Day: September 30, 2021

The U.N. secretary-general expressed “shock” Thursday after the Ethiopian government announced the expulsion of seven senior U.N. humanitarian officials working in the country.
“In Ethiopia, the U.N. is delivering lifesaving aid — including food, medicine, water, and sanitation supplies — to people in desperate need,” Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “I have full confidence in the U.N. staff who are in Ethiopia doing this work.”
He said the organization is engaging with the Ethiopian authorities “in the expectation that the concerned U.N. staff will be allowed to continue their important work.”
The seven officials have been given 72 hours to leave Ethiopia. They include the U.N.’s deputy humanitarian chief, the deputy humanitarian coordinator, and the U.N. Children’s Agency (UNICEF) representative.
In a tweet, the ministry of foreign affairs said the seven were “meddling in the internal affairs of the country.”
Conflict-induced hunger
The Ethiopian federal government has been engaged in an armed conflict with rebels in the northern Tigray region for nearly one year. The government declared a unilateral cease-fire and withdrew its forces in June, but the conflict has continued to spill into the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar.
Of the 6 million people who live in Tigray, the U.N. says 5.2 million need some level of food assistance. Over 400,000 people are already living in famine-like conditions, and another 1.8 million people are on the brink of famine.
On Wednesday, U.N. Humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths said that after 11 months of conflict and three months of a de facto government blockade, the humanitarian crisis in Tigray is spiraling out of control.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Griffiths said the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia is a “stain on our conscience,” as civilians starve because aid workers are being blocked from getting enough supplies to them.
One hundred aid trucks are needed daily in the region, but in the past week, only 79 in total were allowed in, a U.N. spokesman said.
“Trucks carrying fuel and medical supplies still cannot enter into Tigray,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday. “Trucks are waiting in Semera, in Afar, to travel to Mekelle.”
The federal government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, blames the rebels for blocking the aid deliveries.
White House condemnation
“The U.S. government condemns in the strongest possible terms the government of Ethiopia’s unprecedented action to expel the leadership of all of the United Nations organizations involved in ongoing humanitarian operations,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.
Earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order allowing the government to impose financial sanctions on those who prolong the conflict.
“We will not hesitate to use this or any other tool at our disposal to respond quickly and decisively to those who obstruct humanitarian assistance to people of Ethiopia,” Psaki said.

Source: Voice of America

The fragile nature of the security situation in Sudan was exposed by a deadly gunfight in Gabra earlier this week. Authorities arrested 11 alleged terrorists following the battle in which five Sudan General Intelligence Service members were killed.
Analysts blamed the violence on the presence of foreign insurgents in the country and the transitional nature of the military-civilian government that has governed Sudan since 2019, when President Omar al-Bashir was ousted by the military after months of protests.
Khalifa Sidiq, a professor at the International University of Africa in Khartoum and an expert on Islamist groups, told VOA that Sudan’s proximity to other troubled states contributes to the problem.
“The Gabra incident,” Sidiq said, “is not removed from that context. During this transitional period, Sudan is experiencing a security crisis with open borders to hot spots in the region.” As examples, Sidiq pointed to Libya and to Somalia, where the jihadi group al-Shabab operates.
“Sudan’s borders with Chad and the Central African Republic are also porous,” he said.
Sudan’s history of terrorism goes back to the 1970s and was amplified during the 1990s, when it harbored al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and was found to have assisted al-Qaida in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Only after the ouster of al-Bashir and the payment of $335 million in compensation to the victims of several terror attacks did Washington remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terror.
Sidiq pointed out several factors prompting extremist groups to operate in Sudan.
“Among them is the presence of United Nations [and] African Union troops under UNAMID and its successor UNITAMS,” which he said were “foreign multinational forces operating in a Muslim country” that encourage “extremist groups to rise and combat them.”
Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center who was formerly with the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan as well as the former White House Africa director, agreed with Sidiq.
“There are genuine security threats in the country and those security threats require a competent, capable and professional security service to confront them. That much is not in doubt,” he said, adding, “I think the challenge that Sudan faces today is beyond these legitimate threats.”
Role of armed forces
This week’s killings in Gabra and an attempted coup last week, Hudson said, should not be used as an excuse by Sudan’s military to undermine the civilian-led government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
“This will likely be used by the military to demonstrate that they need to have a prominent role in running the country again,” he said. And this week’s shootings “just further underscore the need for a comprehensive conversation on security sector reform and the role of the military in the country going forward.”
As military and civilian officials in Sudan’s transitional government have traded accusations about what led to last week’s coup attempt, observers said the situation exposed the fragile military-civilian partnership in Sudan’s government.
No clear link to IS
Last year, Hamdok survived an assassination attempt when his motorcade was targeted with explosives while he was on his way to his office. Hudson said it wasn’t clear whether the most recent events were connected to the assassination attempt.
Officials have not released information about the nationalities and motives of the terrorists connected to the latest events in Sudan.
“My sense is that [the Gabra incident] is separate, that there are former regime elements, [including] Islamists, which remain present in the country. I do not think that they are the same as Islamic State cells,” Hudson said. “I think that there’s been no demonstration that there’s overlap between elements of the former regime and more hard-core terrorists — you know, international terrorist elements. That link has not been established.”

Source: Voice of America