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Biden’s foreign policy failure to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate violence in Ethiopia is depressingly déjà vu. Let’s hope Trump’s team can see through the garbage.
This is an excerpt from the latest extended version of “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong” a book by veteran Horn of Africa correspondent Rasmus Sonderris
A quick Google search finds that “Meaza Mohammed is an Ethiopian journalist and human rights activist”. Countless newspaper articles depict her as an advocate for raped women. International organizations dedicated to press freedom portray her as persecuted for speaking truth to power. The website of the US State Department, no less, pays homage to her in this manner:
This honorable mention is because the State Department bestowed upon her the International Women of Courage Award on March 8, 2023, at a ceremony with First Lady Jill Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Following up on this event, a Voice of America video opens with the words: “Meaza Mohamed was arrested three times within the span of one year, all for doing her job.”
Meaza Mohammed is not only the founder, but also the chief editor and voiceover woman of Roha TV, one of the more successful of a plethora of ethnic-based Youtube channels produced by Ethiopians in the West. These can be watched freely in Ethiopia too (although until July 2023, a VPN was required). Most of the worldwide sympathy with Meaza Mohammed predates the Fano insurgency in the Amhara Region, which broke out in April 2023, but she was known in Ethiopia as an ethnonationalist firebrand before that. Certainly, Roha TV today is wholly dedicated to propagandizing for Fano, which is, as of 2024, just like the TPLF was until late 2022, an irregular army with the ambition of toppling the elected federal government. However, in this case, the first obstacle on its warpath is the local Amhara regional government, which also has a democratic mandate dating from 2021. We shall return to how Fano both resembles and differs from the two other major ethnonationalist militias in Ethiopia, the TPLF and OLA.
Roha TV serves up a fare of ethnicity-obsessed hate-, fear- and war-mongering. One claim is that the capital Addis Ababa, whose population is majority Amhara, is now in the hands of Oromo extremists who hate all things Amhara.
Roha TV is not all doom, however, as a triumphalist tone is important for recruitment. Just like the TPLF’s propagandists, Fano’s Meaza Mohammed plays a tune about human rights in English, but beats the drums of war in her own language. For instance, at the Amhara Grand Convention, held by the Confederation of Amharas in North America in Atlanta, USA, on March 9-10, 2024, she delivered a fiery speech in Amharic.[4] Dressed in a T-shirt with three raised fists in the Ethiopian colors, she denounced the realists within the movement who seek a negotiated settlement: “We’re not talking about politics, in which we engage in compromise,”[5] she thundered, and ended on this note: “We’re saying that if we don’t achieve victory, the outcome will be our destruction as a people. If this does not bother you, those of us who do care will struggle and we will win, and you better get out of our way!”[6]
The last part is a thinly veiled threat to fellow Amharas who disagree with her. Many of them have been killed. Apart from attacks on federal soldiers and officers, basically anyone in constitutional authority in the Amhara Region, such as mayors, policemen, journalists for government media, and elected members of the regional parliament live with the risk of assassination. In some cases, bounties have been placed on their heads on social media.
In May 2024, I travelled to Bahir Dar, the beautiful capital of Amhara Region by the shores of Lake Tana. Despite a curfew in force after 8pm, life goes on. Amhara Region is suffering an insurgency, but not, as Tigray during the war with the TPLF, an all-encompassing insurgency regime. Banks and businesses continue to function. The mobile-phone network is up, but not for data. Those who can afford a coffee at a major hotel can get a wifi password for internet access. In general, the mood is depressed. People complain of disinvestment, economic sabotage, absence of tourists and rich people fleeing the city: “If they don’t pay Fano, Fano kills them, and if they do pay, the government arrests them,” the locals explained to me. In the parts of the countryside where Fano is in control, either schools have been closed or parents are afraid of sending their children.
There are no two ways about it. Meaza Mohammed campaigns and raises funds for Ethiopians killing Ethiopians, and particularly for Amharas killing Amharas. Of course, she and her backers genuinely believe that this is for a noble cause. To convince themselves and others that Fano’s killings are just, rather than extremist, they play up how the State Department as well as do-gooders around the world celebrate Meaza Mohammed as a champion of human rights. The international community’s failure to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate violence is depressingly déjà vu from the war with the TPLF.
“Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong” is now available on Amazon Kindle, paperback, or hardcover
