Source: United States Senator for Delaware Christopher Coons
WILMINGTON, Del. — In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and chairman of the State and Foreign Operations (SFOPS) Appropriations Subcommittee, published an op-ed in Foreign Affairs on the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia. In the op-ed, Senator Coons calls for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and his government as well as the Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) to lead the way and create conditions under which both sides to the conflict can negotiate and find a peaceful political resolution.
Senator Coons travelled to Ethiopia to meet with Prime Minister Abiy in March as President Biden’s emissary. Last month, along with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Ranking Member Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Senator Coons introduced new bipartisan legislation sanctioning parties involved in the conflict in Tigray.
Foreign Affairs: Peace is still possible in Ethiopia
By Chris Coons
Ethiopia is sprinting toward calamity. Last week, as the rebel forces of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and their allies advanced toward the capital of Addis Ababa, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed traveled to the frontline and vowed to lead Ethiopian troops into battle himself. “We won’t give in until we bury the enemy,” he said. Not to be outdone, a spokesperson for the TPLF called Abiy’s leadership a “chokehold on our people” and pledged to continue the rebels’ “inexorable advance.”
If Abiy and his opponents continue on their current path, they risk triggering not only massive bloodshed and economic collapse but the fracture of the Ethiopian state as we know it. Ethiopia is at risk of becoming this generation’s Yugoslavia: a great nation and a regional leader that violently shatters along ethnic lines. Echoes of the bloody Yugoslav wars are already evident in the polarization, hate speech, and violence that have gripped Ethiopia over the last year. The memory of those previous conflicts haunts me when I think of what may be next for Africa’s second most populous nation.
The full op-ed can be read here.
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