Ethiopia Peace Deal is Cover for Western Destruction of a Strong, Independent African State

Journalist Finian Cunningham lived in the Tigray region of Ethiopia during the build-up of the war that erupted in November 2020.

That two-year war continues despite recent talk of a peace deal. The Tigray people are still under genocidal siege by the federal government led by a charlatan Nobel Peace laureate, Abiy Ahmed.

Many commentators in the West have a distorted view of the war, wrongly portraying the Tigray rebels (TPLF) as the aggressors. In a sickening inversion of reality, these commentators have blamed the victims of genocide instead of the real aggressor – the federal government in Addis Ababa Ababa. They also bizarrely claim that the US has supported the Tigray to undermine the federal government. See for example
https://www.blackagendareport.com/eth…

Grayzone, Jimmy Dore, Redacted and other so-called alternative news outlets have also published shameful misinformation. I offered to contribute a different perspective to these sites but got no response.

I lived in the Tigray region before the war erupted in November 2020, and I can tell you from direct experience that the Abiy government launched the provocations and aggression as early as 2018 after he came to power. It was not the Tigray rebels (TPLF) who started the war. The war was preceded by low-intensity aggression from cutting off services to the Tigray region by the central government in Addis Ababa. That culminated in a full-on siege on the region which continues to this day.

And the Western states have enabled that aggression by their lame support for the Abiy regime, despite the occasional statements of concern from the West about humanitarian suffering from the siege. At no time, have the Western powers intervened to halt the violations. Alleged US support for the TPLF is overblown and misplaced.

World Bank loans have been approved by the United States and European Union – even while the war was raging – which have served to prop up the Abiy regime.

US intervention has actually enabled the Abiy regime to destroy Ethiopia’s independence by waging war against the Tigray region. The war was an aggression involving many serious crimes up to genocide. There was no justification for the war. But the upshot is a weakened Ethiopia which I believe Abiy Ahmed was purposed to achieve. During the TPLF-led government of 1991-2018, the ruling coalition was the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. Abiy was a minister in that government. The notion that the period was all about TPLF tyranny is false. During that period, Ethiopia prospered and had a successful economic and social development partnership with China. It is not true that the TPLF were a US puppet. Ethiopia was strongly independent. What this war has done is turn Ethiopia into a failed state which suits Western capital and also thwarts China’s strategic partnership.

There is evidence that when Abiy was a minister of communication technology in the EPRDF he came under US influence while studying at a US university. The Ethiopian security state apparatus had strong links with the US NSA which is different from the economic policy and strategic partnership with China. The US objective was to scupper Ethiopia’s partnership with China. Abiy was groomed to take over power, launch the war on Tigray and turn Ethiopia into a failed state which it has become. Ethiopia’s reported peace deal is a cover for the Western destruction of an independent African nation. Ethiopia is Africa’s second-most populous country situated in the strategically important Horn of Africa on the northeastern side of the continent.

These are monumental war crimes on top of a vicious military attack against the region and its civilian population. The Abiy regime has been allowed to commit huge crimes because of Western government complacency, indifference, and ultimately complicity.

Last year when the Tigray militants succeeded in pushing back the Abiy regime and his Eritrean allies, the American Joe Biden administration intervened to salvage Abiy’s shaky position and unwind the Tigray military gains. The Western powers have therefore prolonged the civil war in Ethiopia.

The bigger picture of this is the weakening of Ethiopia as an independent, strong African nation. The Western powers want a failed state that they can exploit and displace China’s erstwhile strategic partnership with Ethiopia. Before Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, Ethiopia was the gateway to the African continent for China’s trade and investment plans. The Western-fueled war in Ethiopia has sabotaged that African gateway for China.