DELIVERED ELECTRONICALLY
An Open Letter to Anthony Blinken, United States Secretary of State
Via email to: secretary@state.gov
The Honorable Antony Blinken
U.S. Department of State
Office of the Secretary Room 7226
Harry S. Truman Building 2201 C Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20520
March 10, 2024
RE: An act of genocide-by-proxy against the Amhara People?
Dear Secretary Blinken:
The Amhara people, the Fano, will never participate in any peace talk facilitated by Michael Hammer, Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa.
There are 50 million African Americans and several million immigrants with organic ties with Africa. Yet, China dominates development partnership with Africa. China is literally becoming an inextricable partner with Africa. America is not even a junior partner. As an American, this concerns me gravely.
My open letter begins with the above observation because the current reality is a direct consequence of the myopic US policy in Africa. I am compelled to write this letter because the US State Department appears to be totally clueless, or careless, about how Africans perceive the role of the United States in Africa and the buildup of intense anti-American sentiment. Case in point, the conflict that almost caused an implosion of the Horn of Africa, namely, TPLF’s invasion of the Amhara and Afar regions and its subsequent attempt to overthrow the government.
We recall with great consternation the shocking propaganda by various US authorities and institutions, including the State Department, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and Voice of America, in support of the TPLF. At the time it was ravaging Amhara and Afar communities and marching towards the capital city. Several overt and covert attempts were made by the United States to cause diplomatic stampede, the flight of foreign missions out of Ethiopia. One shocking disinformation was the FAA’s official statement that Ethiopian Airlines may be struck by surface-to-air missiles. The US also interfered with Ethiopia’s sovereignty by continuously declaring Welkiet as Western Tigray. I happen to know from highly reliable sources that management and staff of VOA were instructed to refer to Welkiet as Western Tigray. All this, while the Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa repeatedly declared the US to be “an honest broker.”
I will be brutally honest because there is so much at stake.
Ambassador Mike Hammer is known among Ethiopians and Eritreans as the master of deception. A soft-spoken diplomat whose words should be taken with unrelenting suspicion and whose actions, seriously scrutinized for their underlying motives. It is impossible for any peace talk effort to even begin with the Fano with Ambassador Michael Hammer as the main player.
BRIEF BACKGROUND
At the end of August 2022, the TPLF was totally wiped out. The only option left for its leadership was to be eliminated or surrender in exchange for safe passage to a third country. For reasons that I don’t want to get into at this point, the US State Department interfered with Ambassador Michael Hammer as the chief architect and threw an unexpected lifeline to the TPLF. This lifeline was the Pretoria Agreement, the so-called Cessation of Hostility Agreement (CoHA) signed on November 2nd, 2022.
The CoHA effectively resurrected the TPLF, the cancer of Tigray and of the Ethiopian people. After sacrificing half a million children of Tigray in the war, the TPLF was given a new identity to kill what was left of Tigray’s children by starvation. Once back to life, the TPLF started selling food donated to feed Tigray’s children in the open market causing donors to completely stop food aid. Another beneficiary of the Pretoria agreement is the genocidal regime of Abiy Ahmed. The architect of Amhara genocide, Abiy Ahmed, was given a new identity authenticated by Biden Administration’s shameful act of lifting his government’s Human Rights Violator Designation and the subsequent recommendation of the same to the US Congress, thus clearing the way for new economic aid.
This wicked act by the State Department effectively presented a clean towel for Abiy Ahmed to wipe-clean his blood-stained hands and to continue his fiendish reign of terror with relative impunity.
In return, Abiy Ahmed was instructed to:
1. bring TPLF back into his government,
2. disarm the Amhara Special Forces and the Fano, and
3. surrender Wolkiet, Tegedea, Telemt, Humera and Raya to the TPLF.
In so doing, Special Envoy Michael Hammer essentially declared genocide-by-proxy against the Amhara people.
In his earnest effort to expeditiously complete the task assigned to him by Michael Hammer, Abiy Ahmed declared an all-out brutal war using every weapon available to him, including drones, against the Amhara people murdering innocent priests, farmers, women, and children.
Let’s stop the pretension and cover up! The current uprising, resistance movement of the Fano, is the direct result of the treacherous Pretoria Agreement, courtesy of the United States State Department, Ambassador Mike Hammer’s legacy.
The overwhelming majority of Ethiopians believe that the TPLF would not have done any better had it placed one of its members as the US Envoy to the Horn of Africa. What we see in the State Department, in as far as Ethiopia is concerned, is the visible action of the invisible hands of the friends of the TPLF and the former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi showing their enduring love and loyalty motivated by various interests. Some in the State Department, such as Michael Hammer’s advisor, have a very personal interest; having adopted children from Tigray.
We recall, with palpable agony, how the former Secretary of State Susan Rice, exalted one of the cruelest leaders Africa has ever had, Mr. Zenawi, as “uncommonly wise, brilliant, … selfless, and a true friend.” The same, demented, impious alliance is manifesting itself in the current State Department’s shocking alliance with the TPLF.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
If the Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa truly cares about bringing peace to the Horn, as opposed to painting a rosy picture of his legacy, he should accept the fact that he has grossly miscalculated. No amount of coverup can hide the fact that his solution is the problem. The equation he constructed, which marginalized the Amhara people completely and attempted to deprive them of their ancestral land, has generated “a divide by zero” error. Ambassador Michael Hammer has a conflict of interest. He should resign effective immediately in the interest of peace to the Horn of Africa.
As an American citizen of Ethiopian origin, I will say with certainty that Ethiopians look forward to a strong and unconditional stand from the United States that is commensurate with its stature as the leader of the free world. At the very least, President Biden should issue an Executive Order and implement the Global Magnitsky Act and send a powerful message of solidarity with victims and help address accountability gaps created by the State Department’s heavily biased and misguided policy on Ethiopia, including the acknowledgment the right of the Amhara people to demand the annulment of the Pretoria Agreement, specifically, terms that concern Amhara Ancestral Land.
Dagnachew Teshome
Los Angeles, California
4RuleOfLaw@gmail.com
CC: Senator Robert Menendez, Chairman,
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Senator James Risch, Ranking Member,
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Mary Catherine Phee
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
Representative Gregory Meeks, Chairman,
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Representative Michael McCaul, Ranking Member,
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Editor’s note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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