Somewhat unsually for @Monbiot this article is both harsh shallow and foolish. The story of the Tigray War, its origins, and potential consequences is not comprehensively covered in his usual manner, as a Monbiot fan I am disappointed. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
This companion piece of reporting also from yesterday is better. But it too fails to understand the complexity of a nation which was under seige from Trump, who was in league with Egypt in the lead up to the war in its dispute over the #GERD as well as dealing with Covid.
The coverage from pontificating western media over the this Ethiopian catastrophe rages as an echo chamber of ill-informed reckons.
There are reasons this is happening. More complex and more interesting than the collective ill-informed group-think currently being reported.
There are reasons this is happening. More complex and more interesting than the collective ill-informed group-think currently being reported.
And there are Ethiopian perspectives about all of this which are consistently absent.
And there is a deep and continuing tragedy, a nation which became a democracy less than two weeks ago not being properly engaged with over its own future.
And there is a deep and continuing tragedy, a nation which became a democracy less than two weeks ago not being properly engaged with over its own future.
The big guns of U.S. diplomacy were briefly trained on this connundrum in a coherent manner through the offices of former UN political chief Jeffrey Feltman, working as a special envoy.
However his efforts to bring dialogue to bear to assist the main players failed, in large part because the U.S. and E.U preferred to follow along with the groupthink which holds that the Tigray War is some kind of justified honourable war of liberation.
It seems Ethiopia has long since come to the conclusion that it does not have rational interlocutors to deal with in the U.S. or the E.U, who chose to participate together in a highly charged G7 CNN mediated town hall which did not include a speaker from Ethiopia.
The Western world turned its back on Ethiopia in 2020 because it was distracted by Trump and Covid. That happens. But now that it has time on its hands to think about a very important and very large nation in the middle of a democratic transition it really should try harder.
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