World Bank is betting on Premier Abiy. $ 715 million to strengthen the regime at the behest of the United States.
The World Bank grants $ 715 million to the Ethiopian regime in theory to strengthen its food capacity threatened by the Ukrainian conflict. In reality, it is a substantial aid aimed at strengthening the regime that has plunged the country into civil and ethnic war. A help wanted by the United States which drastically changed their policy in Ethiopia, starting to support the Ethiopian Premier.
The World Bank on Friday agreed to provide $ 715 million in grants and loans to Ethiopia, a victim of drought and a devastating government-created conflict that has received this substantial aid. World Bank executives avoided embarrassing visits to Addis Ababa, preferring to sign the agreement remotely using the Covid19 pandemic as an excuse. The agreement was signed by Ethiopian Finance Minister Ahmed Shide and the World Bank’s Director for Regional Integration of Africa; Boutheina Guermazi.
Under this agreement, the World Bank will grant the Ethiopian regime 200 million dollars as a grant and 515 million in the form of credit. The large sum would be destined to strengthen agriculture and food self-sufficiency threatened by the Ukrainian conflict. The 715 million would allow Ethiopian agriculture to adapt to the impacts of climate change, strengthen livestock farming and its marketing and increase agricultural production by ensuring the inclusion of marginalized and vulnerable groups, obviously with particular attention to women. To this substantial package must be added the 300 million dollars given as a grant in April also by the World Bank which, in fact, has the objective of keeping the Ethiopian regime alive.
The reasons given to justify this gift are at least imaginative. The current food shortage that several million Ethiopians suffer is not due to the distant Ukrainian conflict but from two years of civil war unleashed by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed Ali with the original aim of imposing a central government and the Amhara ethnic domination . Agriculture, industry, infrastructure, health, education are all sectors that have suffered the most from the war as every available fund was used to buy weapons and reorganize the federal army destroyed by democratic forces ( TPLF, OLA and other minor military political movements) between May and October 2021. The Tigray siege and humanitarian blockade created an unrecognized genocide that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 people.
During these 18 months of conflict the Ethiopian regime and its Eritrean ally have committed various war crimes and crimes against humanity in different regions of the country: Amhara, Afar, Oromia, Gambella, punctually blaming either the TPLF or the Oromo Liberation Army. State violence promoted to impose absolute central power and replace the federal system created by the TPLF during its decades in power has prompted several international partners, including the European Union and the United States, to suspend aid and funding.
The particular emphasis placed by the World Bank on the promotion of women through its funding represents the culmination of the hypocrisy of this international financial institution which has never raised the slightest protest in front of the tens of thousands of women raped and killed in Tigray, Amhara, Afar, Oromia.
Some observers have noted a link between the funding and the recent announcement by the Ethiopian government of a “humanitarian truce”, advocated by Washington. On June 19, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced that a committee was studying possible peace negotiations with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The World Bank is a US-controlled institution, so it is safe to assume that the White House is using it to enforce its policy in Ethiopia.
A policy that seems to have radically changed since the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict. For over a year, the United States has financially and politically supported the TPLF and the OLA with the aim of implementing regime change as Abiy allied himself with the number one enemy of the United States in the Horn of Africa region: the Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki.
The military capacity demonstrated by the TPLF in resisting the invasion of the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies and in regaining the majority of the region and the gradual increase in the military strength of the OLA structured into a real army, (factors combined with the administrative and political capabilities of the TPLF widely demonstrated during his long tenure in government) had served the White House a tip re on democratic forces and to support the formation of their political and military union signed in Washington in September 2021.
After the defeat inflicted on the TPLF and the OLA by the Ethiopian and Eritrean regimes in December 2021, which prevented the fall of Addis Ababa and the change of regime, the United States has adopted a more confused policy trying to reach any peace agreement and recording numerous diplomatic failures.
This policy became better defined and structured when the war in Ukraine broke out. In Ethiopia, none of the warring factions managed to prevail despite the federal victory in December 2021 and the civil war was gradually turning into an ethnic war of all against all. The scenario has deteriorated with the emergence of now irremediable fractures in the alliance between the Prosperity Party of the Ethiopian Premier and the nationalist Amhara leadership that already in January reproached him for not having annihilated the TPLF during the military offensive of December 2021. Now Abiy he is seeking new alliances between the more opportunistic and corrupt elements of the Oromo and is implementing subtle but effective measures of repression of the Amhara community, progressively replacing Amhara officials and officers with Oromo loyal to him.
The new alliance between Abiy and part of the Oromo aims to make his Prosperity Party less dependent on the Amhara and to weaken the popular support enjoyed by the Oromo Liberation Front and its Oromo Liberation Army military wing. It should be noted that the new alliance on which Abiy relies to stay in power is more fragile than the previous one with the Amhara. Furthermore, the Premier will soon have to face a real armed opposition from the Amhara which will further complicate and aggravate the conflict.
The United States and consequently the European Union, dominated by American foreign policy, are identifying in Abiy the right man to be able to keep Ethiopia on its feet, preventing it from sinking into the chaos of perennial ethnic war like in Somalia or neighboring Yemen. . This new policy implies that the United States has drastically decreased military support for the Tigray army, which is now in dire straits, having currently lost its offensive capability. The TPLF is on the brink of an encircled region and a population that is literally starving. The chances of breaking the encirclement are slim given its diminished offensive capacity and the semi-total blockade of arms supplies by the Americans.
The humanitarian blockade imposed by the dictators Abiy and Afwerki seems to have become a subtle weapon of persuasion adopted by the White House to persuade the TPLF to sign a peace that would in fact be a surrender. On the other hand, Washington is trying to persuade Abiy to grant independence to Tigray as a counter game. The future African nation would be totally at the mercy of Eritrea and Ethiopia for supplies, exports and imports, being territorially blocked between these two nations and at the mercy of Western aid to save its people and rebuild the country. With the secession from Ethiopia, the TPLF would become a harmless and easily controllable political entity.
The new policy of senile Biden, in addition to the fear that Ethiopia will become the second Somalia in the Horn of Africa, is also dictated by the fear that Russia will be able to bring Ethiopia into its sphere of influence, thus increasing isolation western Africa. Unfortunately, betting on a Premier who proved unreliable will be the biggest mistake of the United States and the consequences as terrible as it is unimaginable.
