Cara Anna is the Associated Press reporter who spread, all across the world in numerous respectable newspapers, the fake news that some 800 church-goers in the holiest place of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity had been cornered, dragged into the central city square, gunned down and eaten by hyena.

This background information is provided just in case you missed the section “Do we know what happened in Axum?” within my 50,000-word piece “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”, soon to come out in book form.

Also rather shockingly, she got away with it without any mea culpa or stain on her reputation that we know of.

Whether she initially believed in her own Axum massacre story, there is no way to tell, but it is clear that, no less than eight days later, she knew that her key witness account, which she had validated in no uncertain terms, was made up.

Instead of eating humble pie, she went on to write many more atrocity stories based on anonymous sources. The Pulitzer Center website presents her thus: “Cara Anna is the East Africa correspondent with The Associated Press. Her team’s Pulitzer Center-funded coverage of Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Ethiopia’s government barred her from the country. The team also won the AP’s top journalism award in 2021.” 

She probably thinks she can continue to escape scrutiny, as long as she avoids nosy journalists like me. It would be a waste of my time to request an interview with her, so I went undercover with nothing but a gmail account and an AI-generated portrait.

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2024, 15:53 (Ethiopian time)
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Film script based on your reporting

Dear Cara Anna.

Thank you so much for your amazing work, which has inspired my dramatized student film project. I am referring to your groundbreaking reporting from Ethiopia for Associated Press on February 18, 2021, when you revealed in shocking detail that some 800 church-goers in Axum, Tigray, Ethiopia, had been cornered, dragged outside, gunned down and eaten by hyenas. My reaction to reading it was: “How come nobody made a movie about this before?”

I have been searching for some original documentary footage of the dead bodies, the burials or the like, but have yet to come across any. Could you perhaps point me the way? Otherwise, given your prestige with many prizes to your name, naming you as my source for this true-story script must be enough, don’t you think?

Thanks once again, and hoping for your reply.

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva, film student from Chile

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent: February 15, 2024, 16:34 
To:  Fernando Silva
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Fernando, thank you for asking and for being interested. It was very hard to get any images from a region where telecoms were cut. We often relied on people who physically left Tigray. Have you tried Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, who also published reports based on their own interviews?

Cara

AP

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 15, 2024, 17:41 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Dear Cara Anna.

Thank you very much for your prompt response! I will go carefully through all the documentation of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and only come back to you if I have any questions after that.

Yours sincerely
Fernando

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 21, 2024, 19:47 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Dear Cara Anna.

I have now carefully studied the Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch reports on the Axum massacre. Your and the human-rights organizations’ reports coincide on the dates and the perpetrators, but not on the location, also not on the description of what happened, certainly not in any of what I was going to use for my film script, that is, the 800 church-goers getting cornered, dragged out, gunned down and eaten by hyena, as told in your first article on February 18, 2021, and subsequently retold in The New York Post, The Sun, The Independent, The Times, etc. 

Sorry, but can you clear up my confusion? Were there two separate events? Should I give up my script along the lines of your report from February 18, 2021?

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva.

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent: February 21, 2024, 19:51 
To:  Fernando Silva
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Fernando, that’s very much up to you, especially since you’re looking for footage from a time when basic communications and other services like electricity were cut in parts of Tigray and many people had difficulty just keeping their phones charged. Having enough for a film sounds challenging, but perhaps contacts in the Tigray diaspora can help now that the war is over and it’s easier to reach people and share information.

Cara

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 21, 2024, 20:22 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Cara Anna.

Okay, thanks, but I don’t want it to be up to me, but up to the evidence. If I present it as a true story and it turns out not to be so, I will be accused of slandering an African nation.

You did your report by talking to people in Axum over the phone, and so did the Amnesty researchers. From my own little research, I know that Axum is a fairly big, modern city with tens of thousands of smartphones and also many generators, powerbanks and what not. Yet even the Amnesty and Human Rights Watch reports have no footage revealing anything noteworthy, nor has anybody come up with anything since, at least not online. Moreover, Amnesty says the festival on November 30 was called off, which makes sense if up to ten dead bodies were being stacked on each cart for mass burials on November 30, 2020, as the Amnesty report says. But then I found an Ethiopian television report from the festival , and it is definitely that exact festival from November 30, 2020.

Never mind, it is YOUR story and not Amnesty’s that I care about. And after February 2021, there seems to be nothing about the 800 church-goers any more. Long question short: do you today have any doubt that your dramatic version of the Axum massacre is true or not?

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent:  February 21, 2024, 20:33 
To:  Fernando Silva
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi, you reached out by looking for original documentary footage of what happened in Axum, and I encourage you to find what might exist. You’ll see that for months, media coverage and humanitarian reports along with some government reports noted a long and wide cutoff of basic services in Tigray that affected communications, utilities and the supply of basic items like food and medicine. Even land lines weren’t working in many cases. I do hope that with such conditions having eased, you’ll have much more success reaching people and accessing any footage captured in Axum.

Cara

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 21, 2024, 23:27 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Cara Anna.

Okay, thank you for your prompt reply. But I can only take that as a “YES”, you do have doubts if your shocking report that made it into headlines across the world is actually what happened.

Indeed, none of the factors you mention can explain a complete lack of photographic evidence, but I can and I will look more into it. And shouldn’t you be doing that too? This is a big deal! Your report on February 18, 2021, made a huge impact on public opinion in the West and in Tigray too, stirring fear, hate, all the emotions of war. If those graphic details of insane savagery turn out to be a lie made up to justify revenge killings, and if you lent the trustworthiness of Associated Press to spread such dangerous disinformation, surely, your conscience would want to know and, if necessary, make you issue an apology, am I right? 

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva

Let me interrupt with some commentary:

Rather than answering the questions, Cara Anna trots out the half-truth about Tigray being cut off, which I have addressed at length in Part 3 of “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”. All her focus is on not incriminating herself. This is why she neither defends the veracity of her story nor admits that it was a lie. Now she is being confronted with the common-sense observation that, surely, having a conscience requires her to care one way or the other.

So this is when she ends the exchange, which must have rattled her. Can anything lure her out of her shell again? Well, two weeks later, she gets this email from someone using the “Tigray genocide” hashtag as his avatar.

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 19:23 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Can I ask for some advice?

Dear Anna Cara.

I am Gabriel Teklehaymanot, I work in real estate in the UK, where I have also been involved in activism against the Tigray genocide. You know all about that, because you have covered it and your journalistic brilliance and integrity have been widely recognised, including by the Pulitzer people, I just saw online.

I was contacted some days ago by someone interested in informing the world about what our people went through. He said he had been in contact with you a little while ago. He is the one who gave me this email. Is it okay if I ask you for some advice here? Because I know your work, your time is precious to me too.

Regards

Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Mekete Tigray UK

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 19:27 
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Hi Gabriel, thank you for reaching out. What advice are you looking for?

Cara

AP

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:25 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Dear Cara.

Thank you for this opportunity to borrow some of your precious time.

Well, a young man from Chile, Fernando Silva, wrote me and we talked on the phone too, at length and on numerous occasions. He said you had suggested he reach out to someone like me in the diaspora for guidance. He was very confused and frankly a bit annoying, going into tiresome detail that I am not going to bother you with, but it came from a good place, as he cared about the Axum massacre, which he has scripted a whole film project around. This will be a great opportunity to raise conscience about what happened to our people. It may be an amateur production, but he is putting all his savings into it, and he has many volunteer actors lined up for this true-story drama, which might do well on Youtube. He even showed me how he plans to do the hyenas with blurry imagery of Chilean street dogs shot at night and some horrifying sound effects. 

However, now he is having doubts about what actually occurred in Axum. He said you had suggested that we might have some original photographic material, to which I replied: “Hey, we do not always get to film it when we get killed! So YOU film it, Fernando!”

He objected that you had somehow not affirmed the deacon’s story in his email exchange with you. I am sure he has misunderstood something. The testimony of the deacon was accepted by many, many important newspapers and even corroborated by the honourable Lord David Alton speaking in the UK House of Lords as late as November 2022.

I have more arguments on the ready when he calls me, I think tomorrow, for why his script should stick to your first report on the Axum massacre. Yes, the perpetrators and their supporters have denied everything, of course, this is their evil nature and the reason we had to fight them. But nobody independent or important in the media has ever questioned your story.

I hope you can attest that I am in the right here, thank you. And please, let me once more express my utmost admiration for your professionalism and also thank you for your solidarity.

Regards
Gabriel

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:30 
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Hi Gabriel, thank you for explaining. We didn’t discuss the deacon, and I did encourage Fernando to see whether footage might be available now that communications and services in Tigray have resumed.

Cara

AP

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:50 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Dear Cara.
Ah, I see, well, with me he discussed the deacon and every little clue like he was Sherlock Holmes!  As for footage, I found some from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, but it is very different from what the deacon said, and none of it would persuade the sceptics that there was any massacre at all. Anyway, the deacon’s testimony was at the heart of your story and it is what we have been telling our children and grandchildren within our community as a reminder to know who we are and who are enemies are. So I can understand he cares about verifying it, even if he is a little bothersome.

Should I advise him to make adjustment to his script? I made another argument, a completely different one, that seemed to work much better with him, but the best option for me would be to insist on there being enough evidence for the deacon’s testimony for him to follow his script, so do you think I can do that?

Regards
Gabriel

From: Anna, Cara
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:59 
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

That’s your conversation with him, and I have no advice to pass along for that.

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 7, 2024, 14:55 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Wonderful news!

Dear Cara.

Thanks for your time, yesterday, and I will not bother you anymore except to tell you this wonderful news:

I talked at length to Fernando Silva this morning, and he agreed to go ahead with his script as it is, except making it clearer that you are the one we can thank for knowing about it. I am going to raise more funds for the production, and I will personally go to Chile for a full week and be on set as his advisor, isn’t that great?

The argument that I had hinted at before is that Western media are free to shine a light on the truth, as you did throughout the war, but also to debunk whatever is found to be inaccurate. We are a society of free speech. And of checks and balances, because anyone can go to libel court, but nobody has done so in this case. What you reported from Axum was not trivia about, say a celebrity sleeping around. It was about, let’s remember, 800 people being ruthlessly mowed down in an affront both to humanity and to our Christian faith. Your revelation of a crime so unforgivable shaped the worldwide perception of the war. I can tell you that in my community, it showed us the evil of our enemy and strengthened our will to fight at whatever the cost. Glory to our martyrs!

So what I said to Fernando which finally convinced him is that, if a news organisation as reputable as Associated Press were to get it that wrong about something that serious, there would be big consequences. But there has been no retraction, and you are still working for Associated Press and considered a highly respectable journalist.

Which means your story stands and is perfectly fit for being dramatised, crediting the original author, you, the incredible Anna Cara, who will be mentioned repeatedly in gratitude for your investigatory work. Your name will live forever in the annals of spreading knowledge of the Axum massacre.

Once the film is out, and provided it is as good as it promises, can we count on your help to promote it? Most of all, we would love to interview you, is that okay? Must we submit a formal request for this to your employer?

I hope this happy news makes your day, like it did mine, and that our interview can be scheduled soon.

Happy regards
Gabriel

Notice how both my fictional undercover personalities put an ordinary, very reasonable-sounding trust in the “respectable” institutions of the liberal world order, from our free-speech society to our human-rights bodies. This was myself until recently, and it would still be me today, had it not been my lot to realize how low they stooped in their insistence on getting Ethiopia dead wrong.

UPDATE on April 10: Two days later, a final message from Cara Anna did arrive, though I only discovered this a month later.

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent: Mar 9, 2024, 16:21 
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Wonderful news!

Hi Gabriel, thank you for asking, but there’s no need for me to take part. Now that it’s easier for most people to travel to Tigray, one can go and speak to people there who lived through it.

Cara

AP

Cara Anna seems to believe the authenticity of the undercover personalities to the end!

And yes, as she says, one can go to Axum to ask around and investigate. Plenty of people and institutions have done that. Not a single finding remotely resembles Cara Anna’s story of February 18, 2021. I refer once again to my own work on what we know about what happened in Axum.

I left it here, as I published the exchange on March 30, 2024, having demonstrated sufficiently that Cara Anna is utterly shameless, and that Ethiopians were right to ban her from entering their country. If she had had the slightest conscience, she would have said: “Such a film wouldn’t be a true story, so now I am going to retract my article and apologize in public for the profound harm that I caused. I shall also come clean about my sources throughout the war, and about the extent to which I knew beforehand or only found out later that I was spreading incendiary falsehoods.”

Dream on, she will not say that of her own accord, because she and her employer have proved themselves indifferent to the truth and disdainful of African lives. We cannot expect these people to repent. We must work to hold them to account. And take solace from the fact that history will judge them harshly.

The post Going undercover to interview Cara Anna from Associated Press appeared first on Abren.

The UNHCR told the BBC Amharic service that it had “credible reports” as far back as months ago of efforts to recruit fighters among the refugees. Based on previous allegations by Ethiopian officials and reports by Sudanese media the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an armed insurgency currently at war with the government of Ethiopia, had been actively recruiting fighters from these shelters.

The report of forced recruitment by the UN agency comes days after the resumption of fighting between the militants and Ethiopian government forces, ending a tacit humanitarian truce agreed to by both parties in April, 2022.

Officials of the UNHCR said they had reported their concerns to Sudanese authorities in Khartoum as well as locally. However, it is not clear exactly how many fighters had been recruited or when the recruitment was carried out.

Experts in Ethiopia had warned of the dangers of refugee camps becoming incubation grounds for insurgents. In the 1980s the TPLF had used similar tactics to recruit fighters among refugees that had encamped in eastern Sudan. The same patterns of using the region as a launching pad for the group’s fresh insurrection is thus likely to continue. Ethiopian authorities worry this could draw in other regional actors who seek to use Tigray’s rebels as proxy to attack Ethiopia’s central government.

Citing fears of an Ethiopian incursion to deal with the cross border TPLF militants, the Sudanese government recently announced closing down of the Hamdayet border reception center near Humera. Ethiopian authorities have made clear their desire to see refugee camps along the border relocate to other areas away from zones they view as threatening. Many officials believe the camps are too closely positioned, thus accommodate subversive actors.

On several occasions, authorities in Addis Ababa have accused the TPLF of disguising fighters as refugees registered in eastern Sudanese UNHCR shelters. Some of the purported refugees are members of the TPLF allied, Samre youth group, which was involved in the Mai Cadra massacre, in which several hundred Amhara civilians were brutally murdered, however, refrained from saying Sudanese officials were involved in facilitating military recruitment.

One week ago, Bloomberg reported that former Ethiopian UN-Peacekeepers in Abyei who had defected from the army at the outset of the Tigray war, were resettled in UNHCR refugee camps in eastern Sudan, where they joined up with TPLF militants. Ethiopian official says the bulk of these UN Peacekeepers had been “card carrying members” of the TPLF prior to the outbreak of the conflict on November 4, 2020.

Spokesperson for the TPLF, Getachew Reda, confirmed to Bloomberg the existence of Ex-UN Peacekeeper among the TPLF rank in eastern Sudan. Sudanese officials have neither confirmed nor denied this claim.

Following renewed clashes in northern Ethiopia, the UN refugee agency said it is concerned about the potential for more refugee arrivals and is monitoring the situation closely. This will threaten to immerse Sudan deeper into the conflict.

Given their history, TPLF leaders have a keen understanding of the use for such proximity refugee camps where recruitment and organizing for their cause can occur. Ethiopian authorities also fear the potential effects of these camps becoming military equipment smuggling centers, as was the case in the 1980s. 

As far as the Ethiopians are concerned, Sudan is quietly providing real-estate to the TPLF fighters disguised as UNHCR refugees, while Egypt continues to funnel weapons as well as training to the group, which aims to dislodge both the government of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Given the history of the region this is not all that outlandish

More troubling is the UNHCR’s lack of credible investigations into these serious allegations. Up until now, the UN institutions seem to have implicitly turned a blind eye to it. World Health Organization Director General, Tedros Adhanom, an Ethiopian himself and longtime senior member of the TPLF has repeatedly blamed the government of Ethiopia for atrocities, but has never shown the slightest concern about military recruitment at UNHCR camps based in Eastern Sudan.

In this regard, the UN, US, and EU seem to have implicitly expressed support for activities of the TPLF and their foreign sponsors. This is increasingly being interpreted as covert support for the armed insurgency, which portends to fester and widen.

The post UN Refugee Camps in Sudan as Recruitment Centers for TPLF appeared first on Abren.

On September 10, 2021 CNN published an article entitled “Men are marched out of prison camps. Then corpses float down the river”, in which a gruesome portrayal of alleged executions of ethnic Tigray men in Northern Ethiopia is presented.

The town is Ethiopia’s Humera and the suspected perpetrators are Ethiopia’s security services. To the average Western audience, it all sounds plausible, and the premise is all too familiar. A poor African country, and a regime with a natural inclination to brutalize its own people is the image that comes up instinctively. Regrettably, this level of ignorance can easily pass unnoticed in the prejudiced framework in which many in the mainstream media dwell. This is exactly the agenda setting reporting exploited by authors of the article to mislead readers. Stories like this prey on an audience already steeped in many tropes and stereotypes about Africans that makes such egregious misinformation possible in the first place.

In brief, the article outlines how dead bodies had floated down the Tekeze and Setit rivers and made their way into Sudan where they were discovered. The authors’ investigations lead them to the town of Humera, where allegedly, Ethiopia’s security services are executing Tigrayan prisoners and dumping their bodies in the river. The story is indeed carefully designed to grab attention, illicit sadness and even anger among its readers. But it misses on critical feature of journalism, which is to provide evidence for the story being told. Indeed, very little evidence exists for the claim besides hearsay largely coming from TPLF fixers and activists.

In fact, the primary testimonial provided is from a certain Gebretensae Gebrekristos “Gerrie” who states “We get calls from people in Humera that witnesses — often escaped detainees — saw people marched down to the river in one of the facilities and heard gunshots, or that a number of people were taken by soldiers from the detention facilities and never returned.  We’re told to look out for their bodies coming down the river.” Of course, while Gerrie is giving his testimony he’s donning a ballcap with TPLF insignia. Clearly, he is a Sudan based fixer for the insurgents, yet the reporter never cares to consider this major inconsistency. they just run with the story.

Perhaps more intriguing is the original article published on September 5, 2021 clearly mentions “Ongoing independent investigations by international and local forensic experts found no evidence that the victims had drowned. The experts, who asked not to be identified due to security concerns, told CNN that the bodies had all been exposed to some form of chemical agent after death, leading to a process which had effectively preserved them before entering the water”. For what purpose the bodies would be injected with preservatives after being killed is not elaborated. However, a closer look at a later version published on the 10^th of September 2021, raises some serious issues of credibility. Namely, the new version of article features a silent edit, in which CNN removed all mention of finding chemical agents, likely preservatives in the dead bodies floating down river. Why disguise such an important piece of information?  

The presence of preservatives in the corpses is intriguing. Ethiopian News outlets have alleged these are the bodies of TPLF’s war dead, which had been injected with chemical preservatives, disguised as tortured civilians, dumped in the river, and then later fished out by the group for attention grabbing sensational news story to deceive the International Community. Certainly, this needs more corroboration. But can we really say it’s too far fetched? For a group that has thus far shown the depths of its depravity, anything is possible.

All of this lends credence to forewarning provided by many social media commentators and bloggers that had indicated the TPLF had been planning to stage an attention-grabbing news around the time of USAID’s Samantha Power’s visit to Sudan in late July to early August of 2021. Right on cue, Reuters reports on August 2, 2021 “At least 30 bodies float down river between Ethiopia’s Tigray region and Sudan”; while AP News on the same day writes, “Bodies found in river between Ethiopia’s Tigray, Sudan” In a seemingly coordinated propaganda ploy, mainstream media pick up the tidbits of information and run with without confirming the sources or the evidence whatsoever.

This sort of irresponsible journalism has unfortunately become the norm when it comes to reporting current events in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa in general. At this point it has become clear mainstream media has willfully and deliberately choosing to misinform its audiences on a continues bases. However, manufacturing consent for regime change has proven difficult as more people continue to challenge the credibility of such stories.

Readers can find both the original and the modified versions through links provided below. In this Regard, we would like to thank the important services provided by the Wayback Machine, an internet archives platform preserving digital history.

References

Silently edited version of the report with no mention of chemical agents. in this later version, CNN removed this as it would pose serious credibility based question.

The original version before redactions. This version is currently only found on CNN Philippines website. It has been erased from other CNN sources. But don’t worry. We have it achieved, just in case.

The post When CNN Misrepresented News on Ethiopia appeared first on Abren.

Once again, a fragile peace agreement in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region broke as rebels loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) went on the offensive. Fighting emerged again near the end of August, as rebel forces sought to drive west and south, capturing the small town of Kobo in the Amhara region. At the start of this third round of conflict, Tigray’s insurgent forces had a strong showing, capturing Kobo as Ethiopia’s National Defense Forces exited, citing the risk to civilians posed by urban fighting. Nonetheless, the tide seems to have turned in favor of Ethiopia’s army.

Observers had warned of increasing tensions in this volatile region, despite optimism just weeks earlier that talks to establish a lasting peace agreement were set to get under way. However, seemingly insurmountable challenges remained. For one, TPLF leaders continued insistence on preconditions involving the resumption of basic services, such as telecom, and banking. The government of Ethiopia maintains these can only be part of a larger comprehensive peace deal. According to the office of the prime minister, “there is no magic on/off button to restart telecom and banking in the Tigray region”. Authorities maintain this would require hundreds, if not thousands of technical experts to repair damaged infrastructure.

Since the outbreak of recent fighting, government forces have had a relatively easier fight in maintaining an upper hand. Unlike last year this time, when TPLF fighters overran cities and towns in the Amhara and Afar regions, this time around the insurgents’ offensive has stymied, with thousands of their recruits captured or even killed in the first few weeks. Among the captured are soldier under the age of 15. Government forces are now back in Kobo and last vestiges of TPLF fighters have been pushed back out of Amhara.

The mass human wave tactics used successfully by the rebels last year have been largely ineffective, partly due to better prepared defenses as well as recently surprising twists in the fight, as Ethiopian forces opened other assaults flanking the rebel stronghold region. TPLF’s leaders have accused the government of launching an attack from the north, from neighboring Eritrea, which is allied with Ethiopia. These reports have not been officially confirmed by Ethiopian officials

Still more reports suggest forces loyal to the TPLF have been operating along the border with neighboring Sudan, where they’re engaged in fighting to gain the critical corridor of Humera and Welkait. According to a recent report by CBS News tensions in the area could potentially draw Sudan into what is already a complicated regional conflict. In August Ethiopia’s air force said it shot down an Antonov 26 type cargo airplane carrying arms supplies to the rebels in the Tigray region.  Moreover, Ethiopian authorities have complained about insurgents using UN administered refugee camps in eastern Sudan as launch pads for military missions.  

The tacitly agreed humanitarian truce between the TPLF and the Ethiopian government on March 24, 2022 was to get much needed humanitarian supplies into the Tigray region, which had been severely hampered by intense fighting before that. The trickle of aid had improved before the most recent flare up. It was hoped that the ceasefire would lay the groundwork for a more permanent peace deal under the auspices of the African Union, and chief mediator and former president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo.    

But TPLF officials have said the AU appointed Obasanjo is not an honest broker and is too close to Ethiopia’s prime minister, preferring instead former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta as replacement for Obasanjo. Ethiopian officials prefer to maintain AU stewardship as well and have indicated willingness to negotiate anywhere and at any time without pre-conditions. Ethiopian government officials insist there can only be a comprehensive peace deal.

As fighting rages, Ethiopian joint forces, which includes regional Amhara forces have fought well. The US has once again stated its desire to see an end to hostilities, albeit not as vociferously as it once did. Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, Mike Hammer is again headed to the region, reportedly to try and broker an end to hostilities. Rightly or wrongly, many in Ethiopia view the US desire to end conflict at this juncture as implicitly giving the beleaguered rebels a fighting chance. Last year, as TPLF rebels advanced the threat of sanctions were used by the US to hand tie Ethiopia’s federal government according to statements by officials.

Indeed, Ethiopia – US relations have been fraught of late. There also seems to be some policy disconnect among American foreign policy circles regarding Ethiopia, a once international aid darling held up as a success story. Ambassador Mike Hammer is the fourth Special Envoy appointed specifically to deal with the conflict in northern Ethiopia. The last several envoys were viewed by the Ethiopians as pandering to TPLF’s whims. This is perhaps a reflection of the once close relationship held between the TPLF-led regime in Addis Ababa before the advent of the current ruling Prosperity Party. Recent conflict seems to be closing the door on the Tigray rebel’s chances. The situation on the ground is significantly different now, particularly after the last round of atrocities committed by the rebels against civilians in the Amhara and Afar regions. The rebels are a much more despised group now than at any point in the past. More importantly, Ethiopia’s army and regional forces are much more capable fighting force than before 2020.

The hope is that Mike Hammer will find success whereas others have failed to convince the TPLF leadership to end their warlike stance. Perhaps under some sort of security guarantee or transfer to a third country, rebel leaders can exit their current predicament and let a new generation of leaders in Tigray hammer home a lasting peace deal that sees an end to the suffering in northern Ethiopia. This seemingly far fetched plan may be the path of least resistance to end a festering conflict. The bigger picture in the Horn of Africa requires a stable and peaceful Ethiopia that is friendly to the United States. Achieving this task is the primary interest the special envoys are keenly aware of.

The post Another Envoy to the Horn of Africa appeared first on Abren.

TPLF’s Ex-UN Peacekeepers from Sudan close to hotly contested Humera town in Ethiopia

Hundreds former UN peacekeepers in Sudan associated with the TPLF in Northern Ethiopia have joined the recent battle for a strategic town of Humera, according to a report by Blomberg, in the latest flareup of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray regional conflict.

The fighting has pitted Ethiopian forces against fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an armed insurgency dedicated to the overthrow of the elected government of Ethiopia. While a one-sided humanitarian truce kept the lid on recent fighting, fresh attacks by TPLF has forced the hand of Ethiopia’s armed forces, raising fears of a return to all-out war.

The strategic town of Humera, which lies at the intersection between Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan is highly valued by TPLF rebel forces who have dedicated significant resources to capture. Success in Humera would enable the TPLF to open up weapons-supply corridors to bolster its insurgency, and potentially allow it to launch an attack on Eritrea, a long-standing foe of the Tigray’s regional leadership.

Following the surprise attack on Ethiopia’s northern command by the TPLF in November 2020, many TPLF members of the Ethiopian UN peacekeepers mission stationed in Abyei, refused to return to Ethiopia, fearing prosecution for their associations with the insurrection. The Ethiopian government has accused many of them of aiding TPLF’s insurrection. After abandoning their mission in Abyei, a border region contested by North Sudan and South Sudan, the Ex UN peacekeepers found refuge in Sudan, where they have since joined up with other TPLF insurgents.

According to Bloomberg, “the ex-peacekeepers, including hundreds of officer-level soldiers who were part of the Ethiopian army before joining the UN force, initially conducted operations on behalf of TPLF inside Sudan and have recently moved close to Humera in northwest Ethiopia”.

Since the coming to power of the Abiy government, Eritrea has been key ally of Ethiopia in the fight against TPLF, which is viewed as a national security threat by both Asmara and Addis Ababa. However, Sudan’s leaders in Khartoum have struck a different tone. They have largely been at odds with Ethiopia over the construction of a massive hydropower dam on the Nile River that originates in Ethiopia and traverses Sudan before ending up in Egypt. Many in Ethiopia believe recent Sudanese goading is proxy for downstream Egypt, which seeks to arm twist Ethiopia into a more favorable long term water sharing agreement on the Nile. The Ethiopians sincerely believe Cairo is sponsoring insurgents including the TPLF.

According to Getachew Reda, a member of the TPLF’s executive committee, the former UN peacekeepers had been stationed near refugee camps in eastern Sudan’s Al Qadarif region, preparing to enter the fight against the Ethiopian government and on behalf of the TPLF led region of Tigray.

However, according to Bloomberg, Brigadier Nabil Abdullah, spokesperson of the Sudanese Armed Forces, denied the presence of any Tigray rebel units or ex-UN peacekeeper in his country. A spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency and the peacekeepers in Sudan didn’t reply to questions. Ethiopia has accused Sudan of aiding and abetting TPLF insurgents disguised as refugees in UNHCR camps. The role of the UN in all of this is not clearly known. The general consensus among Ethiopian officials is that UN refugee camps in eastern Sudan have become incubation centers for TPLF fighters disguised as civilian evacuees.

The Ex-UN peacekeepers contingent has been joined by several Tigray fighters who fled during the war recently and some residents. According to Bloomberg, access to the region has been restricted and most communications have been cut off, making it difficult to verify what the unit has been doing or how effective it has been. 

Many TPLF members have been detained in prisons across Ethiopia since the civil war erupted in 2020. Prior to reforms undertaken by the Abiy Ahmed Administration, Ethiopia’s military had been unfairly structured whereby most senior positions were reserved for TPLF adherents. It is therefore not surprising to have the Ethiopian contingent of the UN peacekeepers mission in Sudan also be overwhelmingly from the Tigray region. Only a handful returned to Ethiopia after the conflict.

Sudan continues to play a destabilizing role in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray conflict. Many Tigray rebel fighters are being stationed, armed, and trained in eastern Sudan. TPLF plans to use these units to one day wrester control of the hotly contested Humera-welkait-Tsegede, strategic areas currently administered by Ethiopia’s Amhara regional government. Making things even more intractable is contending ethnic based claims to the region by both Amhara and Tigray leaders.

On August 26, 2022, Ethiopia’s air force chief said it shot down an arms-laden cargo plane while in route to the Tigray region. The Antonov 26 type cargo plane originated in Sudan, although the Sudanese have denied it. A few days prior, Ethiopia’s prime minster mentioned ‘they had “detailed intelligence of several nightly flights intended to arm the TPLF militants”. This latest assault by TPLF fighters stationed in Sudan is further indication of Sudan’s continued involvement in Ethiopia’s internal conflict perhaps on behalf of other bigger regional players.  

Ethiopia has thus far avoided direct entanglement with Sudan on the issue, choosing instead, to embark on a domestic law and order approach where quelling unrest at home is seen as more important, but given consistent flares up in the northwest and west, there will be political pressure at home to deal with destabilizing forces emanating from Sudan. This could potentially threaten to widen the scope of Ethiopia’s conflict. So far, the international community has failed to unequivocally condemn armed actors testing Ethiopia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

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On the morning of August 24th, fighting in Ethiopia’s Amhara Region shattered a ceasefire in a nearly two-year war between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Then, in the late afternoon of August 24th, UN World Food Program (WFP) Chief David Beasley tweeted shocking news:

Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, had included more detail in his August 24, 2022 briefing. According to Dujarric, after the TPLF broke into World Food Programme facilities, it overwhelmed UN staffers and stole 12 fuel tanker trucks:

“I was asked what the impact of the renewed fighting was having. This morning, on August 24th, a World Food Programme warehouse in Mek’ele was forcibly entered by Tigrayan forces who took 12 fuel trucks/tankers with 570,000 liters of fuel. The team on the ground unsuccessfully tried to prevent this looting.  

These stocks of fuel were to be used solely for humanitarian purposes, with the distribution of food, fertilizer, and other emergency relief items. This loss of fuel will impact humanitarian operations in supporting communities in all of Northern Ethiopia.

We condemn any looting or confiscation of humanitarian goods or humanitarian premises, and we call on all parties to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law and to respect humanitarian personnel, activities, assets, and goods.”

The TPLF, who control Tigray regional state, have always claimed to represent the people of Tigray, who are no doubt suffering as a consequence of the war. But the faction’s brazen heist of fuel needed for humanitarian relief operations makes it difficult to believe it actually cares about the conflict’s human toll.

As Tedros’ party steals from UN’s largest humanitarian agency, he looks the other way

One hour after Dujarric’s August 24 briefing, UN World Health Organization Secretary-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was busy tweeting about a conference in Togo. By early afternoon on August 25th, Tedros had returned to do more of the same before moving on to tweeting about Ebola vaccinations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Yet Tedros – who also happens to have been a leader of the TPLF and the faction’s prominent advocate – had absolutely nothing to say about his political party’s theft of 600,000 liters of fuel from the UN’s most important humanitarian agency.

One week later, many of Tedros’s 1.8 million Twitter followers are still waiting for the WHO chief’s response to the TPLF fuel heist.

As The Grayzone revealed, UN staffers have previously accused Tedros of flagrantly violating UN code to further the objectives of his political allies in Ethiopia’s conflict.

Tedros uses his UN post to lobby for his TPLF party

Tedros served as the TPLF’s Health Minister from October 2005 to November 2012, and its Foreign Minister from November 2012 to November 2016, while it held power in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. Eight months after leaving the foreign ministry, in July 2017, he was appointed as the World Health Organization’s Director General and thus, beginning in 2020, the manager of the global coronavirus pandemic.

In 2018, a year after Tedros assumed his post at the WHO, a popular uprising ousted the TPLF from power, after which they retreated to Tigray. Ethiopia’s parliament then elected Abiy Ahmed as prime minister; he won a popular election two years later.

In November 2020, in a seeming bid to return to power, the TPLF attacked fellow soldiers at Ethiopia’s Northern Command Base, initiating the ongoing civil war. Prime Minister Abiy immediately dispatched national troops to Tigray to stop the insurrection but withdrew them in July 2021. The TPLF then invaded Amhara and Afar regional states, until the Ethiopian national army and regional forces drove them back into Tigray and the Ethiopian government declared the humanitarian truce that ended on August 24th.

Throughout this time, no one has been more vocal and visible than Tedros in accusing the Ethiopian government of deliberately fomenting a humanitarian crisis in Tigray, blockading food aid to Tigray, and even committing genocide in the region. He has never, however, acknowledged the pain and displacement that the TPLF has inflicted on Amharas and Afaris.

Throughout April and May of this year, I traveled through Amhara and Afar regional states and saw thousands huddled in IDP camps, all in dire need of food, water, medicine, and sanitation.

Around this time, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reported, “Conflict and violence triggered more than 5.1 million new displacements in Ethiopia in 2021, three times the number in 2020 and the highest annual figure ever recorded for a single country. The conflict in the northern region of Tigray deepened, spreading to neighboring regions and uprooting millions of people from their homes.”

US humanitarian interventionists cry genocide, ignore TPLF human rights abuses

Within hours of the unprovoked TPFL attack on Ethiopia’s national army in November 2020, the TPLF and its advocates took to Twitter to cry “Tigray genocide!” Meanwhile, the most vehement humanitarian interventionists in the US, from  USAID Chief Samantha Power to congress members Tom Malinowski, Brad Sherman, Ilhan Omar, and Gregory Meeks, to name a few, joined the calls to defend Tigray and destabilize the government in Addis Ababa.

Malinowski’s bill, House Resolution 6600, which has yet to reach a vote on the House floor, demands the Ethiopian government’s total capitulation. “Sanctions will be lifted,” it says, “only after: (1) The Government of Ethiopia has ceased all offensive military operations associated with the civil war and other conflicts in Ethiopia.”

The TPLF enjoyed wholehearted US support throughout its 27-year rule, from 1991 to 2018, in exchange for its compliance with the US agenda in Africa. As former CIA and State Department official Cameron Hudson commented to Foreign Policy, “This is a major strategic shift in the Horn of Africa, to go from an anchor state for US interests to become a potential adversary to US interests.”

In 2015, shortly after the TPLF announced that it had won a thoroughly implausible 100% of the seats in Ethiopia’s parliament, Susan Rice and Barack Obama traveled to Addis Ababa to congratulate the party on its democratic achievements.

How do the TPLF keep fighting?

If Tigray is suffering such terrible deprivation, as the WHO’s Tedros, the TPLF, and their humanitarian interventionist allies insist, where do the TPLF find the resources to keep fighting? War is expensive. It requires the constant resupply of weapons, munitions, vehicles, food, emergency trauma care, and intelligence technology.

We may have a partial answer to that question now that both WFP Chief David Beasley and the UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric report that the TPLF have broken into a WFP warehouse and stolen 12 fuel tankers containing 570,000 liters of fuel that is desperately needed for humanitarian relief operations.

Hundreds of WFP aid convoy trucks have also disappeared into Tigray, though without a trace of official outrage.

The TPLF’s  seizure of food aid and its use of food to force recruitment and otherwise exploit civilians has been widely reported by Tigrayan IDPs who have fled to the Amhara region, as well as by Tigrayan troops who were captured or who surrendered in Afar Region. Again, none of this malfeasance triggered protests at the very top of the UN hierarchy as the fuel heist has.

Will WHO Chief Tedros call WFP Chief David Beasley to explain this heinous crime by his political faction?

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It is obvious the TPLF is once again leading a human wave strategy in its most recent offensive. Poorly trained Tigray youths, many of them children below the age of 15 are being made to run towards guns to control territory, which leaders hope to use as bargaining chip in an imagined future negotiation with the government of Ethiopia.

Based on last year, they are likely drugged up and not in uniforms, which makes things even more difficult or defending soldiers of the Ethiopian army. Think about the phycological stresses of shooting at drugged and bewildered youths sent to attack positions. Behind them is of course TPLF’s more experienced fighters who are using these youths as human shields and who will not even recover their bodies when they fall. Yet again, another column is behind them to clean up the mess, as some witnesses testify.

For its part, the Western mainstream media is presently so outraged at Dr. Tedros Adhanom’s alleged video of atrocities in Mekelle, which is most likely a PR concoction, that they are ignoring a monumental crime which is now being committed again. Nobody has a clear idea how many Tigray youths died in the human wave attacks orchestrated by TPLF generals last year. But it is likely to be in the tens of thousands. Locals in the Amhara and Afar regions have reported trucks were observed loading up the slain and taking them back to Tigray, some of these bodies were likely same ones found on the banks of the Blue Nile in Sudan. In Twisted TPLF fashion, the dead have a dual use, one as cannon fodder and another as propaganda dummies.

In the buildup to this current new phase of TPLF’s secessionist war, the leadership expressed a desire to build a million-person army. By their logic the reason that they failed to take Addis Ababa in 2021 was because they did not have enough unarmed children for cannon fodder. Even the New York Times’ great white reporter, Declan Walsh of course can’t report on any of this because he was so braindead that when he saw legions of marching child soldiers during operation Alula he saw motivated young soldier, and not a war crime, as did Dr. Tedros of the World Health Organization who expressed his “Pride” on Twitter.

No doubt there are a lot of Western editors and media managers who do not like the northern Ethiopia war, too savage, too ghastly, too difficult to get at the facts. But that is an abdication of responsibility and to justice. Reliance on poorly sourced and concocted stories is perpetuating the conflict further.

In the end, the reason the TPLF is so popular in the West is because it is so connected. It spent 27 years at the helm in Ethiopia siphoning off great health and using the loot to build a network. Its former leaders held great parties and were articulate and charming. Its supporters are well known figures. But they were also monsters who built an organization which prefers to kill its own children than give up its quest for power.

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