Belligerent Ethiopia threatened to go to war with Eritrea if EU gave aid to Eritrea

Article translated from Italian using online software

Ethiopia does not have the capacity to go to war with Eritrea

By Di Filippo Bovo

In recent days Ethiopia has shown a certain military activism at its borders, against Eritrea and South Sudan, which reflects its atavistic tendency to download out its own internal contradictions, by now chronic famine to the historic clash between the dominant elites and Oromo. Ethiopia, in particular, did not like the fact that all its political and diplomatic efforts carried out to date to isolate Eritrea internationally have failed miserably when the European Community signed an important agreement with Asmara, especially valid new energy and tended to bring great benefits to the town on the Red Sea. In fact, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn Bosch So likewise expressed last April before a delegation of MEPs led by Gianni Pittella: "If the EU gives aid to Eritrea, Ethiopia to invade. Solve everything in seven days and send out a million refugees in Europe ".

Apparently Ethiopia, now, is only the weapon of blackmail. But as long as it is credible this weapon? The country has to deal with internal pressures of the Oromo, who feel excluded from the growth that even Ethiopia in recent years has been largely due to aid and foreign investment, and whose raining benefits especially on the Tigray region ( it is in fact the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray to rule Addis Ababa). Their intake of landmine awareness even more than it already is the fragile framework socio-politics of the country. How can, Ethiopia, venturing into a war in such a situation of total lack of internal consistency? And in fact no one in the political or media sector, in Europe, feel more credible Ethiopian threats. Ethiopia simply can not afford a war, if it were to attempt it, would like to disaster was about to happen in 1998-2000, when the Eritreans resumed their practice the old military strategies already adopted at the time of Operation Red Star launched by Mengistu and the victorious counterattack Operation Fenkil unleashed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Eritrea. A deadly pincer movement that unhinged, and that again would disrupt the Ethiopian army, with undeniable results that history has given us.

The example of the impossibility of Ethiopia to support a long-term war we had a few days ago, to be exact on June 12, when at 5:00 Ethiopia has attacked Eritrea at Tzorona. The losses for the Ethiopians were huge (the most conservative estimates speak of 200 dead soldiers and another 300 wounded), which prompted Addis Ababa to interrupt almost immediately its military operations. The Addis Ababa troops were completely driven back at the points where they already were before they started the attack. On the episode Ethiopian authorities have produced in five different versions: by denying that there had been any military confrontation far as to say that they were instead Eritreans hit Ethiopian troops, "while they were playing football." Eritrea, for its part, has presented and maintained only one version, the one that then also reported to the UN Security Council, calling for a complaint but hardly come.

In fact Ban Ki-moon, well, looking from recognizing what was the victim and who the aggressor, he thought well to get on an equal distance, urging "both sides to show restraint." A statement endorsed also by the spokesman of the US Department of State. This has understandably caused a huge confusion in the government of Eritrea, which in this regard issued a statement hardly travisabile. While in another release, Asmara does know to be aware that to have instigated Ethiopia against Eritrea for this latest massacre and useless it was precisely Washington, and that in due time will prove it.

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