Thread by @althecat

So @PowerUSAID missed out on a meeting with @AbiyAhmedAli in the end. She flew in late at night, and it’s not clear who she did meet. But in the annals of diplomatic snubs this one is pretty epic.

https://twitter.com/PowerUSAID/status/1423050331014017025

Her diplomatic failure is already being compared to an incident in the same region involving Sudan Rice which some think led to the war between Eritrea claiming an additional 100,000 lives.

https://twitter.com/stesfa/status/1423047540950409220

. @SamanthaJPower had been expected in Addis Ababa on Monday or Tuesday. Instead she spent her visit in Sudan heaping praise on the not yet elected govt. before flying in to Addis late at night to avoid protests. Her visit was always scheduled to end today.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how her trip fell off the rails as there are several candidate moments. But three will suffice for now. In the early hours Tuesday morning she posted this tweet.

https://twitter.com/powerusaid/status/1422340300807213057

The @AP report, was very widely carried, and the bodies are real but Is considered in Ethiopia, for a variety of credible reasons, to be a piece of engineered TPLF Propaganda. Given that this was probably her opportunity to visit, the tweet could have waited.

Then yesterday the @StateDept changed its public position on the basis for a ceasefire, reversing a position adopted on Friday calling on the TPLF to accept the ceasefire with no preconditions and cease their invasion of Ethiopia.

https://twitter.com/PowerUSAID/status/1422650683795382277

The statement was also delivered in Washington by the @StateDeptSpox. The problems with this new position for @AbiyAhmedAli and #ethiopia are serious and numerous. And it also looked deeply disrespectful.

https://twitter.com/statedept/status/1422667339254755329

And then this morning after she arrived in Addis a video clip surfaced of Power speaking to African @USAID fellows on video link yesterday (August 3) while she was in Sudan. She tweeted the full video at 4pm.

https://twitter.com/PowerUSAID/status/1422917482009047040

Very quickly the video became an issue. Again not a very diplomatic move. Unless the objective is to piss your interlocutor off, or in this case get your meeting with the Prime Minister cancelled.

https://twitter.com/_mahder/status/1422924987330174985?s=21

https://twitter.com/_mahder/status/1422924987330174985

Judging by the Twitter reaction few people in Ethiopia are disappointed that @PowerUSAID failed to get her meeting.

The full story is longer and has numerous additional gaffes, including at the outset announcing she would be meeting Abiy and having to walk that back.

Obviously the abject failure of Powers’ mission is nothing to celebrate as it is not good for peace, security, or the 100s of thousands of starving children in Tigray.

But there could be a silver lining if reporting about Powers’ spectacular diplomatic self immolation leads to more attention being paid to a security crisis in Ethiopia that is growing more serious by the day, and it’s real cause: ill-informed Western foreign policy positions.

/ENDS

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