This past week, World Health Organization boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made notable statements about the conflict in his home country. The war between the Ethiopian government and the TPLF party in Tigray, which broke out in 2020, is said to receive too little international attention compared to the war in Ukraine. Ghebreyesus explained this in part by suggesting that the skin color of the victims in Tigray is too brown.
The WHO boss himself belongs to the population that is in dire straits in Tigray, and the Ethiopian government responded by saying that the UN agency should reassess whether the man is objective enough for such a high position
How bad is the situation in Tigray? About 90 percent of the state’s population is said to be in need of emergency assistance at present. About 700,000 people, out of a population of 5.5 million, are said to be starving, including at least 115,000 children. Nearly 2,000 children under 5 are said to have died of starvation in the past year.
However, local health officials tell the Associated Press that the actual numbers must be higher. It is not possible for many parents in the hardest hit areas to get their children to hospitals, or to register them as deceased. In addition, food supply problems are also beginning to emerge in the neighboring states of Amhara and Afar.
A UN official said recently at a summit in Nairobi that at least 2,000 trucks of relief supplies a week are now needed to help Tigray. This is higher than the earlier estimate of 600 trucks.
Either way, both estimates are much higher than the actual number coming into the region. Most of the aid is being held up by Ethiopian blockades.
Since the “humanitarian ceasefire” of March 24, a few convoys are said to have been allowed through in a month. However, most aid is being stopped by the Ethiopian military. Emergency workers are doing what they can, but indicate that the blockade is far from being lifted.
There are also problems with agriculture. The Horn of Africa as a whole is experiencing extraordinary drought, and on top of that in Tigray, farm supplies are stagnant. Only 3 percent of seeds and 10 percent of fertilizer for the new harvest are said to have arrived. The situation looks extremely bad, and there is no easy way out.
Negotiations would have to take place between the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and the regional government in Tigray. That government is made up of members of the TPLF, an ethnic party that has held power in the country for the past few decades. Negotiations are proceeding with great difficulty, in part because the fighting itself has led to new complications.
A western part of Tigray, against the border with Sudan, is currently occupied by troops from Amhara state. This occupied territory is claimed by both Amhara and Tigray, and Tigray wants it back as a condition for peace negotiations. If Abiy Ahmed concedes to this, he risks a quarrel with Amhara. Thus, resolving one conflict can create the next.
A similar problem looms in the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The burying of the hatchet by Prime Minister Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in 2018 was celebrated internationally as a major step toward peace in the Horn of Africa. Two years later, the men marched together to suppress the rebellion in Tigray. Afwerki was said to harbor a deep hatred toward the TPLF because of the bitter struggle for independence that Eritrea had to fight against Ethiopia. It is questionable whether his good relationship with Ahmed would survive his reconciliation with Tigray.
With the war in Tigray, it has become clear that many Western countries and organizations had a slightly too rosy view of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. When Ahmed came to power in 2018, he seemed a friendly, young and fresh face for Ethiopia. Of mixed ethnic and religious backgrounds, and full of good plans and intentions.
In 2019, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for resolving a border conflict with Eritrea.
But since the beginning of the conflict with the TPLF, the outside world has been shown a very different face. The face of the lieutenant colonel in the Ethiopian army, who volunteered to join one of the warring factions during a previous civil war.
Africa correspondent Declan Walsh of the New York Times even wrote in December 2021 that Ahmed was already preparing his conflict with Tigray when he received the Nobel Prize. He reportedly held secret talks with Afwerki, and carried out troop movements in preparation for an armed confrontation.
Perhaps another factor is that the brown Ahmed in particular has become a less easy villain for Western media than the white Vladimir Putin. Comparisons between Putin and Hitler were already frequently made before the invasion of Ukraine. The demonization of the Russian president plays a role in the fanatical way many Westerners declare their support for Ukraine.
Something similar is not or rarely seen in the Western response to African conflicts. What was the name of the main culprits in the last famine in Ethiopia? Or Darfur? When Yugoslavia fell apart, Serbian leader Milosevic was indeed compared to the Austrian in the media. Perhaps armed interventions against “new Hitlers” would be the order of the day, if attention to brown thugs was more evenly distributed.
African dictators, then, do not (yet) have nuclear weapons.
The Nobel laureate and reformer Ahmed seems hard to fit into the mold of “brown Führer,” even if he does let 6 million people starve. That figure, by the way, also came from Ghebreyesus’ mouth, and was probably meant to evoke certain associations.
Tedros Ghebreyesus’ career would also probably have been very different if Western countries had put a little more “pressure” on African dictatorships. Before working at WHO, Ghebreyesus climbed up within the health system in Tigray. He was a member of the TPLF when that party ran a minority regime.
Again, a double standard is clearly evident, but one that works to the disadvantage of white dictatorships. Indeed, the last two white minority regimes in Africa collapsed due to international pressure. Rhodesia was never truly recognized as a state, and South Africa saw sanctions continue to increase until the government decided to abolish Apartheid in exchange for normalization of foreign relations.
Non-white minority regimes face sanctions if they commit specific atrocities, but rarely because they are inherently racist.
