Thread by @althecat

Today's thread is a tale of two (Feltman) briefings. The first of which was hosted by the USIP on Nov 2nd in Washington.

This briefing - which many will be familiar with - took place on the 2nd day of the COP26 world leaders summit in Glasgow.

The timing was also:
- One month after Feltman visited Sudan in the first of two failed attempts to stop the coup there.
- One month after US Climate Envoy John Kerry annouced a decision made in Sept. for Egypt to host #cop27
- A week and a day after the Coup in Sudan.

In the USIP briefing Feltman read, very emotionally, a prepared statement, one which covers a lot of ground, and which contains much of the bluster which we have come to expect from U.S. imperial declarations.

Whilst he actively criticised the the TPLF more strongly than in most previous U.S. pronouncements, he remained relatively belicose to Ethiopian ears, repeating accusations around the absence of aid shipments, and the expulsion of UN staff.

And he failed to mention matters which are very important for Ethiopia and Ethiopians, including the Nov. 3rd attack of the Northern Command - the cause of this war - the open "big lie" which underlies the fascist coup attempt by the TPLF over the past year.

I was at #COP26 at the time of Feltman's USIP briefing. The day before I had watched Biden arrive & deliver his address to a packed plenary meeting. I caught up with the briefing a couple of days later and posted some initial thoughts here >>

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1456352435421782025?s=20

These thoughts - which I hold to today - were based on reading the @addisstandard's publication of the transcript rather than the video, which I have only watched today.

And the video is different as there you can see and feel the emotional intensity for Feltman.

A bit of background is now important. Feltman as we know spoke at Meles Zenawi's funeral, and he is clearly still smarting from the Ethiopian reaction to his appointment as envoy which this engendered on his appointment.

That video can be watched here >> and if you listen to the November 2nd briefing he talks a fair bit about this at the beginning.

And here's another more recent, and somewhat unguarded video of Feltman, in Glasgow speaking candidly at a Beyond Borders festival shortly after he retired from the UN, possibly thinking at that point that his career in the spotlight was over.

I first posted this video back in April whilst researching Feltman, shortly after his appointment. On the basis of this I had thought he might actually be quite good, I particularly liked his critical remarks about drone warfare.

But these views ran into a fair bit of headwind in Ethiopian twitter circles. Soon after Feltman embarked on the first of many fruitless trips to the HoA to try to bring peace to the region.

While his first mission resulted in some lofty plans/hopes (14 May: state.gov/travel-by-u-s-…), any hope of success quickly evaporated when Centcom's commander visited Egypt a couple of weeks later. english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/…

At which point Ethiopia turned its focus to its 21st June elections - which as we now know were used as cover for a 2nd TPLF offensive in Tigray in which it retook Mekelle after the ENDF withdrew it's forces and declared a unilateral ceasefire.

Feltman was then sidelined in U.S. efforts to relieve the seige on Tigray in favour of Samantha Powers (@PowerUSAID) who went to Sudan/Ethiopia in late July. Powers visit was accompanied by a TPLF Tekeze River bodies propaganda campaign and the massacre of 240 civilians in Afar.

The U.S. never even acknowledged the massacre in Afar, and CNN's @nimaelbagir 2 months later immortalised the Tekeze River bodies fabrication in an awful investigation. Powers only visited Ethiopia briefly on her final day to meet with the Minister's of Peace and Health.

Through August the military conflict continued to escalate, reachiug a critical point mid-August with a major TPLF defeat at Debre Tabor. An Ethiopian victory which coincided with Jeffrey Feltman's 2nd visit to Addis.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1428393615466930183

Feltman's 2nd peace mission was also a complete failure. This time he did not meet PM @AbiyAhmedAli, instead he was informed during his meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister that he "had wrong facts" and to return only hen he had "correct facts". aa.com.tr/en/africa/top-…

In September and October the war in Wollo continued and the scale of damage got much worse. The UNSC met again twice, fruitlessly, and through this period the U.S. persisted in its demands for Ethiopia to enter into ceasefire negotiations "without preconditions".

In the 2nd half of October as CO26 approached the war escalated again, and found itself finally near the top of the news agenda. Airstrikes on Tigray by the ENDF were accompanied by attacks by the TPLF on two cities harbouring 100s of thousands of IDPs, Dessie and Kombulcha.

And the festering coup in Sudan was completed on October 25th. And that set the scene for the USIP briefing on November 2nd, the first of the two briefings around which this thread is anchored.

The coup resulted in Sudan's PM Hamdock being arrested and not attending COP26.

Had he done so Hamdock would have presumably met with US President Joe Biden. Instead, as I arrived at COP on the 26th I met a member of the Sundanese delegation who like me was digesting the sudden unexpected news of the coup.

The Africa Group of nations had arrived at COP early to prepare for pre-COP consultations, alongside the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, to which many of Africa's nations also belong - on their agenda was development finance for climate mitigation and adaptation.

Which fully sets the scene for the 2nd half of Feltman's USIP briefing. Which needs one final piece of introduction. In Ethiopia the USIP is best known for this report - which many analysts have suggested is a blueprint for U.S. intervention in Ethiopia. usip.org/programs/red-s…

So with all that in mind, lets resume our 1st briefing from US HOA Envoy Jeffrey Feltman, this time in the form of a Q&A with his host and former UN colleague Lise Grande, President/CEO of the USIP.

Threadfix....

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1465001225355771907?s=20

...#USPolicyEthiopia Thread PART 1 of 2 ENDS

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Part 2 here >>

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1465001225355771907