No other Nobel Peace Prize winner in recent memory has endured the wrath of the international media, the fury of global think tanks, and the scolding of UN, EU, and U.S. officials as much as Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
The Washington Post describes the decision to bestow the Peace Prize on him as “the tarnishing of the world’s most famous prize.” CNN wonders how the world fell for a “global pariah.” The Guardian has upped the ante, demanding the Nobel Committee “should resign over the atrocities in Tigray,” which Abiy has allegedly committed.
Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the National Interest Center have painted Abiy as a “Nobel Peace Prize embarrassment.” The World Peace Foundation accuses him of “using starvation as a weapon of war.” A UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs states: “there is no doubt that sexual violence is used as a weapon of war.” Another unnamed UN official claims Abiy is using hunger to “starve the population either into subjugation or out of existence.”
Feeding on such frenzy, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy declares “crimes against humanity, and genocide are occurring in Tigray.” The U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has spoken out about an ongoing “ethnic cleansing” and the EU envoy has accused Abiy of having a plan “to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years.”
A joint investigative report by the UN and the Ethiopian Human Rights Council “could not confirm deliberate or willful denial of humanitarian assistance to the civilian population in Tigray or the use of starvation as a weapon of war.” Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, affirms investigators did not find evidence of possible genocide. Further, officials of the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the UN Population Fund have characterized the accusation of using rape as a weapon of war as “media hype” and “very sensationalist,” respectively. Unfortunately, the truth did not stop the U.S. from imposing economic sanctions, depriving 115 million Ethiopians of badly needed international aid.
My purpose with this commentary is not to defend Abiy or his government. It is to address the systemic ordinariness and manifest familiarity of unjustified attacks against African leaders. The wild allegations against Abiy and the resultant economic sanctions have grave consequences, chief among them undermining what the Nobel Prize Committee regards as “important reforms that give many citizens hope for a better life and a brighter future.”
The international community cannot remain oblivious to the reasons why 26 of the 28 African, Asian, and Middle Eastern developing countries either rejected or abstained when the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution to investigate Ethiopia for serious human rights violations. Considering that senior UN and EU officials have been involved in hyperbolic attacks against Abiy, the investigative commission that the UN is assembling at the request of the EU does not inspire confidence.
The nature and texture of the scathing criticisms often reserved for African leaders demand extraordinary measures. The UN and the African Union (AU) must jointly appoint a commission to investigate the validity (or lack thereof) of the allegations. If the UN rejects the request, the AU must do it alone.
Should the outcome lend credibility to the allegations of genocide, or deliberate use of rape and starvation as tools of war, Abiy must dutifully relinquish the Nobel Peace Prize, extend public apologies, and face the consequences. If the investigation proves the allegations false, those who orchestrated them need to be held accountable.
The conflict between Abiy’s government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is due partly to a conflict in economic development ideology. Under TPLF’s 27-year reign, Ethiopia followed a socialist economic system. Jeffrey Feltman, U.S. President Biden’s special envoy for the Horn of Africa, notes that Abiy ushered in “ambitious economic and democratic reform programs and [took a] decisive shift away from discredited Marxist theories.”
A renowned Oxford economic development professor, writing in The Financial Times, suggests that Abiy’s reforms can “ignite economic change” across Africa. Over a dozen international media such as France24 echo the same sentiment – that his reforms “have the potential to upend his country’s society and reshape dynamics beyond its borders.”
Unfortunately, the TPLF “refused to move one iota” from its socialist ideology of the “developmental state.” The motive for its war has been “to overthrow the prime minister” and regain its position as “the arbiters of power and money.” Its control over the “developmental state” for 27 years was the source of riches that allowed its leaders to siphon off US$30 billion through illicit transfer to offshore banks.
A joint investigation by the UN and the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRC) have found: “The November 3 attack was only the first act in a well-orchestrated and rehearsed plan to usher in the disintegration of Ethiopia and replace it with a number of small independent or quasi-independent states over which Greater Tigray would reign supreme.”
A TPLF official, Sekoture Getachew, describes the war his party launched as a “lightning strike” to “cause a disarray [and] demobilize the federal forces.” He adds: “We brought the entire northern command consisting of 30,000 soldiers and 70 to 80 per cent of the nation’s military firepower under our control, barring a few pockets of resistance.” Soon after, the acting president of the Tigray State, Debretsion Gebremichael, declared Abiy’s government “illegitimate” and demanded it be dissolved.
Inexplicably, Mark Andrew Lowcock, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs (2017-2021), accuses Abiy of “picking a fight” and “sending Federal troops to Tigray in an attempt to resolve what was essentially a political argument.” For reasons only a genuinely independent investigation can attempt to sort out, the UN, EU, and the U.S., along with European and American media, have formed a united front to stand with TPLF, a party the U.S. has previously labelled as a Tier III terrorist organization.
Abiy’s acceptance speech at the Nobel Prize award ceremony exclusively focused on two themes: The violence of war as the epitome of hell and the eminence of peace as a foundational tenet of security and prosperity. As fate would have it, a fear that he expressed in his acceptance speech that “the dream of peace has often turned into a nightmare of war” came to pass on November 3, 2020.
The PM’s choice was between two nightmares: Surrendering to TPLF or launching a military campaign against the TPLF. Surrendering to TPLF was unthinkable because he was bound by oath to defend the constitutional order from domestic and foreign enemies. Surrendering would also mean betraying Ethiopians who went through a three-year national uprising to remove the TPLF and reversing the ongoing political and economic reforms. The only choice available to him legally and morally was enforcing the constitutional order.
The conundrum in Abiy’s desire for peace and obligation for war is best articulated in U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2009 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. He delivered his speech nine days after he ordered a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan to reverse the Taliban’s momentum. As Obama asserted:
“There will be times when nations will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified … Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, “There were 10 times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, President George W. Bush.” The cost of the war in Afghanistan was enormous. At least 31,000 Afghan civilians were killed, and over 40,000 civilians were seriously injured on Obama’s watch. Moreover, over four million Afghans were either internally displaced or forced to leave their country of birth as refugees.
In retrospect, considering the international media’s vicious attack against Abiy, one wonders about the conspicuous absence of a flash mob of international media to throw a cascade of hyperbole at the U.S. Nobel Laureate. There was no mention of the “tarnishing” of the Peace Prize. Nor was there a demand for the Nobel Committee to resign.
The international media’s treatment of Obama was not an exception. History is replete with wars that the international media justified as necessary to protect the sovereignty and integrity of nations. America’s war in Kuwait, Great Britain’s war in the Falkland Islands, and the more recent law enforcement campaign against the January 6 insurgents in the U.S. are cases that stand out in stark contrast to how the international media treated Ethiopia’s war to protect its sovereignty and integrity.
No one denies the humanitarian crisis that the war has wrought. A joint UN and Ethiopian Human Rights Commission report has found all combatants committed “serious abuses and violations of human rights.”
Yet, as the record shows, the TPLF has shown little interest in averting the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia. In June 2021, Abiy declared a unilateral ceasefire due primarily to the worsening humanitarian conditions. Sadly, the TPLF rejected it as “a sick joke” and launched coordinated offensives on three fronts outside of its regional state. Three fronts, in the Amhara and Afar regions, were crucial areas for humanitarian access. Speaking to Reuters, the TPLF’s spokesman, Getachew Reda, notes that his Front’s “primary focus is to degrade enemy fighting capabilities.”
It is also open knowledge that TPLF forces looted “U.S.AID warehouses” and “emergency UN food supplies at gunpoint.” While the world appeals to find a way to send food to 400,000 Tigrayans facing the risk of starvation, TPLF was ransacking humanitarian food warehouses to feed its 800,000 strong militia.
Further, on September 16, 2021, a UN tweet decried “Only 38 out of 466 [UN aid] trucks that entered #Tigray returned.” TPLF uses the trucks to transport its militia and military equipment. Unfortunately, the international public pressures Abiy to allow more trucks into Tigray, which will end up being hijacked for military use, including for transporting child soldiers to their imminent death serving in human waves.
Three issues cause concern as to how verifiably false allegations crowded out the truth and became the prominent international narratives. First, there is the written statement by a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, in which he “warned that the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is financing some journalists who are making the Tigray situation look much worse than it is.”
Second, senior officials of the UN, EU and U.S. have used their power of international influence to peddle verifiably false claims. Tedros Adhanom, the World Health Organization Director-General, a former high-level officer of the TPLF, regularly retweeted wild accusations of genocide and rape as a weapon. Even worse, he posted a picture of child Tigrayan soldiers as young as 10 on his Twitter handle with the caption “pride.” The tweet is still there, but the picture has been removed.
Third, two UN whistleblowers, who happened to be of African origin and exposed “some top U.N. officials globally sympathize with [TPLF] forces,” have been put under administrative leave and face termination.
Much as there is a need to establish accountability for the war and alleged atrocities committed by all sides, there must also be accountability for fabricated attacks by international officials. If left unchecked, the manifested international double standard with which African leaders are judged can distort the political power calculus in Africa in favour of rogue parties who use terror as a tool to win political concessions. This will forever condemn African nations to live in perpetual conflict and poverty.
People of conscience in Africa and around the world need to amplify the hushed whispers of African leaders about the blatant patronization with which they are judged. A global moral voice needs to emerge from a chorus of voices to redeem or rescind Abiy’s Nobel Peace Prize. This is crucial not only to redeem his reputation and protect his transformative reforms but also to free African nations from unwarranted international condemnation. Anything less would be being complacent and complicit with the all-too-familiar takedown of promising African leaders.
Yonas Biru worked for the World Bank for nearly two decades. In the last seven years of his tenure, he served as the Deputy Global Manager of the International Comparison Program (ICP). He has served as the interim chair of Prime Minister Abiy Abiy’s Independent Economic Advisory Council and chair of the Nile Club that advised the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Yonas is a Troy Media Thought Leader. For interview requests, click here.
Submitted by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a Troy Media Editorial Content Provider Partner.
The opinions expressed by our columnists and contributors are theirs alone and do not inherently or expressly reflect the views of our publication.
© Troy Media
Troy Media is an editorial content provider to media outlets and its own hosted community news outlets across Canada.
