August 4, 2021 (Walta) – The United States of America has called on Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to withdraw its forces immediately from the Amhara and Afar regions.
The Director of United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, made the call on a post she made on her twitter account.
She also made the call for the Amhara regional government to withdraw its forces from Western Tigray and Eritrean government to withdraw its force permanently from Ethiopia.
People are asking why Samantha failed to call on Sudan to withdraw its forces from Ethiopia as well.
“If aid is to reach people in need in Tigray, then all parties must end hostilities. All parties should accelerate unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance to those affected by the conflict, and the commercial blockade of Tigray must end,” she twitted.
Following her tweets, people have been reacting to in a different manner. One of such tweet is from Ann Garrison, an independent journalist.
“At least she didn’t call for the Ethiopian government to withdraw from anywhere. I wonder whether that means, she knows she’s lost the battle to portray the Ethiopian government and national army as the aggressors,” tweets Ann.
Samantha Power is currently visiting Sudan. She is expected to arrive in Ethiopia this week. She is seeking to press the government t of Ethiopia to unblock aid and end conflict.
TPLF has been designated as a terrorist group by Ethiopian House of People’s Representatives.
In her visit in Sudan, she has made several meetings with senior leadership of Sudan in which she shared the news of Sudanese Council of Ministers Unanimous vote to join the International Criminal Court.
“A joint Transitional Government and Sovereign Council session votes next. A revolution for “Freedom Peace and Justice” just took a key step toward ending impunity” Samantha twitted.
It seems a puzzle when the US itself is not signatory off ICC but pushing Sudan to be a signatory.
She also visited the Um Rakuba Camp in Eastern Sudan. The camp hosts refugees that fled the conflict in Tigray region of Ethiopia.
Ethiopians has been critical about Samantha’s visit to Ethiopia. Many of them see her as a destabilizing force in the Biden administration. That emanates from Samantha’s perceived role in Libya crisis while serving the Obama Administration.
US position regarding the current situation in Ethiopia in general and Power’s ill-advised tweets about the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region in particular is fueling sense of nationalism in Ethiopia in an unprecedented manner, at least, in past three decades.
Samantha Power served as the 28th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017.
She began her career as a war correspondent covering the Yugoslav Wars. She was a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama until March 2008, when she resigned from his presidential campaign after apologizing for referring to then-Senator Hillary Clinton as “a monster” during an interview.
Power joined the Obama State Department transition team in late November 2008. She served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council from January 2009 to February 2013.
In April 2012, Obama chose her to chair Atrocities Prevention Board. As U.N. ambassador, Power’s office focused on Middle East and North Africa, Sudan, and Myanmar. She is considered to have been a key figure in the Obama administration in persuading the president to intervene militarily in Libya.