Ethiopia’s worsening crisis is also an opportunity for Trump

This November, a 20-year-old man from the Amhara region of Ethiopia — forced to drop out of school by the ongoing civil wars in Africa’s second-most populous nation and become a second-hand wool seller — left his home to do business at a market in the nearby village of Zibst. 

The young man never returned home. 

He was one of 43 people killed when the military under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a drone strike into the crowded market, one of three attacks on civilians that morning that also targeted a health center and an elementary school. The U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project said the attack was the deadliest drone strike since the Abiy government stepped up its fighting this summer in Amhara region, and also particularly alarming since there had been no nearby clashes with the local Fano rebels. 

"He died after they were struck from the air," the victim’s still distraught mother told the German news organization DW recently — not wanting to give the family’s name because of fears of government reprisal. The young man’s father was only able to identify his body through his ID card. "I brought him back and buried him in his birthplace." 

The young wool seller was one of hundreds of civilians slaughtered in the latest and arguably worst phase of Ethiopia’s seemingly unending civil wars, which intensified this fall as the government launched what it has ominously called “the final operation” in the Amhara region. The offensive has killed, detained or displaced thousands of civilians despite supposedly targeting the region’s Fano fighters. 

The death toll, so far, is disturbing. The airstrikes, carried out from Turkish-manufactured drones and supported by a growing, unholy alliance between the Abiy regime and the United Arab Emirates have killed at least 449 and possibly as many as 750 civilians in what has all the appearances of an ethnic cleansing campaign to undermine popular support for Fano, according to groups tracking the killing. 

Meanwhile, government forces have also established a network of mass detention camps in Amhara region that can be seen on satellite photos and which, according to Amnesty International, have supported the mass arrest of thousands.

The world community is largely ignoring these crimes against humanity. That is partly the result of distraction from other high-profile conflicts across Africa and the Middle East, but the shocking neglect of the Ethiopian crisis is also the result of political inertia and agendas wrapped up in regional and global superpower competition that neglects basic principles of autonomy and human rights. 

On the same day as the drone attack on Zibst, Donald Trump was elected for a second term, as the 47th president of the United States. The start of the new administration offers a unique opportunity for a long-overdue reset of American policy. Ethiopia’s deeply entrenched crisis offers a test case on pathways to a solution.  

The new president’s long-standing concerns about U.S. competition with its global rivals — not only with China but the growing ambitions of oil-rich players from the Persian Gulf — can and must be combined with strategies that emphasize expanding democracy and guaranteeing fundamental freedoms.  

It is not just only that Ethiopia and the Abiy government need a strong dose of tough love. But that will require that Washington stop turning a blind eye to human-rights abuses in the Horn of Africa, where Abiy was somehow awarded a Nobel Peace Prize despite years of civil war in his own country. 

During President Biden’s four years in the White House, talk of a new approach to Africa more focused on human rights and pressing issues such as climate change was often merely that: talk. Earlier this year, U.S.- and Western-backed institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank offered loans and direct aid that missed a massive opportunity.

These dollars rescued the Abiy regime from an urgent debt crisis while failing to impose conditions to improve civil rights or end the brutal conflicts in the Amhara region and other parts of the country. 

Instead, the bailout has only freed the government in Addis Ababa to purchase more high-tech weaponry such as the Turkish-built Bayraktar TB2 drones that are the backbone of an unmanned fleet placed under a special unit of the Ethiopian Air Force last year. The regime has also found an ambitious partner in its oil-rich Persian Gulf neighbor, the UAE, which is eager to gain political influence over the Horn of Africa in a rivalry with other regional players such as Saudi Arabia. 

Everyday citizens in Amhara region and most other parts of Ethiopia — farmers, teachers, and merchants — are becoming needless pawns in these geopolitical power games, as civil society unravels under not only wanton violence but also the rapid erosion of democratic norms across Ethiopia. The drone strikes and house-by-house raids by government forces have been accompanied, according to Amnesty International, by arrests of judges, court staff, prosecutors and university professors, often without warrants. 

Although Trump often spoke in his campaigns of an “America First” policy that hints at isolationism, the reality is that the incoming president is also eager to project strength and compete on a global stage with rivals such as China — which over the last decade has also made a bid for influence across Africa. In this moment of crisis, there is opportunity for the new American president.

Throughout the last century, strong ties between Washington and Addis Ababa have greatly benefitted both nations. In the second half of the 2020s, a new focus from the second Trump administration can not only become a “win-win” for both nations by maintaining close economic ties but also lessening the allure of anti-democratic rivals like China and the UAE.

I would strongly urge the new president to see Ethiopia as a test case that democracy and human rights can again become the foundation for a newly thriving African continent. 

Mesfin Tegenu is executive chairman of the American Ethiopian Public Affairs Committee.