Ethiopia Faces TPLF Advance and U.S. Trade Threat

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declares state of emergency, dozens of countries join methane and deforestation pledges at COP26, and the Islamic State kills dozens in Kabul hospital attack.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared a six-month state of emergency on Tuesday in response to a rapid advance by Tigrayan forces, which has put rebel forces within 200 miles of the capital, Addis Ababa.

Abiy has in recent days told citizens to take up arms and organize their neighborhoods in preparation for a potential Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) invasion, declaring in a televised address that “dying for Ethiopia is a duty [for] all of us.”

It’s a remarkable turnaround for the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who promised a swift end to an offensive launched against the TPLF last November.

Since then, federal forces have captured Tigray’s capital, Mekele, only to be forced out roughly six months later. They then returned to fighting following a hastily declared cease-fire in June.

The strategic failure of Ethiopian government forces to tame TPLF rebels can be traced to the beginning of the conflict. Tigrayans, who dominated Ethiopia’s government for decades, also account for a disproportionate share of the country’s top military commanders. When many of them sided with the TPLF, they set the stage to outfox their federal army counterparts.

As William Davison, an Ethiopia expert and senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, explained, the well-trained Tigrayan forces have been able to build up considerable momentum since July, and they have benefited from a corresponding drop in federal troop morale that has compounded territorial gains.

To regain the upper hand, the Ethiopian Air Force has recently started bombing targets in Tigray, with questionable results. But while the airstrikes showcased the government’s technological supremacy—and led to accusations of targeting civilians—it has done little to stop the rebel advance. “This is still an infantry-heavy army, it’s not like there’s some key weapons factory or training institute they can target.” Davison said. “So I don’t think the federal government is achieving anything, really, other than enraging Tigrayans further.”

And while an invasion of Addis Ababa may not be imminent, the TPLF has other means to pressure the central government. Its recent seizure of key towns put it close to controlling the landlocked country’s main trade route to the Port of Djibouti, giving the rebels a chance to both strangle the capital and free up a route for much-needed aid to the estimated 400,000 people facing famine in Tigray.

To add to Abiy’s problems, the U.S. government has just declared Ethiopia out of compliance with the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) due to alleged human rights violations in Tigray—a move that would deny Ethiopia duty-free access to U.S. markets if it does not return to compliance by January. It is not a trivial threat; Mamo Mihretu, Ethiopia’s chief trade negotiator, wrote in Foreign Policy last month that removing AGOA privileges would pose an “existential threat” to the country’s manufacturing sector.

Confronted with a TPLF force with the wind at its back and a looming economic blow from Washington, Abiy’s best option may be de-escalation. “I think now is the time for the federal government to acknowledge the degree to which the Tigray resistance is a force to be reckoned with and to look at making some sort of concessions to try and stop this in its tracks,” Davison said. “Because the direction it’s going in looks fantastically perilous.”

Climate pledges. This year’s major United Nations climate summit, known as COP26, delivered some tangible results on Tuesday as more than 100 countries joined a U.S.- and European Union-led pledge to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The greenhouse gas has a heat-trapping potential roughly 30 times that of carbon dioxide, but it dissipates from the atmosphere much more quickly.

Alongside the methane pledge, 100 countries also joined an initiative to halt and reverse deforestation by the end of the decade, a timeframe that has come under criticism from climate activists.

Today’s theme at the climate conference is finance, with talks expected to cover a global carbon market and funding for a green transition in developing countries.

Islamic State attacks Kabul. At least 25 people were killed and 50 more were injured in a suspected Islamic State attack on a military hospital in Kabul on Tuesday, one of the deadliest attacks since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan. Islamic State attacks have increased in the country in recent weeks and come amid reports that former members of the ousted Afghan government’s military and intelligence services have begun enlisting with the terrorist group.

U.S-Russia relations. The top U.S. spy, CIA Director William Burns, finishes up a two-day visit to Moscow today as part of a flurry of U.S. diplomatic engagement with Russia. As the New York Times reported over the weekend, Burns’s trip follows trips by several White House officials to Moscow in recent months that have yielded few concrete results but helped “to prevent Russian-American tensions from spiraling out of control.”

AUKUS fallout. Australia and France have deepened the diplomatic rift created by the defense pact among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—known as AUKUS—as France’s Ambassador to Australia Jean-Pierre Thebault accused Canberra officials of “deceit” in cancelling a deal to build Australia’s next submarine fleet. The comments follow a personal spat between Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and French President Emmanuel Macron after the former leaked a text conversation between the two.

The text from Macron, sent two days before the AUKUS announcement, read: “Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarine ambitions?” and has been used to suggest that France was not as blindsided by the deal as it has let on. A French official described the leak as proof of Australia’s “very inelegant methods.”

U.S. election funding. Foreign nationals are allowed to finance U.S. ballot initiatives, according to a Federal Election Commission ruling first reported by Axios. Foreign donations are banned under U.S. electoral law, but the ruling applies that law only to elections, not state-level referendums. Although the decision was made at the federal level, U.S. states can enact their own bans on foreign funding; so far, only seven states have done so.

Britain’s Brexit divide has jumped from the (sometimes empty) fruit and vegetable shelves in the country’s supermarkets to the poultry section after a chicken product made from “British chicken and non-EU salt and pepper” was criticized by some customers as jingoistic. Morrisons, the chain responsible for the product, has issued an apology and promised to change the packaging.

“Our chicken label is adhering to British packaging regulations, however we will be redesigning it to make it clear this is not a political commentary,” the company said. Ironically, the vaguely nationalistic language was chosen to adhere to EU regulations.