“Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”
President F. D. Roosevelt (about the brutal dictator of Nicaragua)
It is an open secret that, for the US government, democracy and human right are not ends but tools for demonizing anyone and everyone not subservient to the US. A US “son of a bitch” can be as autocratic or dictatorial as he pleases without being frowned upon, let alone condemned by the US, as long as he continues to be a US lapdog on a leash, fully controlled by the US. On the contrary, any non-western leader who resents US domination, let alone challenge its hegemony, is sure to be called by all types of anti-democratic names (despotic, totalitarian, tyrannical or whatever), irrespective of the democratic record of the leader. The examples are too well-known to dwell on, and too many to list. Suffice to mention the cases of the Uyghurs of China and the Amhara of Ethiopia.
While China was the manufacturing center of the US, and was, essentially, a US “son of a bitch” posted against the USSR, nobody in the US government seemed to have heard of the Uyghurs, let alone concerned about them. The US multinationals were reaping hundreds of billions, if not trillions, out of essentially free Chinese (including Uyghurs) labor, and there was no murmur, let alone uproar, about this modern slavery. However, now that China is seriously challenging US hegemony, and, therefore, is no longer a US “son of a bitch”, the US government never talks about China without mentioning its “deep concern” for the plight of Uyghurs under the Chinese communist government, emphatically emphasizing the “communist” in the “communist government”, as if China was not communist when the US multinationals were flocking to the country in the 1980’s.
“We, the Foreign Ministers of Canada and the United Kingdom, and the United States Secretary of State, are united in our deep and ongoing concern regarding China’s human rights violations and abuses in Xinjiang. China’s extensive program of repression includes severe restrictions on religious freedoms, the use of forced labor, mass detention in internment camps, forced sterilizations, and the concerted destruction of Uyghur heritage.” (US State Department, Joint Statement on Xinjiang, March 2021).
The US government accuses China of sterilizing Uyghurs, not out of concern for Uyghurs but only because it needs a pretext to demonize China for not being a US “son of a bitch”, so to speak. Otherwise, it should also have accused Meles Zenawi’s regime of Ethiopia for doing exactly the same to the Amhara of Ethiopia, albeit at a much grander scale, and with ample evidence to prove it. However, Mr. Zenawi was a US lapdog on a leash, ever ready to bark and bite on behalf of the US at a moment’s notice.
By its own admission, Mr. Zenawi’s tribalist regime of TPLF (Tigre People Liberation Front) “lost” 2.5 million Amhara in its 2007 census, making this genocide of the Amhara by TPLF the worst genocide the world has ever seen in centuries, next only to the holocaust, definitely worse than the Rwandan genocide. However, the US government, instead of condemning Mr. Zenawi’s regime for the well-documented, irrefutable Amhara genocide as it is condemning China for alleged Uyghur genocide, rewarded the regime for a “well done ethnic cleansing job” by funneling additional billions to prop up the regime, knowing full well that Mr. Zenawi’s regime is a Tigre minority tribalist regime that cannot stand without leaning on the US. The irony of all ironies was that the person Mr. Zenawi put in charge of Amhara mass sterilization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom, was later put in charge of the World Health Organization, mainly because of US support, in spite of vehement opposition from many corners, especially from diaspora Amhara.
The US government uses every opportunity to accuses China of trampling the democratic rights of Uyghurs. However, when the Mr. Zenawi’s regime massacred more than two hundred Addis Ababa protestors simply because they tried to express their democratic rights by opposing the results of the highly disputed May 2005 election, the US State department blamed the massacre on “lumpen Amhara protestors” and, thanking Mr. Zenawi for quickly putting the protest under control, poured additional millions for “additional training” of Mr. Zenawi’s notorious security force known as the Agazi which, for all intents and purposes, was the equivalent of Hitler’s SS.
The US accuses China of an alleged state project to facilitate Han migration into Xinjiang to displace the indigenous Uyghurs and control their region. However, the US cannot be honest in this accusation. Otherwise, it should also have accused Mr. Zenawi’s regime for doing exactly the same to the Amhara of Ethiopia, albeit at a much grander scale, and with ample evidence to prove it. On the contrary, Mr. Zenawi’s state project to effectively double the size of what used to be called Tigray kifle hager (Tigray Province) by annexing huge fertile lands from the Amhara region of Ethiopia, displacing the indigenous Amhara from these annexed lands, and settling TPLF combatants en masse on these annexed lands was fully funded by the US and its western allies. This TPLF/USA engineered demographic change was so effective that both TPLF and USA are now demanding that the fate of these annexed regions be decided by referendum.
“We … urge the Government of Ethiopia to withdraw Amhara regional forces from the Tigray region and ensure that effective control of western Tigray is returned to the Transitional Government of Tigray.” (Press Statement, Anthony J. Blinken, May 15, 2021)
After Meles Zenawi of TPLF (Tigre People Liberation Front), the next and the present US son of a bitch in Ethiopia is Abiy Ahmed who used to be a child soldier of the OLF (Oromo Liberation Front) and is now the undeclared luba (chief) of OLF, the openly stated goal of OLF being to completely “Oromize” Ethiopia by reducing the Amhara (by far the largest majority in Ethiopia) to politically insignificant minority, if not by cleansing them altogether. In this respect, Abiy Ahmed has achieved so much that, what Meles Zenawi did in thirty years pales in comparison to what Abiy Ahmed has done in just four years, since he came to power in 2018.
The US never tires of accusing China of alleged “genocide” of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. And yet, it has never chastised, let alone condemned, Abiy Ahmed’s proven Amhara genocide committed right under its nose for more than four years, the “Tole Massacre” of June 18 (2022) in which more than 2000 Amhara were viciously slaughtered in Tole Kebele of Oromo region not in a week and not even in a day, but in just few hours. On the contrary, seemingly not satisfied with the scale of Amhara genocide in the last four years of Abiy Ahmed’s reign, the US government recently underwrote the so-called “Pretoria Agreement” to give Abiy Ahmed a pretext to officially launch a new, wide-ranging, all-encompassing genocidal operation on the Amhara under the guise of “dismantling the Amhara Special Force and disarming the Amhara FANNO”.
“The United States participated as an observer in the African Union lead talks in Pretoria … which produced the cessation of hostilities agreement on November 2nd. We are very proud to have supported that effort along with others and now we have seen the silencing of the guns … and now move to other issues of importance including insuring that Eritrean troops are completely removed from the region, and you deal with other Amhara special forces and FANNO groups that are active in the area.” (Michael A. Hammer, United States Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa).
As the underwriter of the “Pretoria Talks”, the US knew beforehand that the sole purpose of the talks was to remove TPLF from terrorist list and to add the Amhara Special Force and Amhara FANNO the list. No wonder why the US made sure genuine representatives of the Amhara were completely excluded from the talks, insisting that Amhara be “represented” by none other than their mortal enemy, the Abiy Ahmed regime. And no wonder why the Abiy Ahmed regime which “represented” the Amhara in the Pretoria talks is now using his murderous OLF/TPLF combined forces to wage a vicious war against the Amhara with full support of the United States, as per “Pretoria Agreement”.
Thanks to the absolute immunity Abiy Ahmed got from the “Pretoria Agreement” guaranteed by the US, he has now let loose his tribalist forces infused with unimaginable Amhara hatred to freely roam in the Amhara region slashing throats, cutting breasts, tearing wombs open, shattering skulls, burning children alive, burying elderly alive, feeding Amhara corpses for hyenas, and wiping entire Amhara towns, in full view of the whole world. The US government, which has been wailing day and night about “reported atrocities” in Tigray, is completely mum about these well-documented, video-supported atrocities on the Amhara, if only to fulfill one of its obligations in the “Pretoria Agreement”.
And thanks again to the absolute immunity Abiy Ahmed got from the “Pretoria Agreement” guaranteed by the US, he has incarcerated every Amhara journalist or activist worth his salt under trumped-up terrorism charges without demur from the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, one more proof that these so-called western human right advocates are nothing but tools for defiling opponents of western domination.
The US government is not only unabashedly hypocritical, but also overtly cruel. After all, this is a government whose very foundation was based entirely on cruelty to indigenous Americans and whose very development was based entirely on cruelty to African Americans. In addition, this was the very cruel government which nuked Japan solely to hasten the surrender of an already defeated enemy by mere few days, in addition to showing how powerful it is and warn the USSR not to challenge its hegemony.
While OLF/TPLF combined forces are mercilessly pounding the Amhara region in the “special operation” Abiy Ahmed recently launched as per “Pretoria Agreement”, the US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, Mr. Michael Hammer, instinctively felt the need to double Amhara pain by cruelly rubbing salt on their wound saying, “we have seen the silencing of the guns”. The US which, conveniently forgetting its dark history, considers itself “a shining city on a hill” and which brags ad nauseam about “American exceptionalism”, is so narcissist that it will not hear even a heavy gun fired right under its nose, if doing so serves its self-interest.
Fortunately for the Uyghurs, their democracy and human right is of utmost interest to the US government only because they live in China which is on course to dethrone the US from its sole superpower status. Unfortunately for the Amhara, let alone their democracy and human right, even their very existence is of no interest to the US government only because they happen to live in Ethiopia which, under TPLF/OLF, has become shamelessly servile to the US. Ethiopia is now, for all intents and purposes, a US protectorate to such an extent that it is the US government which decides how Ethiopian regional borders are drawn, who should govern what region, which regional force should be and should not be deployed where, and which regional force should be dismantled altogether, in addition to who should and should not be armed.
As long as China remains a threat to US hegemony, the US will continue to accuse China of ethnically cleansing the Uyghurs. In the same vein, as long as Abiy Ahmed remains America’s son of a bitch, the US will have no issue with his ethnic cleansing of the Amhara and will see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing about the Amhara genocide. Such is the hypocrisy of the US government – it is legendary.
Mesfin Arega
mesfin.arega@gmail.com
