rights. Al-Ahram even published an interview with Ethiopian Water Minister Ato Motuma Mekassa who sought to reassure the Egyptian public. Others are afraid that Egypt has given in to the inevitable, among them members of parliament, including Sisi supporter Mostafa Bakry, who just recently described the dam as one of the many conspiracies against Egypt. 

Mohamed Nasr Allam, who served as Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation from 2009 to 2011, has been openly critical of the agreement with Ethiopia, and expresses concern over future “negative effects” of the dam. Allam tells MENASource that Egypt fears that filling the Renaissance Dam’s reservoir will cause the lake behind Egypt’s Aswan High Dam, and Egypt’s water reserves, to shrink. Allam says this will cause millions of feddans of agricultural land to go fallow, reduce the amount of electricity produced by the Aswan Dam, cause drinking water stations to go dry, and cause Egypt’s water table to drop.

“The High Dam can only be filled if there are no dams before it, and if it empties, it will only be able to be refilled at half the capacity,” Allam adds. 

In the Minya Governorate about 300 km south of Cairo, Amir Mikhail, a farmer in his sixties, speaks of his fears that “his land will become fallow” as a result of how the Renaissance Dam will affect the flow of water to Egypt. “We barely have enough water to farm now,” Mikhail complains. “We share water, and take turns watering our land.” He adds, “Constructing the Renaissance Dam will be a disaster for sure. I’m afraid of the day I won’t be able to water my crops. God help us.”

Mohamed Mahmoud is an independent journalist based in Cairo. 

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Near midnight on June 12, Eritrea’s information minister released a press statement accusing Ethiopia of the attack, and stating that “the purpose and ramifications of this attack are unclear.” Privately, officials expressed concern that the skirmish could presage a return to full-scale war.

Eritrean officials suggest a review of satellite images of the Ethiopian-Eritrean border, which they claim will show that Ethiopia has been building up its forces over the past two months. That would not be surprising, as Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has repeatedly and very recently warned of his intention to use “proportionate military force” against Eritrea in response to its “provocations,” though the United Nations Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group (SEMG) has found little evidence of destabilizing acts by Eritrea in recent years.

The United States, EU, and United Nations Security Council should act quickly to ensure that Sunday’s border skirmish does not escalate further. And for once it should point the finger of blame firmly at Ethiopia. Past aggressions by Ethiopia have failed to draw censure from the international community, but the refusal to assign blame in this latest incident would dangerously threaten stability in the Horn. The details of the current conflict may be unclear, but Ethiopia has been frank about its desire to punish Eritrea militarily. Given that, the dire escalation of the conflict on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border was utterly predictable. And the international community is complicit in this escalation, because it has consistently failed to censure Ethiopia for its past aggressions.

Who is to blame?

Ethiopia has denied that it initiated the conflict at the Tsorona front on Sunday, but only weakly. When questioned, Ethiopia’s information minister, Getachew Reda, initially claimed to know nothing about the fighting. Later, he vaguely accused Eritrea of provoking the skirmish, calling the fighting “an Eritrean initiative,” and referring to “an incident on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border” and “a provocation”—one that apparently triggered a rapid and unprecedentedly large-scale deployment of Ethiopian heavy artillery and tanks.

Gedab News has subsequently offered what seems, on its face, to be a fairly credible account of what might have occurred. The account alleges that Eritrean forces chased a group of deserters onto Ethiopian territory, where they skirmished with at least three of the Eritrean rebel groups that are being illicitly backed by Ethiopia. The article notes that neither Eritrea nor Ethiopia would want the details of such an incident to slip out, since it suggests not insubstantial misconduct by both sides. But whether or not this particular account is accurate, it’s fairly likely that some minor incident along these lines occurred on Sunday at the Tsorona front—as such incidents do, with some regularity, along the militarized border—and that Ethiopia seized the opportunity to pursue Eritrea’s forces back across the border with tanks and heavy artillery, apparently causing a substantial loss of life. The pursuit of Eritrean forces over the border (which has not been demarcated due to Ethiopia’s refusal to comply with the terms of a 2000 peace treaty and subsequent boundary determination) was predicted by Hailemariam’s ongoing threats to punish Eritrea with military force.

I cannot of course rule out the possibility that Eritrea may be single-handedly responsible for this latest border skirmish. But Ethiopia’s failure to offer any specific explanation of what Eritrea has actually done to provoke such a significant strike should be regarded as a red flag of blame, as should Getachew’s press statement in Addis Ababa on Tuesday morning, in which he argued that Eritrea simply deserved to be attacked: “We believe that the regime doesn’t have any moral ground whatsoever to complain to the international community that it has been attacked because it has all along been working to invite such an attack from any responsible country in the region.”

Getachew then referred to Eritrea’s efforts to “destabilize” the region. This is a constant Ethiopian refrain, but because he made no specific allegation, it remains unclear what Ethiopia thinks Eritrea has done to provoke an attack.

(The SEMG is charged with monitoring the arms embargoes on Somalia and Eritrea, and routinely investigates Eritrea’s activities in the region. For the past several years, it has reported that both Ethiopia and Eritrea have continued to fund rebel and opposition groups operating on each other’s territories. But it has failed to uncover any significant destabilizing acts or violations by Eritrea. And there is no doubt that the volume of funding provided to rebel groups by Ethiopia vastly exceeds that which is provided by the much smaller, and poorer, Eritrea.)

Ethiopia has recently complained about efforts by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to improve Eritrea’s ports, which they hope to use as a launching pad for assaults against Al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen. But there is no evidence that the UAE cooperation will adversely affect Ethiopia’s security. Unrelatedly, Ethiopia has also recently accused Eritrea of fomenting protests by Oromos in the southern part of the country. But that claim is wholly unsubstantiated, has been denied by the Oromo protesters, and is routinely dismissed by security analysts and human rights investigators.

Earlier this year, in March, Ethiopia’s prime minister publically threatened to take military action against Eritrea in response to various alleged acts of “provocation” and “destabilization.” It is very likely that the attack on the Eritrean border is simply a fulfillment of what was, in effect, a public pledge to escalate the conflict with Eritrea at the earliest opportunity.

Previous Ethiopian assaults on Eritrea

Ethiopia has a history of attacks on Eritrea. In March 2012, Ethiopia illegally sent troops across the Eritrean border to attack three military bases that it claimed were operated by the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front. In March 2015, Ethiopia bombed two targets in Eritrea, apparently in retaliation for an EU decision to provide development funding to Eritrea. (Neither Eritrean nor Western diplomats will consent to discuss this incident on the record, but the basic facts of the incident are already in the public arena.) Eight soldiers were killed in the strike on a military depot in Asmara; and in violation of the rules of war, the other strike was directed at a civilian target, a Canadian-operated mining venture at Bisha. No-one was killed in that attack, and it appears to have been intended to undermine investor confidence in Eritrea’s security.

The United States, European nations, and the United Nations Security Council failed to censure Ethiopia for these attacks—nor have any of these bodies respond to Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s very public threats to use military force against Eritrea (for example, in speeches made in October 2015, November 2015, and March 2016). This failure to contain Ethiopia’s repeated aggression has unquestionably contributed to a sense of impunity on the part of Ethiopia, which is also considered an essential partner of US counterterror efforts in the Horn of Africa region. Because of Ethiopia’s key role in US security efforts, Washington has typically avoided criticizing Ethiopia’s regional aggressions, as well as its escalating domestic civil and human rights violations.

Who benefits from the skirmish?

Some analysts have argued that Eritrea stands to benefit from the conflict, because “it diverts attention away from the alleged crimes against humanity, and [justifies Eritrea’s] need for an enormous and compulsory conscription,” according to Charlotte King of the Economist Intelligence Unit.

That could be so – I would be the first to admit that the motivations of both the Eritrean and Ethiopian regimes are inscrutable to distant eyes. But I would assess that the Eritrean regime has little to gain from contributing to a media narrative that is already focused on its “bad behavior” at home and in the Horn. And, given the ongoing and illegal occupation of Eritrean territory by Ethiopian troops, on top of the aggressions cited above, Eritrea does not have to work that hard to prove that has significant national security concerns stemming from its border conflict with Ethiopia. If anything, media headlines about the border are likely to draw more attention to the crimes against humanity charges, by keeping Eritrea’s affairs in the news.

Giving Ethiopia an excuse to restart the border war would also be a dangerous gamble by Eritrea. In the years since the last border war ended (in 2000) Ethiopia has been flooded with development and military assistance, the latter given by the US and EU in exchange for Ethiopia’s participation in the UN peacekeeping mission in Somalia. At the same time, Eritrea has been starved of both economic investment and development support, and has lost hundreds of thousands of youth to migration. Both factors have no doubt caused a substantial decline in Eritrea’s military capabilities. If Ethiopia and Eritrea go back to war, it’s clear who would win. And it would be suicide for Eritrea to provoke such a conflict at time when the world’s opprobrium is focused on Asmara. The odds of any nation or intergovernmental body rising to Eritrea’s defense is painfully slim – as the muted response to Sunday’s fighting has shown.

If Ethiopia wants a war, on the other hand, there’s good reason to think that there will never be a better time. The US national security advisor, Susan Rice, is a committed defender of the Ethiopian regime and will remain in her office for only a few more months. With the allegations of crimes against humanity, international criticism of Eritrean has certainly plateaued. And Ethiopia is facing a worrying pile-up of domestic problems, particularly among its Muslim and Oromo populations, but also in the Gambella and Somali regions, among others. The temptation to quell domestic unrest by uniting the population against an external foe must be fairly strong, and Ethiopia’s Tigrean elite has long desired absolution for its loss of Eritrea and, in particular, the port of Asab. “A second round of full-scale war between Ethiopia and Eritrea cannot be ruled out,” Ethiopia’s information minister says. 

No pragmatic analyst of US foreign policy could demand that Washington exercise its responsibility to ensure the implementation of the Algiers Agreement, which Ethiopia has violated for the past thirteen years. No matter how just that demand, no matter how long overdue, no matter how profoundly such action would increase the stability and peacefulness of the Horn, it is simply not realistic to expect Washington to take up this burden at a time of global economic instability and ever-escalating security concerns. But there is no excuse for Washington’s silence in the face of Ethiopia’s clearly announced intention to restart hostilities against Eritrea, and in the face of its continued military aggressions. Ethiopia is testing the waters for a return to war.

For now, the Ethiopian forces have withdrawn, and it is to be hoped that Washington is exerting pressure on Addis Ababa behind closed doors. Because: If Ethiopia and Eritrea go back to war, Washington, the European Union, and in particular the UN Security Council, will have no one but themselves to blame. 

Bronwyn Bruton is deputy director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council

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Gambella, one of Ethiopia’s nine official regions that is approximately the size of Belgium, is located in the western part of the country, jutting into South Sudanese territory. It has 400,000 estimated residents, and is home to some of the country’s most fertile land—significant chunks of which have been leased to international companies in lucrative, but controversial, land deals.  

Blame for the attack has been placed squarely on the Murle tribe, an ethnic group that resides in South Sudan and often crosses into Ethiopia to steal cattle and abduct children. The magnitude of the recent raid, however, has begged questions about the group’s motive and logistics for such a large—and bloody—operation. Reports that attackers wore “military-style uniforms” and were unusually well-armed add to the confusion, and some accounts even suggest that the Murle were accompanied by Dinka attackers—the same ethnicity as South Sudanese President Salva Kiir.

The raid takes place at a tense time for the two countries, as deposed South Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar again failed to return to the capital Juba, as the latest peace agreement stipulates he should. He has been delayed multiple times and continues to reside in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. Machar’s ethnic group, the Nuer, were the principal victims of Friday’s violence.  

The Ethiopian government has not officially linked the attack to the forces of either Salva Kiir or Riek Machar. However, South Sudan’s two-years-and-running civil conflict means that the country has been flooded with small arms and light weapons, and the Gambella raid suggests that the Murle have benefitted from this chaos.

This most recent conflagration complicates already strained relations among Gambella residents. In January, clashes between the Anuak and Nuer began after a land dispute between two men escalated, and ended in dozens of deaths and a bloody attack on a prison in Gambella town, the region’s capital. After the incident, the government withdrew and disarmed the region’s special police, leaving the region unsecured and especially vulnerable to an attack.

In addition to the Anuak and Nuer—groups also present in South Sudan—Ethiopians from the country’s other ethnicities, known collectively as “highlanders,” reside in Gambella. The Anuak, who are indigenous to the region, have occasionally clashed with Gambella’s highlanders, most of whom were resettled in the region during Ethiopia’s Derg Marxist military dictatorship in the 1980s.

Relations between the regional Gambella government and Ethiopia’s federal government have also been fraught at times, as government attempts to secure the region have often meant calling upon highlander military personnel, adding to fears that the federal government was usurping local and regional decision-making power. More than a decade ago, the infamous 2003 “Gambella massacre” pitted the Ethiopia’s military against the region’s residents and, according to Human Rights Watch, left hundreds of Anuak civilians dead; mistrust between the local and federal government lingers, and recent events could intensify these feelings. Today, for example, Gambella residents took to the streets to protest insecurity and demand that the abducted children be returned.

Ethiopia hosts more than 270,000 South Sudanese refugees, who make up the largest cohort of refugees in the country ahead of Somalis, Eritreans, and Sudanese. The majority of South Sudanese refugees, most of whom fled South Sudan after the outbreak of violence there in December 2013, live in Gambella region’s six refugee camps. When not managed carefully, large refugee influxes like those which exist in Gambella can lead to or worsen existing inter-communal tensions.

Since news of the attack broke, the Ethiopian military crossed into South Sudan—with the latter’s permission—to pursue the invaders and attempt to rescue the abducted women and girls. Recent reports suggest that they are close to succeeding. That the governments of Ethiopia and South Sudan have coordinated their responses, at least to a degree, is a positive sign. But Gambella residents’ underlying fears of political marginalization by the Ethiopian federal government remain, and the ethnic tensions exacerbated by conflict in South Sudan know no borders. 

Kelsey Lilley is Associate Director of the Africa Center. Follow her on Twitter @KelseyDegen.

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