BY YESUF ENDRIS
ADDIS ABABA – The U.S. policy makers are often more responding to American perceptions than they are about dealing with the situation on the ground, Atlantic Council’s Africa Center senior fellow Bronwyn Bruton said.
The scholar further stated that the way Ethiopia’s conflict has been depicted has caused a deleterious effect on the U.S. policy thereby making the latter question the government’s sovereign right to fight insurrections. “It is very clear that the government of Ethiopia has an obligation to resist armed insurrection and it is legal. I would say within its rights, the government has taken appropriate measure in disarming rebel forces that are attempting to overthrow the state.”
Describing the U.S. policy on the Horn of Africa, Bruton indicated the country has been carrying out proxy war against the Al-Shabaab insurgency for the past 10 years in Ethiopia’s next door Somalia. “…And I have argued, for example, that the war in Somalia, may be better described as a civil war and is certainly not winnable militarily, but the U.S. has continued to prosecute it.”
She clarified that the U.S. has chosen to insist that the war against the TPLF is unwinnable and therefore shouldn’t be fought and there have been a lot of efforts on the part of TPLF’s defenders to make the case that the government could have done things differently. “My view is that there were provocations on both sides, but both on the playground and in war, we have a principle of throwing the first punch; it was TPLF.”
“I would really hope that the TPLF has learned from its efforts to march south on Addis Ababa and its efforts to occupy the Amhara and Afar states, they are not welcome and it is not going to succeed in overthrowing the federal government. And so, there is an opportunity here to negotiate.”
Noting the international community exerted growing pressure on the Ethiopian government to allow more humanitarian support, the analyst stressed that equal measures should be taken to force TPLF not hinder the aid delivery.
The January 4/2022
