Ethiopia

A new era opens for the Horn of Africa. Ella Rule Ethiopians and Eritreans were rejoicing on 8 July as a peace deal was reached between the respective leaders of Eritrea (Isaias Afwerki) and Ethiopia (Abiy Ahmed), who agreed to normalise relations between the two neighbouring countries, which had cut off all links with each other starting with a 2-year war from 1998-2000 and lasting until now– to their mutual disadvantage. What caused the rift? Following the ending of colonial rule in Eritrea after the end of the second world war, its area was effectively annexed by Ethiopia in 1962, after 10 years of federation in which the rights of Eritrea, including the right to use its own national language, were gradually eroded. Naturally, the Eritreans responded to Ethiopian opp...

One thing stands out clearly from the last few decades of privatisation and war: capitalism is not working in Ethiopia. Ella Rule On 4 November last year, the Ethiopian government sent its army into the Tigray area of the country to quell an armed rebellion led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). On 28 November, the army had taken control of the regional capital, Mekele. Thousands of ordinary people had fled the area into neighbouring Sudan in order to get out of the way of the fighting, while the Ethiopian government imposed a news blackout on the area, as a result of which little information has emerged of what exactly is the state of affairs, although it is known that there has been a heavy death toll, among government troops as well as rebels. Given that no...

Will this African nation be allowed to settle its own future without any further interference? Pavan Kulkarni A peace deal negotiated and mediated locally is the best chance for the peoples of the Horn of Africa to live in peace, free from the constant manipulations and provocations of the US imperialists and their local proxies. The following article is reproduced from People’s Dispatch, with thanks. ***** Negotiations between the federal government of Ethiopia and the insurgent Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) began in South Africa on 25 October, as the latter’s military defeat appears imminent. The civil war in Ethiopia started after the TPLF attacked a federal army base in November 2020. Representatives of both the TPLF and t...

https://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2022/10/27/african_union_ethiopia_tigrayan_peoples_liberation BYAmy Goodman & Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now! Peace talks between Ethiopia’s government and rebel forces in Tigray began Monday in South Africa, where the African Union is mediating the highest-level effort so far at ending the bloodshed. The war began in November 2020 when Ethiopian troops, backed by soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, launched an assault on the northern Tigray region against the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. All sides in the conflict have been accused of abuses, with the death toll believed to be in the hundreds of thousands and millions more displaced. Journalist Tsedale Lemma, founder of the English-language magazine Addis Standard, expl...

By Lawrence Freeman Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, has made an audacious salient call for debt cancellation for low income countries. It was published in the Opinion section of the April 30, New York Times, Why the Global Debt of Poor Nations Must Be Canceled, (printed in full below). PM Abiy is correct, debt cancellation is absolutely necessary to save lives and for developing nations to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. To compel a nation like Ethiopia to spend almost half of its revenue on debt service, while its people are suffering from a perfect storm of Desert Locust swarms, food insufficiency, and a weak healthcare infrastructure, is immoral if not criminal. PM Abiy wrote: “At the very least, the suspension of debt payments should last not just until the end o...