foreignpolicy--2020-09-20--Political Violence Could Derail Ethiopia’s Democratic Transition

ADDIS ABABA , Ethiopia—According to his wife , the late Gen. Seare Mekonnen , Ethiopia ’ s former army chief of staff , was assassinated by a bodyguard shortly after 9 p.m. on June 22 , 2019 .
The general was rushed to a hospital , where he later died .
His companion , a retired general who was also hit , died immediately .
His wife was inside their home at the exact moment of the killing , but she was there at the scene when , a few minutes later , the bodyguard sprang from the ground and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the garden , firing a volley of bullets at a security guard in pursuit .
If anybody knows what happened to the widely respected general that night , it is his widow , Tsige Alemayehu .
But , for more than a year after the assassination , she was not asked to testify in the accused bodyguard ’ s trial .
Nor were she and her family allowed to attend the hearing .
Indeed , before June she had never met the prosecutor hired by the government in the case .
Her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the federal police commissioner , and even Ethiopia ’ s prime minister , Abiy Ahmed , were all rebuffed .
“ We don ’ t know what is going on and nobody is telling us , ” she said in an interview in July .
“ There must be something they want to hide.
” Tsige is not alone in her confusion and her suspicions .
In the past two years , political killings and the conspiracy theories they spawn have become a recurrent theme in Ethiopian politics , with powerful and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The proliferation of both reflects the violent nature of regime change and power struggles in an ethnically and ideologically divided country which has never experienced a peaceful political transition .
They also reveal certain deep-rooted facts about the Ethiopian state itself .
In June of this year , Hachalu Hundessa , a popular singer and activist from the Oromo ethnic group , was shot in his car , triggering days of mayhem in which at least 166 people were killed ( some by police , others by mobs ) and more than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ headlines , many low-level officials—including mayors , security chiefs , and opposition politicians—have been killed in the past two years .
Four months before Hachalu ’ s murder , the police commissioner of the town of Burayu was murdered .
The government blamed rebels linked to the Oromo Liberation Front ( OLF ) , an opposition party ; the Oromo opposition blamed the government .
A few months later , the head of the OLF office in the Bole district of Addis Ababa was killed in his car .
A couple of weeks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well-connected businessman allegedly with links to the government was killed in the town of Adama .
As for Seare ’ s assassination in Addis Ababa last year , it happened on the same night as what the government alleged was an attempted coup in the northern region of Amhara .
The plot , which the government said was led by Amhara state ’ s then security chief , Asaminew Tsige , resulted in the murder of several top officials in Amhara including the regional president .
That night , Abiy alleged the two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days , Asaminew was killed by the army while hundreds of his alleged accomplices and co-conspirators , including some opposition leaders , were arrested .
Abiy later claimed that “ the suspected people were trained by people who came from abroad.
” But , in the subsequent months , almost all were released .
In the former chief of staff ’ s case , only his bodyguard remains on trial—and the putative links between that incident and the assassinations in Amhara are no longer under consideration .
Seare ’ s widow believes the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of explanation from the government—point to a cover-up .
“ Justice has not been served , ” she said .
Many Ethiopians at the time questioned the government ’ s version of events , and to this day many doubt its reasons ( or lack thereof ) for releasing suspects .
When discussing their release Abiy did not specify whether they had been exonerated or pardoned .
When asked for further details about the releases , Fikadu Tsega , the deputy attorney general , simply reiterated that the government had made a decision @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s political opening increasingly resembles earlier periods of tumult in Ethiopian history .
Abiy has himself noted parallels with the pattern of violence which followed the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and which involved both a rebel campaign of political assassinations known as the White Terror , and the state-orchestrated mass murders , known as the Red Terror , by the military junta known as the Derg .
“ We all know the history of the Red and White Terror , ” he warned in an interview last year .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officials and the government during that time responded with unmatched force .
There are people who want to repeat that .
We have to be responsible not to repeat that history.
” It also resembles the mid-1990s , after the EPRDF overthrew the Derg in 1991 and then fell out with its allies in the transitional government , ushering in a period of bloody instability .
In 1996 , an Oromo singer and political activist called Ebbisaa Addunyaa was slain in his home in Addis Ababa in circumstances which echo those surrounding the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Oromo opposition blamed the government for the murder .
But some observers believe that intra-Oromo rivalries and even personal betrayal might have played a part , according to Endalk Chala , a professor at Hamline University who is researching a history of the OLF .
Nobody was ever held accountable .
The conflicting interpretations of Hachalu ’ s murder today reflect similar divisions .
Almost immediately after his death , members of the Oromo opposition accused the government .
The government pointed to indications that Hachalu may have been killed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the musician ’ s political moderation .
But the chance that he was murdered for more mundane reasons—such as a romantic feud— can not be entirely discounted .
The more fundamental problem for Ethiopia ’ s stability is that Abiy spoke out before any real investigation could take place .
As he did in the hours after the so-called Amhara coup attempt the previous year , Abiy appeared on television ( dressed again in army fatigues ) and blamed the incident on “ anti-reformists.
” Four days later he appeared to blame Egypt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a major dispute over the construction of the Nile dam : “ Those external and internal forces who were not successful with the Great Ethiopia Renaissance Dam issue have tried their utmost efforts to create chaos at this time.
” Meanwhile , Shimelis Abdisa , head of Oromia region , hinted heavily in a televised statement on June 30 at the involvement of Tigrayan politicians , alleging they organized the assassination in order to “ regain the power which they had lost.
” Since then the police have arrested four suspects for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s office , had taken orders from the Oromo Liberation Army ( an armed breakaway faction of the OLF ) .
This pattern of inconsistent public statements and reckless politicization by both government and opposition leaders is now a familiar one .
After the grenade attack in Meskel Square in 2018 , the government swiftly blamed former Tigrayan security officials—including the former head of national intelligence .
Police arrested 30 people suspected of involvement in the blast , as well as nine police officers for failing to prevent the attack , including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
More than two years later , on Aug. 28 this year , five non-Tigrayan individuals were convicted for the incident .
All others have since been released or had their charges dropped .
Following the death of the dam ’ s chief engineer , some opposed to Abiy ’ s government accused it of murdering him .
While on a visit to the United States Abiy himself called it an assassination , before the police said it was a suicide .
Others suggested the assassins might be linked to the Tigrayan-dominated military-industrial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was responsible for much of the dam ’ s construction ( and was widely believed to have embezzled funds ) .
Nothing has ever been definitively proved .
Another problem is the overwhelming dominance of state-controlled or state-affiliated media , even in the relatively liberal press environment of the Abiy era .
These outlets flood the airwaves with the official narrative following major incidents , enjoy privileged access to political court cases , and frequently broadcast highly partisan “ documentaries ” targeting political opponents .
This feeds polarization by restricting the space for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And it is exacerbated by the government ’ s habit of shutting down the Internet in moments of crisis , which leaves the field open to extremist online voices which predominate among Ethiopia ’ s large and politically assertive overseas diaspora .
The flip side of this is an entrenched culture of opacity around the real workings of politics and government , which itself fosters the kind of climate of intrigue and mistrust which can lead to violence .
“ It becomes hard to say what is and isn ’ t conspiracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anthropologist at the University of Glasgow .
“ These aren ’ t totally wild political tales with witches and illuminati in them ; they are plausible explanations in a context where intrigue and opacity are the norm.
” One consequence is that responding to assassinations and political killings has become , especially for the opposition , principally about seizing control of the narrative .
This can come at the expense of seeking to establish the truth by pressing for independent and transparent investigations—and this matters in today ’ s Ethiopia , where independent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early days of the EPRDF government , there were signs of improvements in judicial independence .
But these were more or less reversed in the years following the 2005 national election—the closest thing to a free contest in Ethiopian history , and in which a coalition of opposition parties claimed victory .
In reaction , the government of then Prime Minister Meles Zenawi crushed what remained of the courts ’ independence , flooding the benches with loyalists and restricting employment opportunities for dissidents .
“ They aggressively went after those who resisted party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a law professor at the University of Missouri .
The attorney general ’ s office is headed by a political appointee and member of the ruling party .
It is responsible not only for giving legal advice to the government but also for prosecuting crimes , which means there is no institutional safeguard against politically motivated prosecutions .
“ The entire bureaucracy—the entire law enforcement process—has historically been , and is still perceived to be , politicized , ” said Adem K. Abebe , a legal expert based in The Hague .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ despite its pledge to do things differently .
Even under Abiy , there is still an almost total merger of party and state .
It is a phenomenon which dates back as far as Ethiopia has had parties ( under the Derg there was only one party , and before the 1974 revolution the emperor himself was , in effect , the state ) .
And its consequences are huge , profoundly shaping the culture of power and influencing the everyday relationship between citizens and their rulers .
For those outside the state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Adem calls self-help : “ If people think the state won ’ t do anything , they take matters into their own hands ” —which can mean political violence .
For those inside the state and the party , it encourages both corruption and a sense of impunity .
All feed the culture which makes assassinations more likely .
In late 2019 , Abiy ditched the EPRDF and formed a new party , the Prosperity Party , which promised to separate itself , for the first time , from the state .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aligned with the party to head various institutions .
On Aug. 19 , he made a highly regarded constitutional scholar , Gedion Timothewos Hessebon , the attorney general—but Gedion is not necessarily independent ; he is said by well-connected political observers to have become a member of the PP .
But as Ethiopia ’ s long history of political violence and politicized justice clearly shows , it will take more than changes in personnel to fix problems of this kind .
“ If they want to regain trust in the institutions they will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said Abel Abate Demissie , an Ethiopian political analyst and associate fellow at Chatham House in London .
At a minimum this must involve depoliticizing the attorney general ’ s office and redefining its functions .
There should also be an entirely independent commission of inquiry headed by figures from outside politics to conduct investigations into all the major assassinations of recent years .
And the government ought to take a longer view , too , and establish—following broad-based public consultations—a wide-reaching truth-and-reconciliation process to tackle the legacies of historic violence and injustice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the painful and destructive cycle which increasingly threatens to drive it over a cliff .

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia—According to his wife, the late Gen. Seare Mekonnen, Ethiopia’s former army chief of staff, was assassinated by a bodyguard shortly after 9 p.m. on June 22, 2019. The general was rushed to a hospital, where he later died. His companion, a retired general who was also hit, died immediately. His wife was inside their home at the exact moment of the killing, but she was there at the scene when, a few minutes later, the bodyguard sprang from the ground and ran to a shed at the end of the garden, firing a volley of bullets at a security guard in pursuit.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia—According to his wife, the late Gen. Seare Mekonnen, Ethiopia’s former army chief of staff, was assassinated by a bodyguard shortly after 9 p.m. on June 22, 2019. The general was rushed to a hospital, where he later died. His companion, a retired general who was also hit, died immediately. His wife was inside their home at the exact moment of the killing, but she was there at the scene when, a few minutes later, the bodyguard sprang from the ground and ran to a shed at the end of the garden, firing a volley of bullets at a security guard in pursuit.
If anybody knows what happened to the widely respected general that night, it is his widow, Tsige Alemayehu. But, for more than a year after the assassination, she was not asked to testify in the accused bodyguard’s trial. Nor were she and her family allowed to attend the hearing. Indeed, before June she had never met the prosecutor hired by the government in the case. Her efforts to speak with the attorney general, the federal police commissioner, and even Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, were all rebuffed. “We don’t know what is going on and nobody is telling us,” she said in an interview in July. “There must be something they want to hide.”
Tsige is not alone in her confusion and her suspicions. In the past two years, political killings and the conspiracy theories they spawn have become a recurrent theme in Ethiopian politics, with powerful and dangerous consequences for an already fragile nation. The proliferation of both reflects the violent nature of regime change and power struggles in an ethnically and ideologically divided country which has never experienced a peaceful political transition. They also reveal certain deep-rooted facts about the Ethiopian state itself.
In June 2018, shortly after Abiy took office and a year before the chief of staff’s killing, there was an apparent attempt on the prime minister’s life in Addis Ababa’s Meskel Square. A grenade was thrown toward the stage as the prime minister finished addressing a public rally, killing two and injuring many more. Two months later, Simegnew Bekele—the chief engineer of the country’s wildly popular infrastructure megaproject, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam—was found dead in his car in the same square. (The police determined it was a suicide, but few are convinced.)
In June of this year, Hachalu Hundessa, a popular singer and activist from the Oromo ethnic group, was shot in his car, triggering days of mayhem in which at least 166 people were killed (some by police, others by mobs) and more than 9,000 people were arrested.
Beyond the headlines, many low-level officials—including mayors, security chiefs, and opposition politicians—have been killed in the past two years. Four months before Hachalu’s murder, the police commissioner of the town of Burayu was murdered. The government blamed rebels linked to the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), an opposition party; the Oromo opposition blamed the government. A few months later, the head of the OLF office in the Bole district of Addis Ababa was killed in his car. A couple of weeks after Hachalu’s killing, a well-connected businessman allegedly with links to the government was killed in the town of Adama.
As for Seare’s assassination in Addis Ababa last year, it happened on the same night as what the government alleged was an attempted coup in the northern region of Amhara. The plot, which the government said was led by Amhara state’s then security chief, Asaminew Tsige, resulted in the murder of several top officials in Amhara including the regional president.
That night, Abiy alleged the two events were linked. In the following days, Asaminew was killed by the army while hundreds of his alleged accomplices and co-conspirators, including some opposition leaders, were arrested. Abiy later claimed that “the suspected people were trained by people who came from abroad.” But, in the subsequent months, almost all were released. In the former chief of staff’s case, only his bodyguard remains on trial—and the putative links between that incident and the assassinations in Amhara are no longer under consideration.
Seare’s widow believes the arrests and subsequent releases—with barely a word of explanation from the government—point to a cover-up. “Justice has not been served,” she said. Many Ethiopians at the time questioned the government’s version of events, and to this day many doubt its reasons (or lack thereof) for releasing suspects. When discussing their release Abiy did not specify whether they had been exonerated or pardoned. When asked for further details about the releases, Fikadu Tsega, the deputy attorney general, simply reiterated that the government had made a decision to do so.
In 2018, the historic transfer of power inside the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)—from the ethnic Tigrayan old guard to Abiy’s supposedly reformist Oromo faction—was hailed as a democratic breakthrough, and Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize a year later. Thousands of political prisoners were released; exiled opposition parties including the OLF were welcomed home; revisions to draconian laws were promised. The independence of state institutions, including the electoral board and judiciary, was also made a priority.
But today’s political opening increasingly resembles earlier periods of tumult in Ethiopian history. Abiy has himself noted parallels with the pattern of violence which followed the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and which involved both a rebel campaign of political assassinations known as the White Terror, and the state-orchestrated mass murders, known as the Red Terror, by the military junta known as the Derg. “We all know the history of the Red and White Terror,” he warned in an interview last year. “It started with the killing of government officials and the government during that time responded with unmatched force. There are people who want to repeat that. We have to be responsible not to repeat that history.”
It also resembles the mid-1990s, after the EPRDF overthrew the Derg in 1991 and then fell out with its allies in the transitional government, ushering in a period of bloody instability. In 1996, an Oromo singer and political activist called Ebbisaa Addunyaa was slain in his home in Addis Ababa in circumstances which echo those surrounding the death of Hachalu this year. Much of the Oromo opposition blamed the government for the murder. But some observers believe that intra-Oromo rivalries and even personal betrayal might have played a part, according to Endalk Chala, a professor at Hamline University who is researching a history of the OLF. Nobody was ever held accountable.
The conflicting interpretations of Hachalu’s murder today reflect similar divisions. Almost immediately after his death, members of the Oromo opposition accused the government. The government pointed to indications that Hachalu may have been killed by militant Oromo nationalists who had previously denounced the musician’s political moderation. But the chance that he was murdered for more mundane reasons—such as a romantic feud—cannot be entirely discounted.
The more fundamental problem for Ethiopia’s stability is that Abiy spoke out before any real investigation could take place. As he did in the hours after the so-called Amhara coup attempt the previous year, Abiy appeared on television (dressed again in army fatigues) and blamed the incident on “anti-reformists.” Four days later he appeared to blame Egypt, with whom Ethiopia is embroiled in a major dispute over the construction of the Nile dam: “Those external and internal forces who were not successful with the Great Ethiopia Renaissance Dam issue have tried their utmost efforts to create chaos at this time.” Meanwhile, Shimelis Abdisa, head of Oromia region, hinted heavily in a televised statement on June 30 at the involvement of Tigrayan politicians, alleging they organized the assassination in order to “regain the power which they had lost.”
Since then the police have arrested four suspects for the killing—who, according to the attorney general’s office, had taken orders from the Oromo Liberation Army (an armed breakaway faction of the OLF).
This pattern of inconsistent public statements and reckless politicization by both government and opposition leaders is now a familiar one. After the grenade attack in Meskel Square in 2018, the government swiftly blamed former Tigrayan security officials—including the former head of national intelligence. Police arrested 30 people suspected of involvement in the blast, as well as nine police officers for failing to prevent the attack, including the capital’s deputy police commissioner. More than two years later, on Aug. 28 this year, five non-Tigrayan individuals were convicted for the incident. All others have since been released or had their charges dropped.
Following the death of the dam’s chief engineer, some opposed to Abiy’s government accused it of murdering him. While on a visit to the United States Abiy himself called it an assassination, before the police said it was a suicide. Others suggested the assassins might be linked to the Tigrayan-dominated military-industrial conglomerate Metals and Engineering Corporation, which was responsible for much of the dam’s construction (and was widely believed to have embezzled funds). Nothing has ever been definitively proved.
A number of theories can be posited to explain these patterns. One is simply incompetence and government incapacity, including a lack of technical expertise for conducting complex investigations. Following the bomb in Addis Ababa, the U.S. government sent a team of experts from the FBI to help determine the cause of the blast, though it was not involved in the subsequent police investigation into the suspects.
Another problem is the overwhelming dominance of state-controlled or state-affiliated media, even in the relatively liberal press environment of the Abiy era. These outlets flood the airwaves with the official narrative following major incidents, enjoy privileged access to political court cases, and frequently broadcast highly partisan “documentaries” targeting political opponents. This feeds polarization by restricting the space for nonpartisan accounts and undermining faith in facts. And it is exacerbated by the government’s habit of shutting down the Internet in moments of crisis, which leaves the field open to extremist online voices which predominate among Ethiopia’s large and politically assertive overseas diaspora.
The flip side of this is an entrenched culture of opacity around the real workings of politics and government, which itself fosters the kind of climate of intrigue and mistrust which can lead to violence. “It becomes hard to say what is and isn’t conspiracy,” argued Diego Malara, an anthropologist at the University of Glasgow. “These aren’t totally wild political tales with witches and illuminati in them; they are plausible explanations in a context where intrigue and opacity are the norm.”
One consequence is that responding to assassinations and political killings has become, especially for the opposition, principally about seizing control of the narrative. This can come at the expense of seeking to establish the truth by pressing for independent and transparent investigations—and this matters in today’s Ethiopia, where independent investigations do not exist.
“During the old regime we had a lot of courts and a lot of wrangling even if we had no due process of law. Since the Revolution, we have neither courts nor wrangling nor due process of law,” wrote the Ethiopian writer-in-exile, Hama Tuma, in his 1993 satirical classic The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories. “In my country, going to court of one’s free will is considered a sign of mental imbalance.”
In the early days of the EPRDF government, there were signs of improvements in judicial independence. But these were more or less reversed in the years following the 2005 national election—the closest thing to a free contest in Ethiopian history, and in which a coalition of opposition parties claimed victory. In reaction, the government of then Prime Minister Meles Zenawi crushed what remained of the courts’ independence, flooding the benches with loyalists and restricting employment opportunities for dissidents. “They aggressively went after those who resisted party dictates,” said Mekonnen Firew Ayano, a law professor at the University of Missouri.
The attorney general’s office is headed by a political appointee and member of the ruling party. It is responsible not only for giving legal advice to the government but also for prosecuting crimes, which means there is no institutional safeguard against politically motivated prosecutions. “The entire bureaucracy—the entire law enforcement process—has historically been, and is still perceived to be, politicized,” said Adem K. Abebe, a legal expert based in The Hague. This continues under the new administration, despite its pledge to do things differently.
Even under Abiy, there is still an almost total merger of party and state. It is a phenomenon which dates back as far as Ethiopia has had parties (under the Derg there was only one party, and before the 1974 revolution the emperor himself was, in effect, the state). And its consequences are huge, profoundly shaping the culture of power and influencing the everyday relationship between citizens and their rulers. For those outside the state and the party, it encourages what Adem calls self-help: “If people think the state won’t do anything, they take matters into their own hands”—which can mean political violence. For those inside the state and the party, it encourages both corruption and a sense of impunity. All feed the culture which makes assassinations more likely.
In late 2019, Abiy ditched the EPRDF and formed a new party, the Prosperity Party, which promised to separate itself, for the first time, from the state. He has also appointed several respected individuals not aligned with the party to head various institutions. On Aug. 19, he made a highly regarded constitutional scholar, Gedion Timothewos Hessebon, the attorney general—but Gedion is not necessarily independent; he is said by well-connected political observers to have become a member of the PP.
But as Ethiopia’s long history of political violence and politicized justice clearly shows, it will take more than changes in personnel to fix problems of this kind. “If they want to regain trust in the institutions they will have to be really creative,” said Abel Abate Demissie, an Ethiopian political analyst and associate fellow at Chatham House in London.
At a minimum this must involve depoliticizing the attorney general’s office and redefining its functions. There should also be an entirely independent commission of inquiry headed by figures from outside politics to conduct investigations into all the major assassinations of recent years. And the government ought to take a longer view, too, and establish—following broad-based public consultations—a wide-reaching truth-and-reconciliation process to tackle the legacies of historic violence and injustice. Otherwise, Ethiopia will not break the painful and destructive cycle which increasingly threatens to drive it over a cliff.


foreignpolicy--2020-09-22--Pompeo’s Critics Misrepresent the Commission on Unalienable Rights

Human rights organizations went on a public relations blitz this summer as the U.S. State Department ’ s Commission on Unalienable Rights first released the draft , and then final version , of its report .
These same groups have been vocal opponents of the commission— which I serve on as rapporteur—from the start , anointing themselves the only true guardians of human rights as soon as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced its formation last year .
Now that the commission has produced something deliverable , nongovernmental organizations say they feel vindicated .
Pulling no punches , Kenneth Roth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Watch , slammed the report in an Aug. 27 article in Foreign Policy as “ a frontal assault on international human rights law.
” Roth is an influential figure in the world of human rights advocacy , so his statements carry weight .
But , in this case , he and like-minded activists are victims of their own ideological blinders .
By any objective measure , the only assault has been a misguided , rhetorical one on the part of those entities that , in virtually all domains save this one , advocate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unorthodox views .
To see why their feigned outrage falls flat , it is necessary to consider how the commission report was written , why certain emphases are present , and what the text , on a close read , actually says .
The first misunderstanding concerns the role of Pompeo himself in authoring the report .
According to Roth , Pompeo “ has imposed his personal preferences ” regarding which human rights are worthy of respect .
But Pompeo has done no such thing : Although he created the commission , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The commission was established under federal law as an independent advisory committee within the State Department , not as a mouthpiece for any person or political party .
The first time Pompeo saw the report was after it had been written and adopted unanimously by its 11 commissioners .
Counted among their ranks were three women and eight men ; Republicans , Democrats , and independents ; members of racial and ethnic minorities ; and people identifying as Christian , Muslim , and Jewish , as well as several who are secular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ secretary of state is free to draw conclusions from the report—as he did in a highly publicized July 16 speech in Philadelphia .
But when he does , he is speaking on behalf of the Trump administration , not as a spokesperson for the commission .
The second misunderstanding hinges on the role of nostalgia as an alleged operating principle .
Critics have disdained the commission ’ s focus on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights .
In their view , the commission “ lionizes ” that nonbinding document , which they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anachronistic , critics say , to see the declaration as the “ heyday of the human rights movement , ” since a whole corpus of legally enforceable human rights law followed from the declaration in the decades since it was adopted .
The commission never downplayed later human rights treaties ; rather , it in no uncertain terms affirmed their significance .
But the commission never downplayed later human rights treaties ; rather , it in no uncertain terms affirmed their significance , stressing that the United States is bound by any treaties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ post-declaration covenants and states not only that their development is “ welcome ” but also that it “ has achieved tangible results.
” The detailed focus on the 1948 declaration was required by the commission charter , which was a call to get back to the basics .
Since that charter tasked the group to ground its advice explicitly in the bedrock of human rights law , it is only natural that commissioners sought to adhere to their mandate .
The third concern relates to something Roth and others dismiss as a nonissue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Putting aside all the bombast , the commission ’ s core point regarding proliferation was actually a simple and noncontroversial one : “ More rights do not always yield more justice.
” Any astute reader would note the careful and deliberate use of “ always.
” This topic takes up less than two full pages of the nearly 60-page commission report , so , contrary to some accounts , it is not the singular focus of the document .
Nonetheless , the report accurately describes a phenomenon that is easily verifiable : In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ list of 30 articles ; fast-forward to 2013 , and the tally of international rights provisions reached anywhere from 676 to 1,377—so high that no one was quite sure of the total count .
In recent years , while diplomats and scholars have commented on the proliferation of rights in global health , they have also lamented United Nations declarations on the rights of peasants , the right to solidarity , and the right to peace—not because there is anything wrong with them in principle , but rather because , as the number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rights becomes devalued .
As one article in Human Rights Quarterly summarizes , “ rights proliferation is a significant concern and is increasingly discussed within the human rights community.
” Indeed , Roth appeared to admit as much when he testified before the commission earlier this year , saying that his organization occasionally has to turn down advocacy work on the grounds that not every social aim qualifies as a human right .
As the number of rights multiplies , the currency of rights becomes devalued .
The fourth and final point of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
NGOs like Human Rights Watch demand that the United States accept the determinations of entities like the U.N. Human Rights Committee—a body of independent experts that monitors the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights .
Roth and others attempt to frame these institutions as the final arbiters of human rights law , something akin to the U.S. Supreme Court in a domestic legal context .
But the analogy is imperfect : U.S. citizens elect officials who nominate and confirm justices for the nation ’ s highest court .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And when the United States ratifies treaties , it does not cede interpretive authority to them ; it routinely attaches “ reservations ” and “ understandings ” meant to ensure consistency between the U.S. legal system and whatever the international agreement happens to be .
Roth omits mention of black-letter international law : In almost all cases , treaty provisions explicitly refrain from endowing entities with binding interpretive authority .
This makes intuitive sense .
As the commission report states , “ It would be a sad irony if the idea of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ positive laws of nations must be accountable to higher principles of justice—were reduced to whatever current treaties and institutions happen to say about it.
” Both Republican and Democratic administrations have sought to preserve U.S. authority to interpret human rights treaties , but Roth nonetheless singles out the commission and then issues a damning indictment , claiming that “ [ t ] he commission seems to favor an a la carte approach to rights : The U.S. government will pick the rights that it wants to observe , and others can do the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is inaccurate ; the report specifically and strongly rejects a cherry-picking approach , asserting that “ it defies the intent and structure of the UDHR to pick and choose among its rights according to preferences and ideological presuppositions while ignoring other fundamental rights.
” It is true that the commission cites the Vienna Declaration—a 1993 human rights instrument—which suggests that the universality and indivisibility of human rights do not mean uniformity in bringing them to life .
But the commission , at the same time , was careful to stress that not every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be accepted as an excuse for violating human rights.
” The point the commission made is that framing the issue as an either/or—either you stand for universal human rights , or you champion particular traditions—presents a false choice .
The commission ’ s work has started a valuable conversation about the role human rights play in foreign policy .
For that conversation to continue constructively , however , it would be useful if critics took the time to read the full report and accurately represent its contents .

Human rights organizations went on a public relations blitz this summer as the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights first released the draft, and then final version, of its report. These same groups have been vocal opponents of the commission— which I serve on as rapporteur—from the start, anointing themselves the only true guardians of human rights as soon as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced its formation last year. Now that the commission has produced something deliverable, nongovernmental organizations say they feel vindicated. Pulling no punches, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, slammed the report in an Aug. 27 article in Foreign Policy as “a frontal assault on international human rights law.”
Human rights organizations went on a public relations blitz this summer as the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights first released the draft, and then final version, of its report. These same groups have been vocal opponents of the commission— which I serve on as rapporteur—from the start, anointing themselves the only true guardians of human rights as soon as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced its formation last year. Now that the commission has produced something deliverable, nongovernmental organizations say they feel vindicated. Pulling no punches, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, slammed the report in an Aug. 27 article in Foreign Policy as “a frontal assault on international human rights law.”
Roth is an influential figure in the world of human rights advocacy, so his statements carry weight. But, in this case, he and like-minded activists are victims of their own ideological blinders. By any objective measure, the only assault has been a misguided, rhetorical one on the part of those entities that, in virtually all domains save this one, advocate for anti-bullying and the free expression of unorthodox views. To see why their feigned outrage falls flat, it is necessary to consider how the commission report was written, why certain emphases are present, and what the text, on a close read, actually says.
The first misunderstanding concerns the role of Pompeo himself in authoring the report. According to Roth, Pompeo “has imposed his personal preferences” regarding which human rights are worthy of respect. But Pompeo has done no such thing: Although he created the commission, he played no role in drafting the report.
The commission was established under federal law as an independent advisory committee within the State Department, not as a mouthpiece for any person or political party. The first time Pompeo saw the report was after it had been written and adopted unanimously by its 11 commissioners. Counted among their ranks were three women and eight men; Republicans, Democrats, and independents; members of racial and ethnic minorities; and people identifying as Christian, Muslim, and Jewish, as well as several who are secular. Like any other person, the secretary of state is free to draw conclusions from the report—as he did in a highly publicized July 16 speech in Philadelphia. But when he does, he is speaking on behalf of the Trump administration, not as a spokesperson for the commission.
The second misunderstanding hinges on the role of nostalgia as an alleged operating principle. Critics have disdained the commission’s focus on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In their view, the commission “lionizes” that nonbinding document, which they see as an error. It is anachronistic, critics say, to see the declaration as the “heyday of the human rights movement,” since a whole corpus of legally enforceable human rights law followed from the declaration in the decades since it was adopted.
The commission never downplayed later human rights treaties; rather, it in no uncertain terms affirmed their significance.
But the commission never downplayed later human rights treaties; rather, it in no uncertain terms affirmed their significance, stressing that the United States is bound by any treaties it ratifies. The report mentions several post-declaration covenants and states not only that their development is “welcome” but also that it “has achieved tangible results.” The detailed focus on the 1948 declaration was required by the commission charter, which was a call to get back to the basics. Since that charter tasked the group to ground its advice explicitly in the bedrock of human rights law, it is only natural that commissioners sought to adhere to their mandate.
The third concern relates to something Roth and others dismiss as a nonissue, namely that of rights proliferation. Putting aside all the bombast, the commission’s core point regarding proliferation was actually a simple and noncontroversial one: “More rights do not always yield more justice.” Any astute reader would note the careful and deliberate use of “always.”
This topic takes up less than two full pages of the nearly 60-page commission report, so, contrary to some accounts, it is not the singular focus of the document. Nonetheless, the report accurately describes a phenomenon that is easily verifiable: In 1948, the declaration contained a modest list of 30 articles; fast-forward to 2013, and the tally of international rights provisions reached anywhere from 676 to 1,377—so high that no one was quite sure of the total count.
In recent years, while diplomats and scholars have commented on the proliferation of rights in global health, they have also lamented United Nations declarations on the rights of peasants, the right to solidarity, and the right to peace—not because there is anything wrong with them in principle, but rather because, as the number of rights multiplies, the currency of rights becomes devalued. As one article in Human Rights Quarterly summarizes, “rights proliferation is a significant concern and is increasingly discussed within the human rights community.” Indeed, Roth appeared to admit as much when he testified before the commission earlier this year, saying that his organization occasionally has to turn down advocacy work on the grounds that not every social aim qualifies as a human right.
As the number of rights multiplies, the currency of rights becomes devalued.
The fourth and final point of contention concerns interpretations of human rights treaties. NGOs like Human Rights Watch demand that the United States accept the determinations of entities like the U.N. Human Rights Committee—a body of independent experts that monitors the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Roth and others attempt to frame these institutions as the final arbiters of human rights law, something akin to the U.S. Supreme Court in a domestic legal context. But the analogy is imperfect: U.S. citizens elect officials who nominate and confirm justices for the nation’s highest court. International interpretive bodies are less directly accountable. And when the United States ratifies treaties, it does not cede interpretive authority to them; it routinely attaches “reservations” and “understandings” meant to ensure consistency between the U.S. legal system and whatever the international agreement happens to be.
Roth omits mention of black-letter international law: In almost all cases, treaty provisions explicitly refrain from endowing entities with binding interpretive authority. This makes intuitive sense. As the commission report states, “It would be a sad irony if the idea of human rights—which reflects the conviction that the positive laws of nations must be accountable to higher principles of justice—were reduced to whatever current treaties and institutions happen to say about it.”
Both Republican and Democratic administrations have sought to preserve U.S. authority to interpret human rights treaties, but Roth nonetheless singles out the commission and then issues a damning indictment, claiming that “[t]he commission seems to favor an a la carte approach to rights: The U.S. government will pick the rights that it wants to observe, and others can do the same.”
Once again, this accusation is inaccurate; the report specifically and strongly rejects a cherry-picking approach, asserting that “it defies the intent and structure of the UDHR to pick and choose among its rights according to preferences and ideological presuppositions while ignoring other fundamental rights.”
It is true that the commission cites the Vienna Declaration—a 1993 human rights instrument—which suggests that the universality and indivisibility of human rights do not mean uniformity in bringing them to life. But the commission, at the same time, was careful to stress that not every “claim of cultural specificity ought to be accepted as an excuse for violating human rights.” The point the commission made is that framing the issue as an either/or—either you stand for universal human rights, or you champion particular traditions—presents a false choice.
The commission’s work has started a valuable conversation about the role human rights play in foreign policy. For that conversation to continue constructively, however, it would be useful if critics took the time to read the full report and accurately represent its contents.


foreignpolicy--2020-09-22--The Ethiopian-Egyptian Water War Has Begun

It took only a few weeks to plan the cyberattack—and a few more to abandon the world of ethical hacking for the less noble sort .
But they would do anything for the Nile , the four young Egyptians agreed .
With that , the group calling themselves the Cyber_Horus Group in late June hacked more than a dozen Ethiopian government sites , replacing each page with their own creation : an image of a skeleton pharaoh , clutching a scythe in one hand and a scimitar in the other .
“ If the river ’ s level drops , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hurry , ” warned a message underneath .
“ Prepare the Ethiopian people for the wrath of the Pharaohs.
” “ There is more power than weapons , ” one of the hackers , who asked not to be identified by name , told Foreign Policy .
Also , it was a pretty easy job , the hacker added .
A few weeks later and thousands of miles away , a 21-year-old Ethiopian named Liz applied red lipstick and donned a black T-shirt and jeans .
She positioned her phone on her desk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ influence campaign : a TikTok video .
She danced to a popular Egyptian song underneath the message , “ Distracting the Egyptians while we fill the dam.
” “ There ’ s no other country that can stop us , ” said Liz , who has more than 70,000 followers on the app and whose taunting video was met with praise and threats .
“ It ’ s our right.
” Rarely have young people been so passionate about an infrastructure project .
But the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam , which will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than just a piece of infrastructure .
It has become a nationalistic rallying cry for both Ethiopia and Egypt—two countries scrambling to define their nationhood after years of domestic upheaval .
Many Ethiopians and Egyptians are getting involved in the only way they can—online—and fomenting the first African cyberconflict of its kind , one with far-reaching and long-lasting consequences .
Tensions escalated this year , as the U.S.-brokered negotiations between Ethiopia and Egypt unraveled and new talks mediated by the African Union began .
Two issues are at the core : what will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happen during a dispute .
In terms of the former , Egypt wants the pace of the reservoir filling to be dependent on rains , to ensure a minimum flow if there ’ s a drought ; Ethiopia says such a guarantee is unacceptable .
And in terms of disputes , Egypt and Sudan want a resolution mechanism with binding results , but Ethiopia doesn ’ t .
Construction of the dam was completed in July , and the filling of its reservoir started soon after amid heavy rains but before an agreement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was signed .
The U.S. government , a top source of aid for both Ethiopia and Egypt , said in August that it would halt some aid to Ethiopia over what it saw as a unilateral move to progress with the dam .
At the beginning of the year , when Ethiopia ’ s water minister was asked in a press conference who would control the dam once complete , he looked surprised before responding with a curt , “ It ’ s my dam.
” Ethiopians across social media , including Liz @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and hashtag , urging their government to move forward with the project .
Some have gone further , saying that the dam should be filled regardless of downstream countries ’ positions : One Twitter user wrote , for example , “ There is no need of negotiations with crafty Egypt.
” Egyptians online retorted with pleas using the hashtag # Nile4All and threats such as “ I proudly volunteer to join my Egyptian army to demolish Ethiopia and its dam , ” using hashtags such as # EgyptNileRights .
Social media users from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Internet , but seem to do so most often on Adel el-Adawy ’ s Twitter page : As a member of a prominent Egyptian political dynasty , a professor at the American University in Cairo , and the most visible disseminator of the Egyptian perspective on the dam in English , he has amassed a significant following .
Adawy , whose pinned tweet is a picture of himself shaking hands with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi , posts frequently about the Nile and Ethiopian affairs , especially when things get sticky .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hundessa , a popular activist-singer of Ethiopia ’ s historically marginalized Oromo ethnic group , was killed , the country descended into chaos .
Hundreds were killed as protests were either met with state violence or descended into mob violence .
Adawy posted frequently , underscoring the fractious situation but also fomenting alarmism , such as when he posted that frustrated Ethiopians were privately asking Egypt to overthrow the Ethiopian government .
Soon after one such post , he was bombarded , he said .
“ I got around 500 or 600 friend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I got messages with insults.… I got people sending me certain links , of course I didn ’ t open any of them , ” he said .
Many of the accounts seemed hollow , with little information contained in them .
“ Getting within an hour or two 600 friend requests is not normal.
” Even on Twitter , some of the engagement on Adawy ’ s posts comes from suspicious accounts ; they lack followers , were recently created , have number-filled usernames , or only post about the dam .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ extent of coordination or who might be the coordinator .
“ It only means one thing .
It means we should expect this more and more.
” It ’ s possible that the engagement is coming from concerned Ethiopians at home and abroad , at the encouragement but not the behest of Ethiopian officials .
“ I have friends who joined Twitter just for the sake of this .
It ’ s highly emotional and nationalistic , ” said Endalkachew Chala , an Ethiopian communications professor at Hamline University in Minnesota .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ computational propaganda , ” according to a 2019 report from the Oxford Internet Institute .
Agencies there use human-run social media accounts to spread pro-government propaganda , attack the opposition , and troll users .
The same goes for the Egyptian government .
Though there is no evidence yet that either government was involved in coordinated social media attacks or in the Cyber_Horus hack , the activity from the past few months still represents a milestone .
It has marked the first known time these kinds of digital tools have been used by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from another , said Gilbert Nyandeje , founder and CEO of the Africa Cyber Defense Forum .
“ It only means one thing .
It means we should expect this more and more.
” At their core , all the online attacks , hacks , and discord are driven by the same force : nationalism .
For both countries—Egypt since the 2011 fall of Mubarak and Ethiopia since the 2012 death of strongman Prime Minister Meles Zenawi—national identity has been in flux .
Egypt ’ s Sisi has anchored his legitimacy on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been an emphasis on national security , rounded out by megaprojects such as the Suez Canal expansion and the construction of a new administrative capital city .
But at the core of Egyptian identity is the Nile , so bolstering nationalism means defending the Nile , too .
And officials have encouraged this outlook : One sleekly produced video shared on Facebook by the Ministry of Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs warned , “ More than 40 million Egyptians are facing the threat of drought and thirst.… The cause of water shortage is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than its needs.
” At their core , all the online attacks , hacks , and discord are driven by the same force : nationalism .
It has been a show of vulnerability rare in Arab power politics .
But the strategy has helped garner global sympathy for Egypt , even as its Nile claims are framed by Ethiopia as the result of unjust colonial-era agreements in which Egypt ’ s interests were represented by British colonizers .
Meanwhile , in Ethiopia , Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been unable to manage competing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Abiy came to power in 2018 thanks to a wave of protests that started among young Oromos .
Following decades of authoritarianism and the country ’ s domination by the Tigrayan minority ethnic group , Abiy promised to build bridges spanning ethnic fault lines , cultivate an inclusive nationwide identity , and open up the political space .
But even at the beginning of this year , slow progress on fulfilling these promises was encouraging criticism , including from Oromos who said he was abandoning the cause .
Still , the dam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of all ethnic backgrounds could rally .
“ We do have a lot of divisions—ideological , ethnic , tribal , religious , ” said Chala , the Ethiopian professor .
“ But even though we have these bitter divisions , Ethiopians have overwhelmingly supported this Nile dam especially on social media.
” Even some of Abiy ’ s most outspoken critics , such as prominent Oromo activist and media mogul Jawar Mohammed , posted frequently about Ethiopia ’ s right to fill the dam .
“ Egypt & its backers should know Ethiopia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , agreement or no agreement , ” Jawar tweeted in June .
Everything changed in the following days , however , after the popular singer Hachalu was killed and Jawar was arrested following accusations of inciting ethnic tensions .
While other Oromo activists have echoed Jawar ’ s support of the dam , they have warned against losing sight of the Oromo struggle and what they regard as Abiy ’ s failures.The dam provided a unifying issue around which Ethiopians of all ethnic backgrounds could rally .
Ethiopian officials , meanwhile , continue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dam online and often use the # ItsMyDam hashtag in their own social media posts .
This use of social media to rally around the dam has also meant that Ethiopia ’ s massive global diaspora can get involved , without having to worry about frequent in-country Internet shutdowns that otherwise curtail online movements there .
But nationalism creates problems .
The thousands of Ethiopian refugees , asylum seekers , and migrants living in Egypt are now facing greater pressure and harassment from Egyptian citizens and authorities since the dam tensions started to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an Egyptian migrant rights activist currently in Germany .
And in Ethiopia , it has meant that any domestic criticism of the dam from an environmentalist point of view—namely , that it could disrupt ecosystems and biodiversity , even within Ethiopia—is met with derision .
And for both countries , surging nationalist sentiment means that it ’ s harder for officials to agree to , and for the public to accept , compromise .
Ethiopia , Egypt , and the quieter Sudan have actually already agreed on most items when it comes to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now are related to dispute resolution , drought contingency plans , and future upstream projects .
And yet , much of the online rhetoric remains maximalist , even rejecting items that have already been unanimously decided—such as the existence of an Ethiopian Nile dam in any form—raising the possibility that the online tensions and attacks may not subside anytime soon .
As for the hackers at Cyber_Horus , the group is already planning another attack on Ethiopia .
When asked if they would reconsider if an agreement between the two countries was reached @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Maybe .
”

It took only a few weeks to plan the cyberattack—and a few more to abandon the world of ethical hacking for the less noble sort. But they would do anything for the Nile, the four young Egyptians agreed.
It took only a few weeks to plan the cyberattack—and a few more to abandon the world of ethical hacking for the less noble sort. But they would do anything for the Nile, the four young Egyptians agreed.
With that, the group calling themselves the Cyber_Horus Group in late June hacked more than a dozen Ethiopian government sites, replacing each page with their own creation: an image of a skeleton pharaoh, clutching a scythe in one hand and a scimitar in the other. “If the river’s level drops, let all the Pharaoh’s soldiers hurry,” warned a message underneath. “Prepare the Ethiopian people for the wrath of the Pharaohs.”
“There is more power than weapons,” one of the hackers, who asked not to be identified by name, told Foreign Policy. Also, it was a pretty easy job, the hacker added.
A few weeks later and thousands of miles away, a 21-year-old Ethiopian named Liz applied red lipstick and donned a black T-shirt and jeans. She positioned her phone on her desk and started her own kind of online influence campaign: a TikTok video. She danced to a popular Egyptian song underneath the message, “Distracting the Egyptians while we fill the dam.”
“There’s no other country that can stop us,” said Liz, who has more than 70,000 followers on the app and whose taunting video was met with praise and threats. “It’s our right.”
Rarely have young people been so passionate about an infrastructure project. But the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which will be Africa’s largest, is more than just a piece of infrastructure. It has become a nationalistic rallying cry for both Ethiopia and Egypt—two countries scrambling to define their nationhood after years of domestic upheaval. Many Ethiopians and Egyptians are getting involved in the only way they can—online—and fomenting the first African cyberconflict of its kind, one with far-reaching and long-lasting consequences.
Construction of the dam, which was first dreamed up in the 1960s, started in April 2011, weeks after the toppling of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Even then, the online tensions between Ethiopians and Egyptians were palpable in the comments sections of seemingly every article about the dam. The discord soon even spilled over into the world of reviews: Today, there are several entries for the GERD on Google Maps, most earning middling 3 to 4 stars ratings, buoyed by five-star ratings with feedback such as, “One of the great architectural dam in the World!” but weighed down by one-star complaints including, “You’re gonna make us die from thirst.”Many Ethiopians and Egyptians are getting involved in the only way they can—online—and fomenting the first African cyberconflict of its kind.
Tensions escalated this year, as the U.S.-brokered negotiations between Ethiopia and Egypt unraveled and new talks mediated by the African Union began. Two issues are at the core: what will happen during a drought and what will happen during a dispute. In terms of the former, Egypt wants the pace of the reservoir filling to be dependent on rains, to ensure a minimum flow if there’s a drought; Ethiopia says such a guarantee is unacceptable. And in terms of disputes, Egypt and Sudan want a resolution mechanism with binding results, but Ethiopia doesn’t.
Construction of the dam was completed in July, and the filling of its reservoir started soon after amid heavy rains but before an agreement between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan was signed. The U.S. government, a top source of aid for both Ethiopia and Egypt, said in August that it would halt some aid to Ethiopia over what it saw as a unilateral move to progress with the dam.
At the beginning of the year, when Ethiopia’s water minister was asked in a press conference who would control the dam once complete, he looked surprised before responding with a curt, “It’s my dam.” Ethiopians across social media, including Liz, adopted his response as a mantra and hashtag, urging their government to move forward with the project. Some have gone further, saying that the dam should be filled regardless of downstream countries’ positions: One Twitter user wrote, for example, “There is no need of negotiations with crafty Egypt.”
Egyptians online retorted with pleas using the hashtag #Nile4All and threats such as “I proudly volunteer to join my Egyptian army to demolish Ethiopia and its dam,” using hashtags such as #EgyptNileRights.
Social media users from the two countries frequently collide on the Internet, but seem to do so most often on Adel el-Adawy’s Twitter page: As a member of a prominent Egyptian political dynasty, a professor at the American University in Cairo, and the most visible disseminator of the Egyptian perspective on the dam in English, he has amassed a significant following. Adawy, whose pinned tweet is a picture of himself shaking hands with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, posts frequently about the Nile and Ethiopian affairs, especially when things get sticky.
At the end of June, when Hachalu Hundessa, a popular activist-singer of Ethiopia’s historically marginalized Oromo ethnic group, was killed, the country descended into chaos. Hundreds were killed as protests were either met with state violence or descended into mob violence. Adawy posted frequently, underscoring the fractious situation but also fomenting alarmism, such as when he posted that frustrated Ethiopians were privately asking Egypt to overthrow the Ethiopian government. Soon after one such post, he was bombarded, he said.
“I got around 500 or 600 friend requests on Facebook by Ethiopian accounts. I got messages with insults.… I got people sending me certain links, of course I didn’t open any of them,” he said. Many of the accounts seemed hollow, with little information contained in them. “Getting within an hour or two 600 friend requests is not normal.”
Even on Twitter, some of the engagement on Adawy’s posts comes from suspicious accounts; they lack followers, were recently created, have number-filled usernames, or only post about the dam. But it’s still unclear the extent of coordination or who might be the coordinator.
It’s possible that the engagement is coming from concerned Ethiopians at home and abroad, at the encouragement but not the behest of Ethiopian officials. “I have friends who joined Twitter just for the sake of this. It’s highly emotional and nationalistic,” said Endalkachew Chala, an Ethiopian communications professor at Hamline University in Minnesota.
The Ethiopian government does broadly engage in “computational propaganda,” according to a 2019 report from the Oxford Internet Institute. Agencies there use human-run social media accounts to spread pro-government propaganda, attack the opposition, and troll users. The same goes for the Egyptian government.
Though there is no evidence yet that either government was involved in coordinated social media attacks or in the Cyber_Horus hack, the activity from the past few months still represents a milestone. It has marked the first known time these kinds of digital tools have been used by people from one African country against people from another, said Gilbert Nyandeje, founder and CEO of the Africa Cyber Defense Forum. “It only means one thing. It means we should expect this more and more.”
At their core, all the online attacks, hacks, and discord are driven by the same force: nationalism. For both countries—Egypt since the 2011 fall of Mubarak and Ethiopia since the 2012 death of strongman Prime Minister Meles Zenawi—national identity has been in flux.
Egypt’s Sisi has anchored his legitimacy on a nationalistic platform. At its core has been an emphasis on national security, rounded out by megaprojects such as the Suez Canal expansion and the construction of a new administrative capital city. But at the core of Egyptian identity is the Nile, so bolstering nationalism means defending the Nile, too. And officials have encouraged this outlook: One sleekly produced video shared on Facebook by the Ministry of Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs warned, “More than 40 million Egyptians are facing the threat of drought and thirst.… The cause of water shortage is Ethiopia building a dam five times bigger than its needs.”At their core, all the online attacks, hacks, and discord are driven by the same force: nationalism.
It has been a show of vulnerability rare in Arab power politics. But the strategy has helped garner global sympathy for Egypt, even as its Nile claims are framed by Ethiopia as the result of unjust colonial-era agreements in which Egypt’s interests were represented by British colonizers.
Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been unable to manage competing nationalist sentiments growing among different ethnic groups. Abiy came to power in 2018 thanks to a wave of protests that started among young Oromos. Following decades of authoritarianism and the country’s domination by the Tigrayan minority ethnic group, Abiy promised to build bridges spanning ethnic fault lines, cultivate an inclusive nationwide identity, and open up the political space. But even at the beginning of this year, slow progress on fulfilling these promises was encouraging criticism, including from Oromos who said he was abandoning the cause.
Still, the dam provided a unifying issue around which Ethiopians of all ethnic backgrounds could rally. “We do have a lot of divisions—ideological, ethnic, tribal, religious,” said Chala, the Ethiopian professor. “But even though we have these bitter divisions, Ethiopians have overwhelmingly supported this Nile dam especially on social media.”
Even some of Abiy’s most outspoken critics, such as prominent Oromo activist and media mogul Jawar Mohammed, posted frequently about Ethiopia’s right to fill the dam. “Egypt & its backers should know Ethiopia will start filling #GERD in July, agreement or no agreement,” Jawar tweeted in June. Everything changed in the following days, however, after the popular singer Hachalu was killed and Jawar was arrested following accusations of inciting ethnic tensions. While other Oromo activists have echoed Jawar’s support of the dam, they have warned against losing sight of the Oromo struggle and what they regard as Abiy’s failures.The dam provided a unifying issue around which Ethiopians of all ethnic backgrounds could rally.
Ethiopian officials, meanwhile, continue to encourage Ethiopians to post about the dam online and often use the #ItsMyDam hashtag in their own social media posts. This use of social media to rally around the dam has also meant that Ethiopia’s massive global diaspora can get involved, without having to worry about frequent in-country Internet shutdowns that otherwise curtail online movements there.
But nationalism creates problems. The thousands of Ethiopian refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants living in Egypt are now facing greater pressure and harassment from Egyptian citizens and authorities since the dam tensions started to heat up, said Hamdy al-Azazy, an Egyptian migrant rights activist currently in Germany. And in Ethiopia, it has meant that any domestic criticism of the dam from an environmentalist point of view—namely, that it could disrupt ecosystems and biodiversity, even within Ethiopia—is met with derision.
And for both countries, surging nationalist sentiment means that it’s harder for officials to agree to, and for the public to accept, compromise. Ethiopia, Egypt, and the quieter Sudan have actually already agreed on most items when it comes to the dam; the main sticking points now are related to dispute resolution, drought contingency plans, and future upstream projects. And yet, much of the online rhetoric remains maximalist, even rejecting items that have already been unanimously decided—such as the existence of an Ethiopian Nile dam in any form—raising the possibility that the online tensions and attacks may not subside anytime soon.
As for the hackers at Cyber_Horus, the group is already planning another attack on Ethiopia. When asked if they would reconsider if an agreement between the two countries was reached, one of the hackers said simply, “Maybe.”


foreignpolicy--2020-09-22--Trump Snubs U.N. as General Debate Opens

Here is today ’ s Foreign Policy brief : The general debate of the 75th U.N. General Assembly begins , Mali coup leaders name soldiers and ex-soldiers to lead transition back to civilian rule , and a wave of violence hits Afghanistan as talks continue .
We welcome your feedback at morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .
The General Debate of the 75th United Nations General Assembly ( UNGA ) opens today under the cloud of the coronavirus pandemic , heightened great power competition , and growing contempt for international institutions like the United Nations itself .
The United Nations will seek @ @ @ @ @ @ @ multilateral institutions in the wake of the international community ’ s failure to coordinate an effective response to the pandemic .
At the opening of the General Assembly on Sep. 15 , UNGA President Volkan Bozkir emphasized this year ’ s focus on restoring confidence in the international system , saying that “ the context in which we are working , serves to remind us of the necessity of the multilateralism system.
” Not so fast .
But as Foreign Policy ’ s Michael Hirsh wrote , even though the United Nations has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it has faced since its establishment at the end of World War II , it has mostly succeeded in its founding purpose : preventing another global conflict .
“ It continues to perform essential stabilizing functions—not least as a legitimizing authority whether the issue is nuclear non-proliferation , sanctions against rogue nations … or armed invasion , ” he wrote .
Trump stays home .
U.S. President Donald Trump surprised observers on Monday by refusing to deliver the United States ’ opening speech to the assembly , sending out Cherith Norman Chalet , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , instead .
But as Sarah Nakasone and Kori Schake wrote in Foreign Policy , engaging with the body is the best way to advance U.S. interests .
“ The U.N. does an enormous amount of good in areas where the United States wants action but isn ’ t keen on taking full responsibility , paying the full costs , or doing the diplomatic bidding , ” they wrote .
Iran front and center .
U.S. officials are expected to use the occasion of the summit to continue their efforts to apply more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States announced a new round of sanctions on Iran and individuals involved in its nuclear program .
The executive order formalizing the sanctions also includes sanctions on individuals and companies that buy or sell Iran conventional arms , seemingly an attempt by Washington to unilaterally extend the arms embargo on Iran .
The move follows weeks of unsuccessful efforts by U.S. officials to lobby other powers to pressure on Iran .
After failing to push a resolution through the U.N. Security Council to extend the arms embargo on Iran last month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its effort to impose all pre-2015 U.N. sanctions on Iran that were lifted after the signing of the nuclear deal .
Foreign Policy ’ s Robbie Gramer , Jack Detsch , and Colum Lynch reported that Trump ’ s efforts to scuttle the deal could force a future Joe Biden administration to renegotiate the deal from scratch—something that will not be easy , as Vali Nasr wrote in FP on Monday , given that Iranian leaders are now convinced they must develop a stronger nuclear program before returning to the table .
Mali @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the leader of Mali ’ s junta , announced on Monday that former defense minister Bah Ndaw , a retired military officer , would be appointed by the junta as interim president to lead the transitional government , with himself as vice president .
The decision reflects the military ’ s desire to retain its influence over the country ’ s return to civilian rule after it overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in a bloodless coup last month .
The influential Economic Community of West African States ( ECOWAS ) has led @ @ @ @ @ @ @ return to civilian rule , but it is uncertain if the arrangement will satisfy its conditions .
Opposition leaders recently told the leaders of the junta that the transitional government had to be led by civilians , so Goita ’ s announcement is likely to cause anger in opposition circles .
Turkey continues to back GNA .
Turkish officials said Ankara will continue to back Libya ’ s U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord ( GNA ) , despite a decision last week by GNA head Fayez al-Sarraj to step down from the post @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of the GNA ’ s strongest international allies , and it has played a pivotal role in the ongoing efforts at ending the country ’ s years-long civil war .
But Turkey ’ s involvement in Libya has wider regional implications ; its controversial claims and subsequent military activity in the oil- and gas-rich eastern Mediterranean are in part rooted in a maritime demarcation treaty signed with the GNA .
Britain to announce new coronavirus restrictions .
Faced with an alarming rise in COVID-19 cases , U.K. government officials urged people to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earlier this month for people to return to their workplaces—while pausing plans to allow fans to attend sporting events and for civil servants to return to the office .
More detailed plans will be announced later today in an effort to slow the spread of the virus and avoid a second nationwide lockdown .
Keir Starmer , the opposition Labour party leader warned in a speech that a second lockdown would be “ a sign of government failure , not an act of God.
” Violence intensifies in Afghanistan .
Dozens were killed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Afghan security forces and the Taliban in the deadliest string of violence to hit Afghanistan since the opening of the peace negotiations between the government and the Taliban earlier this month .
Security officials said 57 personnel were killed in the fighting , and although the Taliban did not confirm any casualties , local officials said around 80 militants were killed .
The violence comes just days after the government reportedly killed at least 12 civilians in a series of airstrikes on a Taliban-controlled village in the northern Kunduz province .
Although officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , locals said those killed were mostly civilians .
Sudan pressured to sign deal with Israel .
U.S. officials are offering to take Sudan off its state sponsors of terrorism list in exchange for the country normalizing diplomatic ties with Israel , part of a wider push by the Trump White House to heal divisions between Israel and several Arab states while redirecting diplomatic efforts toward combating Iran .
The move follows recent normalization deals between Israel , the United Arab Emirates , and Bahrain .
As Foreign Policy ’ s Robbie Gramer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a deal could represent another foreign-policy victory for Trump less than two months before the presidential election .
The Sudanese government has already expressed interest in “ concluding a peace agreement with Israel , ” and on Monday , U.S. , UAE , and Sudanese officials gathered for a “ decisive meeting ” on normalization in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi .
Cyprus blocks action on Belarus .
Cyprus has blocked an effort by the European Union to impose sanctions on key Belarusian leaders involved in last month ’ s electoral fraud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unwillingness to take action against Turkey over the eastern Mediterranean dispute .
Cyprus , the northern portion of which has been occupied by Turkish forces since 1974 , has expressed deep concern over Turkey ’ s growing assertiveness in the Mediterranean .
EU leaders will convene again later this week , during which they will discuss the eastern Mediterranean crisis and work to hammer out a resolution .
The cause of the mysterious mass death of some 330 elephants in Botswana several months ago has finally been determined .
According to government officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ signs of cyanobacteria , a naturally-occurring toxin believed to have been present in the local water supply .
The discovery debunks an earlier theory suggesting that the elephants were deliberately poisoned by humans , an explanation some people floated at the time of the deaths .
In addition to facing an ongoing threat of poaching , elephants have become a controversial issue in the country due to the damage they can cause to farmland .
The current government previously permitted a limited number of elephant hunting licenses , partly as a way of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from FP , visit foreignpolicy.com , subscribe here , or sign up for our other newsletters .
Send your tips , comments , questions , or corrections to morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: The general debate of the 75th U.N. General Assembly begins, Mali coup leaders name soldiers and ex-soldiers to lead transition back to civilian rule, and a wave of violence hits Afghanistan as talks continue.
Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: The general debate of the 75th U.N. General Assembly begins, Mali coup leaders name soldiers and ex-soldiers to lead transition back to civilian rule, and a wave of violence hits Afghanistan as talks continue.
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Multilateralism Is at Stake at the U.N. General Assembly
The General Debate of the 75th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) opens today under the cloud of the coronavirus pandemic, heightened great power competition, and growing contempt for international institutions like the United Nations itself.
The United Nations will seek to address concerns about the relevance of multilateral institutions in the wake of the international community’s failure to coordinate an effective response to the pandemic. At the opening of the General Assembly on Sep. 15, UNGA President Volkan Bozkir emphasized this year’s focus on restoring confidence in the international system, saying that “the context in which we are working, serves to remind us of the necessity of the multilateralism system.”
Not so fast. But as Foreign Policy’s Michael Hirsh wrote, even though the United Nations has come under some of the heaviest scrutiny it has faced since its establishment at the end of World War II, it has mostly succeeded in its founding purpose: preventing another global conflict. “It continues to perform essential stabilizing functions—not least as a legitimizing authority whether the issue is nuclear non-proliferation, sanctions against rogue nations … or armed invasion,” he wrote.
Trump stays home. U.S. President Donald Trump surprised observers on Monday by refusing to deliver the United States’ opening speech to the assembly, sending out Cherith Norman Chalet, the United States’ deputy U.N. ambassador, instead. But as Sarah Nakasone and Kori Schake wrote in Foreign Policy, engaging with the body is the best way to advance U.S. interests. “The U.N. does an enormous amount of good in areas where the United States wants action but isn’t keen on taking full responsibility, paying the full costs, or doing the diplomatic bidding,” they wrote.
Iran front and center. U.S. officials are expected to use the occasion of the summit to continue their efforts to apply more pressure on Iran. On Monday, the United States announced a new round of sanctions on Iran and individuals involved in its nuclear program. The executive order formalizing the sanctions also includes sanctions on individuals and companies that buy or sell Iran conventional arms, seemingly an attempt by Washington to unilaterally extend the arms embargo on Iran.
The move follows weeks of unsuccessful efforts by U.S. officials to lobby other powers to pressure on Iran. After failing to push a resolution through the U.N. Security Council to extend the arms embargo on Iran last month, Washington has also faced pushback over its effort to impose all pre-2015 U.N. sanctions on Iran that were lifted after the signing of the nuclear deal.
Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer, Jack Detsch, and Colum Lynch reported that Trump’s efforts to scuttle the deal could force a future Joe Biden administration to renegotiate the deal from scratch—something that will not be easy, as Vali Nasr wrote in FP on Monday, given that Iranian leaders are now convinced they must develop a stronger nuclear program before returning to the table.
What We’re Following Today
Mali interim leaders named. Col. Assimi Goita, the leader of Mali’s junta, announced on Monday that former defense minister Bah Ndaw, a retired military officer, would be appointed by the junta as interim president to lead the transitional government, with himself as vice president. The decision reflects the military’s desire to retain its influence over the country’s return to civilian rule after it overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in a bloodless coup last month.
The influential Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has led the effort to pressure the junta to return to civilian rule, but it is uncertain if the arrangement will satisfy its conditions. Opposition leaders recently told the leaders of the junta that the transitional government had to be led by civilians, so Goita’s announcement is likely to cause anger in opposition circles.
Turkey continues to back GNA. Turkish officials said Ankara will continue to back Libya’s U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), despite a decision last week by GNA head Fayez al-Sarraj to step down from the post in the coming weeks.
Turkey is one of the GNA’s strongest international allies, and it has played a pivotal role in the ongoing efforts at ending the country’s years-long civil war. But Turkey’s involvement in Libya has wider regional implications; its controversial claims and subsequent military activity in the oil- and gas-rich eastern Mediterranean are in part rooted in a maritime demarcation treaty signed with the GNA.
Britain to announce new coronavirus restrictions. Faced with an alarming rise in COVID-19 cases, U.K. government officials urged people to work from home if they can—reversing calls earlier this month for people to return to their workplaces—while pausing plans to allow fans to attend sporting events and for civil servants to return to the office. More detailed plans will be announced later today in an effort to slow the spread of the virus and avoid a second nationwide lockdown. Keir Starmer, the opposition Labour party leader warned in a speech that a second lockdown would be “a sign of government failure, not an act of God.”
Violence intensifies in Afghanistan. Dozens were killed in a wave of clashes between the Afghan security forces and the Taliban in the deadliest string of violence to hit Afghanistan since the opening of the peace negotiations between the government and the Taliban earlier this month. Security officials said 57 personnel were killed in the fighting, and although the Taliban did not confirm any casualties, local officials said around 80 militants were killed.
The violence comes just days after the government reportedly killed at least 12 civilians in a series of airstrikes on a Taliban-controlled village in the northern Kunduz province. Although officials claimed the government killed 40 Taliban militants, locals said those killed were mostly civilians.
Keep an Eye On
Sudan pressured to sign deal with Israel. U.S. officials are offering to take Sudan off its state sponsors of terrorism list in exchange for the country normalizing diplomatic ties with Israel, part of a wider push by the Trump White House to heal divisions between Israel and several Arab states while redirecting diplomatic efforts toward combating Iran. The move follows recent normalization deals between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. As Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer and Colum Lynch reported last week, a deal could represent another foreign-policy victory for Trump less than two months before the presidential election.
The Sudanese government has already expressed interest in “concluding a peace agreement with Israel,” and on Monday, U.S., UAE, and Sudanese officials gathered for a “decisive meeting” on normalization in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi.
Cyprus blocks action on Belarus. Cyprus has blocked an effort by the European Union to impose sanctions on key Belarusian leaders involved in last month’s electoral fraud in response to the bloc’s unwillingness to take action against Turkey over the eastern Mediterranean dispute. Cyprus, the northern portion of which has been occupied by Turkish forces since 1974, has expressed deep concern over Turkey’s growing assertiveness in the Mediterranean.
EU leaders will convene again later this week, during which they will discuss the eastern Mediterranean crisis and work to hammer out a resolution.
Odds and Ends
The cause of the mysterious mass death of some 330 elephants in Botswana several months ago has finally been determined. According to government officials, testing done on the carcasses showed signs of cyanobacteria, a naturally-occurring toxin believed to have been present in the local water supply.
The discovery debunks an earlier theory suggesting that the elephants were deliberately poisoned by humans, an explanation some people floated at the time of the deaths. In addition to facing an ongoing threat of poaching, elephants have become a controversial issue in the country due to the damage they can cause to farmland. The current government previously permitted a limited number of elephant hunting licenses, partly as a way of controlling the elephant population.
That’s it for today.
For more from FP, visit foreignpolicy.com, subscribe here, or sign up for our other newsletters. Send your tips, comments, questions, or corrections to morningbrief@foreignpolicy.com.