PM ABIY AHMED SPEAKS TRUTH TO (SUPER)POWER IN AN OPEN LETTER: IS PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN LISTENING?
Posted in Al Mariam’s Commentaries By almariam On September 19, 2021
“History always smiles upon those who have stood for truth. And so, I am certain that truth will shine upon this proud nation Ethiopia.”
“Ethiopia will not succumb to consequences of pressure engineered by disgruntled individuals for whom consolidating power is more important than the well-being of millions. Our identity as Ethiopians and our identity as Africans will not let this come to pass. The humiliation our ancestors have faced throughout the continent for centuries will not be resuscitated in these lands upon which the green, gold and red colors of independence have inspired many to successfully struggle for their freedom!” PM Abiy Ahmed, “Open Letter to President Joe Biden”, September 17, 2021.
Speaking truth in an open letter
On September 17, 2021, Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed published a historic and extraordinary “Open Letter to President Joe Biden.”
Heads of state communicate through diplomatic channels, private letters, discuss issues of mutual interest in person or on the phone or make their views known through the op-ed pages.
Communication between heads of state by open letter is, to say the least, uncommon.
It is a fact that PM Abiy is ready, willing and able to talk to President Biden about Ethiopia, the Horn region or the “situation in Tigray”.
But Biden so far has limited himself to grandstanding and showboating on Tigray.
Why doesn’t Biden want to talk to the man who holds the key and password to the “situation in Tigray” and the complex issues in the Horn of Africa?
Interestingly, President Donald Trump and PM Abiy had a “special” relationship.
Trump envied PM Abiy.
In January 2020, Trump whined he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, not PM Abiy. “I made a deal, I saved a country, and I just heard that the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country.”
Trump also blustered Egypt could blow up the GERD. PM Abiy was amused by the ranting blowhard.
But PM Abiy and Trump were on speaking terms.
On January 31, 2020, Trump called PM Abiy and “expressed optimism that an agreement on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was near and would benefit all parties involved.”
On April 25, 2020, Trump tweeted, “Just spoke to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali of Ethiopia.
His Country needs Ventilators, and the U.S. is in good position to help him. We will!”
But Biden does not want to talk to PM Abiy!
Biden would rather moan, groan and whine from ten thousand miles.
On May 26, 2021, Biden shed crocodile tears. “I am deeply concerned by the escalating violence and the hardening of regional and ethnic divisions in multiple parts of Ethiopia.”
If Biden is truly “deeply concerned”, he could have picked up the phone on May 25 or 27 and called to PM Abiy and talked to him leader to leader, man to man.
It is possible one telephone call could get the ball rolling.
By making one telephone call, Donald Trump got the ball rolling on the GERD.
Biden has chosen to communicate with PM Abiy by issuing Executive Orders, appointment of a Special Envoy, imposition of visa and related sanctions, pontificating about his “deep concerns” and issuing grand edicts and dictats for “immediate humanitarian access, inclusive dialogue, negotiated ceasefire”.
Curiously, Biden does not seem to have any problems chit-chatting with some African leaders “about the situation in Tigray”.
On February 25, 2021, Biden and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta discussed the “deteriorating humanitarian and human rights crises in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and the need to prevent further loss of life and ensure humanitarian access.”
On February 26, 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris called President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Chairman of the African Union and “emphasized the serious concern of the United States about reports of significant human rights violations and a deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.”
Biden met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and discussed various issues, including the situation in Tigray.
Biden talked about the Tigray situation with the leaders of the G7 in June 2021.
Biden telephoned 19 global leaders within six days of his election.
But Biden has avoided the leaders of the two largest countries in Africa (Nigeria, pop. 206 million/2020 and Ethiopia (pop. 110 million/2020).
Biden snubbed Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.
But on April 30, 2018, Trump gave President Buhari the royal treatment at the White House, even though he felt Africa consists of a bunch of “***t hole countries.”
Biden has completely steered clear of PM Abiy Ahmed.
Trump has talked to PM Abiy on the phone several times.
Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he has “been on the phone on several occasions with Prime Minister Abiy of Ethiopia.”
So, why doesn’t Biden want to talk to PM Abiy?
Biden, for some reason, prefers to talk to PM Abiy through his interlocutor Special Envoy Jeffrey Feltman who has met PM Abiy at least once.
Feltman, before his first visit to Ethiopia, openly insulted PM Abiy declaring, “Authoritarian leaders in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia draw closer at the expense of the wider collective.”
Is that what Biden thinks of PM Abiy? A member of a troika of dictators who plan to subjugate the Horn of Africa?
Is that the reason why Biden and his underlings have chosen to communicate to PM Abiy in Mafia-style threats of extortion, blackmail and intimidation.
All options are on the table, from Global Magnitsky (sanctions over human rights violations) to an executive order on sanctions, to removal from (the African Growth and Opportunity Act), to more restrictive measures on assistance as well as ways to block Ethiopia’s efforts to get cash from international financial institutions.
While Biden and his crew have been finger wagging, bellyaching and whining about PM Abiy, Biden at the African Union Summit bloviated about how “interconnected our world is and how our fates are bound up together.”
But Biden does not want to “interconnect” with certain African leaders who do not kowtow and bow down to him.
Biden will talk to **s-kissers, bootlickers and panhandlers but will avoid like the plague tenaciously independent and nationalist leaders who will not sell their souls or countries for thirty pieces of silver in handouts?
But what is the message Biden wants to send by avoiding/ignoring PM Abiy?
Is the message, “I don’t need to talk to Abiy because he is unimportant? I will send one of my special goons to talk and straighten up this upstart nobody? I will show this little guy in a poor country the power of the White Man’s Burden and save him and his savage people from themselves? Talking to Abiy is beneath me and will make Abiy my equal and be seen as a global leader in the eyes of African? I will teach Abiy a lesson by squeezing him economically, diplomatically and politically until he falls to his knees and cries out, ‘Have mercy, Uncle Joe, Uncle Sam!’ I don’t talk to Abiy until Susan Rice says I can talk to Abiy!”
Could it be that Biden does not give a rat’s ass about the “situation in Tigray” or in the Horn region but is merely paying lip service and shedding crocodile tears to avoid the liberal media from tearing into him for doing nothing about the “humanitarian disaster” as they are doing now about Afghanistan?
Could it be that Biden is afraid to face PM Abiy because PM Abiy will speak the raw and unvarnished truth to him about Ethiopia and tell him to go to…?
Could it be that Biden cannot handle PM Abiy’s truth?
But what is PM Abiy’s truth spoken to Biden?
In his Open Letter. PM Abiy presents hard truths that name and shame Joe Biden.
Here is my personal summary and interpretation of the “Open Letter to President Joe Biden, Jr.”
In the “Open Letter”, PM Abiy, in the phrase of my profession, presents the evidence for the prosecution’s case-in-chief.
PM Abiy lays bare the U.S, and the West’s hypocrisy, duplicity, double-standard, double-dealing, treachery, ill-will and skullduggery over the past 10 months after the TPLF launched an attack to grab power.
PM Abiy speaks truth to Biden telling him that he is writing his Open Letter at a time when the terrorist TPLF is 1) massacring, maiming, torturing, destroying property and displacing hundreds of thousands of women, children and other vulnerable populations in the Afar and Amhara regions of Ethiopia, 2) forcibly inducting “our children in Tigray region into becoming child soldiers and used as cannon fodder, and 3) the U.S. and the West have turned deaf ears, blind eyes and muted lips to the crimes against humanity committed by the TPLF.
PM Abiy points to evidence showing the double-standard maintained by the U.S. and West in general condemning and demonizing Ethiopia despite Ethiopia’s verifiable and herculean efforts to stabilize the Horn of Africa and address the humanitarian situation in Tigray while overlooking with depraved indifference the widespread crimes against humanity committed by the TPLF.
PM Abiy points to evidence of orchestrated in Western media propaganda war on his government and Ethiopia using fake news, disinformation and damned lies about Ethiopia’s law enforcement efforts to capture and bring to justice the TPLF leaders who launched an attack on the Ethiopian Northern Command in Tigray region resulting in thousands of deaths.
PM Abiy points to evidence showing how the U.S. has disregarded the fact Ethiopia has been a longtime friend and strategic ally and partner of the U.S. in the global war on terror and other diplomatic areas.
PM Abiy points to evidence of U.S. depraved indifference and hypocrisy in turning a blind eye to the decades-long gross abuses of human rights and crimes against humanity committed by the TPLF.
PM Abiy points to evidence showing how the U.S. supported, aided and abetted the TPLF regime in creating an ethnic apartheid system and did look the other way as the TPLF looted and plundered Ethiopia.
PM Abiy points to evidence showing how the U.S. treated with a cold shoulder the great achievements of the popular uprising in Ethiopia that removed TPLF from power and its continued condonation of the TPLF’s ongoing criminal activities to destabilize Ethiopia by financing, organizing, planning and executing terrorist acts throughout Ethiopia.
PM Abiy points to evidence showing how the TPLF with the aid and support of international human rights organizations spews disinformation and propaganda which the U.S. and the West in turn use as verified facts to criminalize and wage Infowars on Ethiopia.
PM Abiy points to evidence showing how the U.S. and the West are using the subterfuge of humanitarian concern to justify economic, political and diplomatic intervention in Ethiopia.
PM Abiy points to evidence showing how the U.S. and the West have engaged in activities aimed at delegitimizing the very first free and fair election and discrediting the government elected with the votes of 40 million Ethiopians. For 27 years, the U.S. and the West shamelessly approved the TPLF’s rigged elections (claiming a 100 percent victory in 2015 which Obama declared “democratic”) and remained stone silent when Ethiopia had a peaceful and orderly election in June 2021, despite predictions of doom and gloom.
PM Abiy points to evidence showing U.S. hypocrisy in its global war of terror. The U.S. speaks with forked tongue on terrorism as it coddles the TPLF, which the U.S. itself had designated a tier 3 terrorist organization, while condemning other terrorist groups.
In his “Open Letter”, PM Abiy tells Biden the way it is and the way it’s gonna be.
The Ethiopian people have elected and affirmed their faith in Prosperity Party to lead them through the next five years in landslide victory. That will happen. Ethiopia will continue on its path to development to benefit all its people.
Ethiopia will tolerate no interference or meddling in its internal affairs by anyone.
Ethiopia will confront enemies domestic or foreign who pose a threat to its security and sovereignty.
African nations that have broken free from the shackles of colonialism and will not submit to neocolonialism in its economic, diplomatic and political manifestations. “Despite escaping the yokes of colonialism, Ethiopia now struggles with its mutation.”
Ethiopia shall remain a proud nation and will defend its sovereignty and independence with the blood, sweat and tears of its sons, daughters and kinship with other African nations.
Ethiopians know US policy in Ethiopia is made by “key policy makers and policy influencers” who are in the pay of the TPLF and their lobbyists, but they will not be allowed to rule Ethiopia by remote control from Washington.
Ethiopia will not yield to the pressures and “influence of individuals that have entrenched themselves into the politics of other nations.”
Ethiopia will not be another example of a spectacularly failed foreign policy as seen in Afghanistan and other countries leaving millions in deeper despair and hardship than they were in before US intervention.
PM Abiy poses simple questions for Biden.
Why is it that what is good for the goose not good for the gander?
Why is it OK for the U.S. to wage war on domestic and foreign terrorism but not Ethiopia? Just as your administration and the American people have done, “my administration supported by the millions of Ethiopians thirsty and hungry for their right to peace, development and prosperity is leading our national ‘war on terror’ against a destructive criminal enterprise, which poses a threat to both national and Horn region stability.
Thousands of Ethiopians have sacrificed their lives fighting America’s war on terrorism in Somalia against al Shabab but why has U.S. abandoned Ethiopia and sided with the terrorist TPLF?
Why is the U.S. and the West willfully ignorant of the plain facts in Ethiopia and decided to persecute the victims as oppressors and lionize the oppressors as victims through partisan narratives and bankrolled networks?
Why did the Biden administration betray the hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians and other Africans that helped elect it optimistic a Biden victory “would usher in respect for the sovereignty of African nations and nurture partnership?
Can Biden handle PM Abiy’s truth? Or the truth about African American human rights violations?
I am sure Susan Rice, the DUCHESS OF DARKNESS, is stung by PM Abiy’s “Open Truth Letter”. She is probably pulling her hair out. She did not see the “Open Letter” coming.
There is no doubt in my mind that Biden has outsourced his policy in Ethiopia to Rice, who has long been in bed with TPLF leaders in more ways than one.
Rice is puppet mastering Biden on Ethiopia policy.
Biden talks the talk, but the words are Susan Rice’s.
Biden issued an Executive Order on September 17, 2021, because of the “human suffering that threatens the unity of the Ethiopian state.”
Of course, the Executive Order was prepared at the direction of Susan Rice.
Biden mired in the Afghanistan withdrawal mess could not even help Americans trapped in Afghanistan under terrorist Taliban rule.
How could he possibly give a rat’s ass about Tigray or Ethiopia. Biden is no different than Trump that way.
Biden, like Trump, believes Africa is nothing more than an aggregation of “***t hole countries”.
LET NO ONE FORGET: the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, was sponsored by Joe Biden. That law aimed at extending tough-on-crime policies overly criminalized Black Americans.
Biden significantly contributed to the fact US today has the highest-in-the-world incarceration rate!
LET NO ONE FORGET: Donald Trump, yes, Donald Trump fixed the harshest elements of Joe Biden’s Crime control Act in his First Step Act, resulting in the release of more than 3,000 inmates and 1,700 people convicted of crack cocaine offenses have seen their sentences reduced.
Joe Biden does not give a rat’s ass about African Americans in America. He sure as hell does not give a damn about Africans in the “***t hole countries” of Africa.
Biden has not done a damn thing about the widespread violations of the human rights of African Americans at the hands of brutal police officers in America.
Biden has not said a word about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 nor has he issued an Executive Order to stop police brutality or instructed his attorney general to throw the book at those officers who violate the civil and human rights of African Americans.
Joe Biden should stop shedding crocodile tears about Tigray and cry himself a river for his gross incompetence, dereliction of duty and abandonment of Americans in Taliban Afghanistan. Joe Biden should sanction the Taliban for their total and complete disregard for the principles of human rights.
But Biden should heed two simple truths.
First, as PM Abiy wrote, “History always smiles upon those who have stood for truth. And so, I am certain that truth will shine upon this proud nation Ethiopia.”
Second, Ethiopians and Afghans share one important historical fact. They have never been colonized and they have beat back every attempt to colonize and neocolonize them.
James Russell Lowell wrote, “Truth forever on the scaffold,/ Wrong forever on the throne,/ Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,/ Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
When Biden and the West using their global propaganda machines pillory truth on the scaffold of lies, damned lies and disinformation about Ethiopia, there Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own Ethiopia.
Ethiopians are proud of PM Abiy Ahmed.
There is overwhelming support for PM Abiy’s “Open Letter” among Ethiopians in the country and in the diaspora, and particularly among Ethiopian Americans in America.
It is a matter of pride and patriotism for Ethiopians to stand up to neocolonial bullying.
PM Abiy wrote the “Open Letter” but it is endorsed and countersigned by every proud Ethiopian who believes in the dignity, security and sovereignty of Ethiopia.
PM Abiy’s “Open Letter” speaks for 120 million Ethiopians and no doubt the people of the continent.
A proud American fighting for freedom from British colonialism cried out, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
For proud Ethiopians fighting against neocolonialism and for their country’s honor, it is, “Give me dignity or give me death.”
If Biden wants to pick a fight with 120 million Ethiopians, it is his prerogative.
Let there be no mistake: Proud Ethiopians will NEVER allow Biden to make Ethiopia Africa’s Afghanistan, NEVER!
Proud Ethiopian Americans will not forget Biden’s betrayal of their trust.
Proud Ethiopian Americans have an appointment with destiny on November 8, 2021, Defeat Democrats Day (DD Day).
See you then Joe!
Ethiopians, the truth shall set you free, independent, sovereign, the necessary preconditions for you to live in dignity, security and prosperity.