Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Biden Threatens Sweeping Sanctions on Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Responds
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
22 Sep 2021
Biden Threatens Sweeping Sanctions on Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Responds

The U.S. is once again attempting to overthrow a legitimate head of state in Africa, this time in Ethiopia, where they want to put their old puppet, the TPLF, or a new one, in power.

President Joe Biden has issued an executive order threatening to impose new US sanctions on Ethiopia and Eritrea for their roles in humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ethiopia’s northern regions. 

Unilateral sanctions, meaning sanctions not approved by the UN Security Council, violate international law codified in the UN Charter. However, Biden wrote, “This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.”

In other words, the US writes its own laws, just as it imposes its own sanctions. Unilaterally.

In one bizarre paragraph, Biden describes Ethiopia’s conflict as a “national security threat”:

“I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, find that the situation in and in relation to northern Ethiopia, which has been marked by activities that threaten the peace, security, and stability of Ethiopia and the greater Horn of Africa region — in particular, widespread violence, atrocities, and serious human rights abuse, including those involving ethnic-based violence, rape and other forms of gender-based violence, and obstruction of humanitarian operations — constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”

He’s wrong of course. Americans don’t wake up worrying about Ethiopian conflict. Many wake up wishing they didn’t have to go to that damn demeaning job another day, and/or wondering what pro sports they might enjoy afterwards. Many more wake up full of anxiety about medical debt, college debt, eviction, foreclosure, and poverty. Next to none will read Biden’s executive order and most couldn’t find Ethiopia on a map, thanks to the savage state of American education. Some, especially those who’ve been watching mass atrocity TV, might be persuaded by Biden’s invocation of  “The White Man’s Burden”:

Take up the White Man's burden--

The savage wars of peace--

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hopes to nought.

“Famine” is the Ethiopian emergency that US AID Chief Samantha Power has been shrieking about most for nearly a year. The Ethiopian government, she says, is blocking food aid into war-torn Tigray. Never mind that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a US puppet for nearly 30 years, started the war that’s causing the suffering, as war always does. Or, that the Ethiopian government says that they wouldn’t starve their own people, that they are delivering more food to Tigray than any of the Western NGOs, but that they have set up checkpoints to make sure that aid convoys aren’t transporting arms to the TPLF. Power, like Blinken and Biden, don’t call the Ethiopian government’s account of facts on the ground a lie. They just ignore it, as do other Western officials and press.

Previous US and EU sanctions have targeted individual officials or military officers for their roles in the Ethiopian conflict, but in his most recent order, Biden threatens to sanction governments, political parties, or military or security forces that he deems to be prolonging the conflict or abusing human rights. The worst of such sanctions can block a nation’s access to medical supplies and food, as has been done to Iraq, Cuba, and Venezuela, or the freezing of a nation’s assets in foreign banks, as has been done to Libya, Venezuela, and now Afghanistan.  

Time will tell whether the US and its allies will go to such extremes to control the Horn of Africa, but President Biden has heightened the threats. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed wrote an open letter in response, asking him to respect Ethiopia’s sovereignty, but Biden has not responded, and the letter has not been published by Western press.

Here is Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s open letter to Joe Biden, which he first published on his Twitter page.

Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for promoting peace through her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes Region. You can support her independent journalism on Patreon. She can be reached on Twitter @AnnGarrison and at ann(at)anngarrison(dot)com.

Africa
Horn of Africa
ETHIOPIA VS TPLF

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Tennyson S.D. Joseph
False Promises, False Hopes: The Africa-CARICOM Summit
14 May 2025
A forward-looking critique of African and Caribbean collaborations embodied in the Africa-Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Summit.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
LETTER: Thank you, Mr. Howe, Ama Ata Aidoo, 1967
07 May 2025
Ama Ata Aidoo lands a knock-out blow to white neocolonial anti-African revi
Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team
Now is the Time for All Anti-Imperialists and All Justice Loving People to Stand Unequivocally in Defense of Burkina Faso
07 May 2025
The Black Alliance for Peace demands an end to U.S.
Dylan Sullivan , Jason Hickel
Plundering Africa – Income Deflation and Unequal Ecological Exchange Under Structural Adjustment Programmes
12 March 2025
Presenting new research, Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel mount a devastating critique of the impact of structural adjustment in Africa in the 1
Toward the African Revolution
The Lobito Corridor: US imperialism's latest plot against the Democratic Republic of Congo
05 February 2025
The Lobito Corridor is a key piece of infrastructure western powers are flooding with capital to pursue their imperialist aggression and exploi
Black Alliance for Peace US Out of Africa Network
Report: The Anti-Imperialist Upsurge in the Sahel and the Historic Conference in Niamey
27 November 2024
The Black Alliance for Peace and U.S.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
How the US Destabilized the Horn of Africa
02 October 2024
In 2018, the leaders of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia signed a
Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor
Instability in Somalia Endangers the Entire Horn of Africa
11 September 2024
Divisions with breakaway areas further hamper the resolution of broader issues.<
Hanna Eid
Review: Cabral Writings
04 September 2024
Amilcar Cabral's work and writings are still as relevant today as they were when he walked the earth.
Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor
Africa at the Center of Another Global Health Emergency
28 August 2024
EVD, COVID-19 and now Mpox further reveal how dependency is dangerous and deadly.

More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio May 16, 2025
    16 May 2025
    In this week’s segment, we discuss the modern history of Black politics in the city of Newark, New Jersey, after the death of a long-serving former mayor and the arrest and brief detention of the…
  • Craig Mokhiber
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Craig Mokhiber on the Need to Enforce International Human Rights Law
    16 May 2025
    Our guest is Craig Mokhiber. He is an international human rights lawyer and former director of the New York Office of the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights. He stepped down from that…
  • Ras Baraka
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Ken Gibson, Sharpe James, Cory Booker, Ras Baraka, and Black Politics in Newark
    16 May 2025
    Lawrence Hamm, of the People’s Organization for Progress (POP), joins us from Newark, New Jersey, to talk about Black politics in that city. The late Sharpe James was mayor for a record-setting 20…
  • Garland Ajamu
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist , Garland Nixon
    Ajamu Baraka - Opposing the U.S. Empire in Africa and the Middle East
    15 May 2025
    Ajamu Baraka spoke with Garland Nixon about the need to oppose U.S. foreign policy in Africa and in the Middle East.
  • Trump and Harris
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Corruption, Lies, Biden's Health and Trump's Victory
    14 May 2025
    The same corporate media talking heads who told us to ignore Biden’s failing health are now cashing in with books revealing political cover ups while also covering up their own role in facilitating…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us