Tag Archive for: Ethiopia

Half a million may have died in Ethiopia conflict as all eyes remain on Ukraine

Calling out Western media coverage of Ukraine’s conflict as racist, as some have done, seems a bit of a cheap shot—one angling for another hot take to throw into the never-ending click-bait news cycle. Yes, there have been questionable choices of language by broadcast journalists expressing shock at how something like this could happen in a country where the people are ‘civilised’ and ‘look like us’. And, yes, the scale of the coverage has dwarfed that of other conflicts going on around the world.

There are obvious reasons, though, why Ukraine has got, and should have, more coverage than wars happening in places such as Ethiopia and Yemen. Russia is a nuclear-armed superpower. The invasion threatens to draw in neighbouring European countries and escalate into a global conflict. It is also exacerbating the economic fallout of the pandemic that is directly hitting people through inflation and spiralling petrol and energy prices.

A similar hand-wringing over media bias and implicit racism happened in 2015 after the coverage of terrorist attacks on the office of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and the Bataclan nightclub in France that dwarfed attention paid to disasters elsewhere, including a massacre in Nigeria and the war in Syria. But as with Ukraine, when terrible and shocking events happen closer to home, it is not morally wrong to pay more attention. It is normal and rational.

And yet, the scale of the inverse relationship between the magnitude of suffering that has occurred in Ethiopia and the minimal coverage and engagement by the international community is harder to square. Ethiopia is a major ally for the US and UK in the volatile Horn of Africa and receives billions in support accordingly.

The estimate of half a million victims of the war in Ethiopia has been calculated by Jan Nyssen and a team of researchers at Ghent University in Belgium who have monitored the grinding see-saw conflict since it began in November 2020. It includes an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 victims of direct killings, 150,000 to 200,000 starvation deaths, and more than 100,000 additional deaths caused by a lack of healthcare access due to the conflict.

My interpretation of the international ennui over that death toll and accompanying humanitarian cataclysm: we are nowhere near shaking off some of our previous habits of perception that have characterised conflict throughout the years, whereby a black life lost or violated isn’t as terrible as a white life lost or violated. I come at that as someone who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the loss of civilian life was on an astonishing scale and allowed to endure for decades.

The war in Yemen is about to enter its eighth year and rivals Ethiopia in terms of humanitarian devastation. Nearly 250,000 Yemenis are estimated to have died since 2015, through a similar combination of direct killings and hunger and disease resulting from the conflict. This includes, it’s estimated, upwards of 20,000 people who have died as a direct result of air strikes by the Saudis and their allies—using billions of dollars’ worth of Western-built munitions.

As in Ethiopia’s conflict—where air strikes have involved the same Turkish Bayraktar TB2 armed drones being used in Ukraine’s war to such decisive effect—war crimes have been committed by both sides in Yemen. Western media has provided some coverage of these two conflicts and their atrocities—including the ABC’s Counterpoint interviewing me about Ethiopia’s conflict. But there has been little overall traction—certainly in terms of impact on the public mood and the body politic leading to debate and action—compared to the coverage of and response to Ukraine’s conflict that swung into action straight away and hasn’t let up.

‘The “unthinkable things” that happen in places like Africa are typically reported in terms of issues, number and trends—rather than the people, the emotions and the lives destroyed,’ Moky Makura of Africa No Filter, a group that works to dispel stereotypes about the continent, writes in a recent opinion piece for CNN. Makura notes how at the same time ‘poverty, conflict, corruption, disease and poor leadership were the five frames through which most stories are told about Africa’.

I can relate to that from my time freelancing in Ethiopia. It was very difficult to get through to editors—especially those at big-name media outlets—if I was pitching a story that didn’t conform to those frames of narrative. The irony is that once Ethiopia’s big conflict came along providing a frame that usually proves so popular to Western appetites, Covid-19 had the media’s attention in a vice, and just as that lifted the Ukraine conflict erupted and kept the focus squarely in one place.

Such habits and tendencies of the media were critiqued in the 1988 book Manufacturing consent, co-authored by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. They argued that the mass media advanced stories and news—in the authors’ terms, propaganda—that drew the approval of government and elite interests; if a story didn’t dovetail with those interests, it would receive insubstantial coverage, if that.

‘While the coverage of the worthy victim was generous with gory details and quoted expressions of outrage and demands for justice, the coverage of the unworthy victims was low-keyed, designed to keep the lid on emotions and evoking regretful and philosophical generalities on the omnipresence of violence and the inherent tragedy of human life,’ Herman and Chomsky write.

Some relief agencies are reporting a loss of funding for their Africa operations as donors switch to Ukraine. Furthermore, Ukraine and Russia are major exporters to Africa of grains and other agricultural commodities, and the war has interrupted supplies and forced up prices. Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen import at least half of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, according to the United Nations.

‘All of this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe,’ UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently commented. ‘We are seeing clear evidence of this war draining resources and attention from other trouble spots in desperate need.’

In Ethiopia and Yemen there are finally glimmers of hope. It appears in both cases the opposing sides may have finally ground each other down to a point where some sort of peaceful compromise may be forced onto them. On 25 March, Tigrayan forces agreed to a ‘cessation of hostilities’, following the government’s announcement of an indefinite humanitarian truce a day earlier. In Yemen, a two-month truce was agreed by the warring parties at the start of April. But no such luck for the world’s other conflicts rumbling on away from Ukraine.

Policy, Guns and Money: Africa Day

In this special episode for Africa Day, ASPI’s Lisa Sharland speaks to Kenya’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Martin Kimani. They discuss Kenya’s role on the UN Security Council, multilateralism via Zoom and counterterrorism.

Next, The Strategist’s Brendan Nicholson speaks to Australia’s high commissioner to South Africa, Gita Kamath, about Australia’s economic ties with the country, the impact of Covid-19 and the effectiveness of groupings such as the Southern African Development Community and the Southern African Customs Union.

And ASPI research intern Khwezi Nkwanyana speaks to Human Rights Watch’s Laetitia Bader about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray, its implications for neighbouring countries and multilateral responses so far.

A new dawn for Ethiopia?

In the month before Abiy Ahmed was sworn in as the new prime minister in April 2018, Ethiopia was on the brink of civil war and inching further into the unknown. Unrest led by the Oromo tribe threatened to upend peaceful coexistence among the country’s diverse ethnic groups. When the political crisis deepened, the immediate government response was to declare a state of emergency.

Civil unrest widened, and the government crackdown led to the mass arrest of youths, journalists and dissidents. As the situation continued to deteriorate, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn resigned, clearing the way for change. His decision has helped steer Ethiopia away from worsening instability and towards a new and more hopeful era.

Abiy is the first prime minister from the 25-million-strong Oromo tribe. The Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia and represent just over a third of its population. But they’ve long been disenfranchised and have had little representation at all levels of government. Relatively unknown in the outside world, Abiy has been compared to figures such as Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau because of the reforms he’s implemented while defusing the political crisis.

Under Abiy, Sahle-Work Zewde was elected as Ethiopia’s first female president and women’s rights advocate Meaza Ashenafi was chosen as the country first female Supreme Court chief justice. The size of the cabinet was reduced from 28 to 20 and women took on half of those portfolios. They include defence, trade, transport, revenue, and peace and oversight of federal police and intelligence organisations.

While Abiy has focused on stability and reforms in Ethiopia, he is also bringing hope to East Africa more broadly.

Ethiopia has emerged as one of the world’s fastest growing economies, a development largely overlooked by the business sector in the West—which has long been deterred by Ethiopian governments’ centralised control over the economy. Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, is a living embodiment of the old adage that ‘all roads lead to Rome’. Addis Ababa is the headquarters of the African Union, which acts as a platform for conflict management. Many decisions relating to Africa’s place in the world have been made in the city.

While Ethiopian civil unrest was driven by a lack of democratic, economic and social reforms, these challenges aren’t unique to Ethiopia and its people. Disenchanted youth are increasingly taking a stand against repressive governments across Africa. Corruption has damaged African economies and contributed to higher youth unemployment. That brings civil and political unrest and it has also driven many young Africans to flee to Europe in search of better opportunities.

For thousands of young people leaving Ethiopia in particular, the desperate dash for a better life has ended in tragedy, with many drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. Some have fallen victim to people smugglers who have sent them to be sold in Libyan slave markets. Others have been executed by terrorist groups such as Islamic State.

The horrors inherent in the loss of youth—a major demographic shift for many African countries—have, in turn, brought rising anger and calls for equal access to state resources that have been accessible only to ruling elites. With its diverse ethnic groups, Ethiopia reflects many of its neighbours. Soaring numbers of unemployed youth comprise a powder keg on a conflict-prone continent.

Some tension still simmers over his rise, but Abiy has created a legend of his own. His leadership style is one rarely seen in African politicians. Charismatic and conciliatory in tone, he’s a blessing for Ethiopians hopeful for a better country and a region yearning for peace. At 42, he’s the youngest leader in Africa. He was raised in an interfaith family; his father is Muslim and his mother was an Orthodox Christian.

Abiy is a former military intelligence officer, and his political outreach involved traveling outside the country to talk to exiled opposition and religious figures and imploring them to return home for the sake of peace. This resulted in key political dissidents once branded as terrorists returning home.

Abiy’s push for Ethiopian unity and the peaceful coexistence of its multiethnic groups while maintaining the current trajectory of economic growth has provided a welcome alternative to cheap politics exploiting tribal grievances. Along with his array of liberal reforms, his administration has ordered the release of hundreds of imprisoned politicians, activists and journalists.

Moreover, the new prime minister is already working towards regional stability and economic reform by engaging with the leaders of Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti.

A signature achievement was to bring an end to 20 years of stalemate with bitter rival Eritrea. The two countries had fought a bloody conflict over the border town of Badme that Abiy recently awarded to Eritrea in line with a 2003 United Nations ruling. The Australian Defence Force played an observer role in this disputed area with the United Nations.

Abiy visited Egypt to calm tensions with that country and reassure it leaders that their share of water from the Nile would not be affected by the building of Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam. His government has announced that it will loosen its monopoly on vital economic sectors, to allow privatisation and open the market to foreign investors.

He has also authorised the lifting of the state of emergency and restrictions on internet use and broken ranks with his party over the nation’s long history of one-party rule by urging his cadres to accommodate opposition groups and pursue multiparty democracy.

Abiy Ahmed may not be a panacea for all of the problems affecting Ethiopia, but so far his policies have fostered an Ethiopia that is changing orbit away from its oppressive past and towards a far more promising future for its people and the region.