Africa-Press-Ethiopia<\/p>\n
The Biden administration this month brought Jeffrey Feltman, a seasoned former senior U.S. and United Nations diplomat, out of semi-retirement to assume the newly created role of special envoy for the Horn of Africa, where multiple crises threaten to unravel the entire region.<\/p>\n
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday formally named Feltman to the post, where he will become Washington\u2019s lead troubleshooter for a deadly conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia that has sparked a massive humanitarian crisis and widespread allegations of war crimes.<\/p>\n
Feltman, in his first interview since being tapped for the post, told Foreign Policy the conflict has the potential to spiral into a full-fledged regional crisis, citing a comparison to the war in Syria.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at what the collapse of Syria and the chaos of civil war has meant,\u201d said Feltman, citing the refugee crisis and its impact on Europe, as well as the rise of terrorist groups in the power vacuum from the collapse of a country that had a prewar population of around 22 million people.<\/p>\n
\u201cEthiopia has 110 million people,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the tensions in Ethiopia would result in a widespread civil conflict that goes beyond Tigray, Syria will look like child\u2019s play by comparison.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feltman, a longtime diplomatic heavy-hitter in U.S. and U.N. policy circles, is no stranger to crisis diplomacy. He served in a variety of posts across the Middle East, including U.S. ambassador to Lebanon from 2004 to 2008, which encompassed the 2006 Lebanon War. From 2009 to 2012, he served as the State Department\u2019s top envoy for the Middle East, including during the Arab Spring. Later, as a top official at the U.N., he traveled to North Korea to negotiate with Kim Jong Un at the height of U.S.-North Korea tensions over Pyongyang\u2019s nuclear weapons program.<\/p>\n
But his new task is daunting. There\u2019s the conflict in Tigray and the question of Ethiopia\u2019s broader stability. Neighboring Eritrea\u2019s military intervention in the Tigray conflict, with its troops accused of widespread atrocities and human rights violations, is only complicating any solution. Sudan, meanwhile, is struggling with a fragile and uncertain transition to democracy after three decades under autocratic rule, and it is contending with a border dispute with Ethiopia that could spark a separate conflict between those two countries. There is still a political and security crisis in Somalia. And all the while, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan are in the midst of a yearslong dispute over a massive Ethiopian dam on the Blue Nile that former U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s administration clumsily tried to mediate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m intimidated by the challenge of it. It\u2019s a complex part of the world with a lot of overlapping crises happening at the same time. But it\u2019s also extremely important strategically for the U.S., for our allies, for the region,\u201d Feltman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of an immediate focus, without question, there has to be attention paid to Tigray,\u201d he said. He added that other leading priorities were the Ethiopia-Sudan border dispute and the tensions over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Feltman said he would be traveling to the region \u201cfairly soon\u201d but declined to give specifics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Africa-Press-Ethiopia The Biden administration this month brought Jeffrey Feltman, a seasoned former senior U.S. and United Nations diplomat, out of semi-retirement to assume the newly created role of special envoy for the Horn of Africa, where multiple crises threaten to unravel the entire region. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday formally named Feltman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":3184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12],"tags":[241,236],"class_list":["post-4580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-policy","tag-africa-press-ethiopia","tag-tigray"],"yoast_head":"\n