Inside The Ethiopian Conflict | Ann Neumann | TMR

Sam hosts journalist Ann Neumann to discuss her recent piece in Harper’s, “Falling Like Leaves: The War in Ethiopia and its Crimes against civilians”. Ann Neumann then joins as she walks through the last five years of Ethiopian conflict, beginning with the protests and riots breaking out in 2016 and led to myriad resignations across the Ethiopian government and the assumption of Abiy Ahmed to the Prime Ministership, who immediately stepped in to sign a peace treaty with Isaias Afwerki to end the multi-decade Eritrean-Ethiopian border conflict – a move that would earn Ahmed a Nobel Peace Prize, only for it to become apparent that, as a part of the treaty, there was an agreement to turn against their common enemy of Tigray. After a brief conversation on the role of Tigray and Eritrea in the liberation of Ethiopia from the Derg regime, Neumann parses through the role of the US in propping up various leaders in Eritrea and Ethiopia in the shift towards neocolonialism, with Abiy Ahmed being a particular darling of the west. Wrapping up the interview, Ann walks Sam through the crimes against civilians that have come through Ethiopia’s strict information blockade, from outright violence and violation to the manipulation of food and medicine, and how the information blockade itself developed.

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Ann Neumann is a journalist and a Pulitzer Center grantee. She has written a piece in Harper's magazine in the January issue I think it is of Harper's magazine on the war in Ethiopia and its crime against civilians. and I think I guess Ann is welcome to the program. and I guess the sort of the central thesis of your piece is that there have been crimes against civilians that the war has brought about. that it is hard to really say that it's been exclusively one side or the other in this conflict. I mean the challenge of the war beyond the fact that its context is complicated and they're just it's impossible to get to the territory where the war is actually taking place. The challenge was how to write about the atrocities that this war brought about for the Ethiopian people. and we'll get into the logistics I assume but that Northern State of to gray which has been cut off from the rest of the country and was besieged by the federal troops was impossible to get to. many reporters there, local journalists or International journalists were detained or booted out of the country and this has gone on for some time. and I decided that it was still worthwhile to go and talk to refugees if I could find them to talk to Grants throughout the country who are also experiencing harassment. and to see what was taking place in the country itself. because even though you know the federal troops were portraying themselves as the good guys. even though I could only be in safer territory. there was still a lot of violence that had taken place. so yes a lot of violence and I just whomever because no one else is writing about it.