A senior Ethiopian military leader has accused World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of favoring a rebel faction in a conflict with the central government.
“He has been doing everything to support them. He has campaigned to get the neighboring countries to condemn the war,” Ethiopian army chief of staff Gen. Birhanu Jula told reporters, without attempting to substantiate his claims. “He has worked to facilitate weapons for them.”
Tedros denied the allegations while announcing that he desires only peace in the country. Likewise, State Department officials called for an end to the fighting while distancing themselves from the accusation.
“The U.S. government is doing everything possible to end the conflict,” Assistant Secretary of State Tibor Nagy, who leads the State Department’s Africa bureau, told reporters Thursday. “You have to go to the sources for those charges, but those are not coming from the United States government.”
Ethiopia has been rocked by violence in recent weeks since an attack on the central government’s military by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a political faction that dominated Ethiopian politics for decades before losing power in 2018. Tedros, prior to his election as director-general of the WHO, is Tigrayan and held two Cabinet positions in TPLF-led governments.
“There have been reports suggesting I am taking sides in this situation,” Tedros tweeted Thursday. “This is not true and I want to say that I am only on one side and that is the side of peace.”
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed responded to TPLF attacks by launching an assault that seems intended to consolidate control over the Tigray region as refugees stream out of the territory to neighboring countries such as Sudan. The allegations against Tedros are likely rooted in the same ethnic tensions that have divided the TPLF from the central government, according to the Heritage Foundation’s Joshua Meservey.
“The episode illustrates part of the tragedy of the fighting. It is exacerbating ethnic tensions in a country that is already a tinderbox and spurring Ethiopians to distrust and mistreat one another solely because of their ethnicity,” Meservey told the Washington Examiner.
The rebel fighters, for their part, launched an attack on neighboring Eritrea in an attempt to provoke a counterattack from that government that might help rally local support for the conflict, according to U.S. officials.
“We are deeply concerned by this blatant attempt by the TPLF to cause regional instability by expanding its conflict with Ethiopian authorities to neighboring countries,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this week. “We strongly urge the TPLF and the Ethiopian authorities to take immediate steps to de-escalate the conflict, restore peace, and protect civilians. We appreciate Eritrea’s restraint, which has helped prevent further spreading of the conflict.”
Nagy echoed that statement but also made clear that “there is no equivalency” between the TPLF and the Abiy government in the State Department’s view.
“This is not two sovereign states fighting against each other,” he said. “This is a faction of the government running a region in Ethiopia that has decided to undertake hostilities against the central government. And it has not, in my view, had the effect that they thought that they were going to get.”
