# Sovereignty Claims and Diplomatic Dissent in the Midst of Domestic Warfare: Ethiopia and the U.S. During the War in Tigray (2020-2022)

David Ambrosetti

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David Ambrosetti. Sovereignty Claims and Diplomatic Dissent in the Midst of Domestic Warfare: Ethiopia and the U.S. During the War in Tigray (2020-2022). European Conference on African Studies 2025: African, Afropean, Afropolitan, Czech Association for African Studies; AEGIS - African Studies in Europe, Jun 2025, Prague, Czech Republic. halshs-05137004

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# Sovereignty Claims and Diplomatic Dissent in the Midst of Domestic Warfare: Ethiopia and the U.S. During the War in Tigray (2020-2022)

*David Ambrosetti (CNRS, LAM)*

ECAS 10, Prague, 24-28 June 2025, https://ecas2025.gcon.me/programme

Panel POL104 “African Sovereignty, Contentious Foreign Policy and ‘Undiplomatic’ practices”,
27 June 2025

## Abstract

The war in Tigray that broke out in November 2020 came with strained relations between some Western states and the federal government of Ethiopia. Considering that Ethiopian sovereignty was attacked, the latter resorted to various means in order to display its discontent towards the European Union and the United States, including expelling diplomats and UN senior officers. Simultaneously, mobilizations within the Ethiopian diasporas in the U.S. became a perfect example of what Alexander Betts and Wil Jones have called a “politics of animation” (Betts & Jones, 2016). Tensions rose, bringing analysts to the conclusion that the U.S. merely *lost Ethiopia* after failing to make its regional “anchor state” meet with minimal humanitarian and stability requirements as a condition of U.S. diplomatic support in the first place (Verhoeven & Woldemariam, 2022). Yet, Ethio-American business-as-usual relations resumed once the war was officially over in November 2022. Ethiopia was not lost. This paper intends to reflect how Ethiopian federal authorities may have, at that time, assessed the political risks they were taking when activating such levers of diplomatic action, more or less “undiplomatically”. It particularly explores the communication warfare that teared the U.S. Ethiopian diaspora apart. The case brings to correlate such diplomatic risk assessment with the involvement of the Eritrean neighbor as well as the role played by other foreign partners (notably in the Middle East), but also with a form of reciprocal “domestication” that Ethiopian and the U.S. diplomacies have gone through during previous episodes of diplomatic tension between them.

**Short Summary:** The paper intends to better understand how strong sovereignty claims in ‘undiplomatic’ manners arise and what function they do play in the diplomatic arena, considering one study case, the relationship between Ethiopia and the U.S. during the war in Tigray (2020-2022)

## Introduction

What I am intending to do in my research activity now is to better understand a sequence that I have been observing, which concerns the relations the Ethiopian federal authorities had with other, particularly Western partners.

From 2014 to 2018, I have been directing a French research unit based in Addis Ababa, the French Center of Ethiopian Studies.
This unit is attached to the French CNRS and to the French Embassy in Ethiopia.

As a director of the Cfee, I was a member of the French diplomatic staff in Addis.
I was attending the weekly meetings gathering the ambassador and the different heads of services.
I could connect with foreign diplomats, with whom we often evoked the political situation in
Ethiopia, particularly due to my interest for international politics.
And thanks to my position among researchers visiting our center, I could link what diplomats were scrutinizing with observations made by my colleagues.

What I could not do, though, was to dedicate research time on this material, as I had to run the center's business on scientific cooperation with the Ethiopian authorities, logistic support, publications, fundraising, human resources, relations with our authorities in Paris, etc.

During my stay occurred a major shift, which became labeled in the media as the Oromo Protests in 2016, particularly during the Olympics in August 2016 when the runner Fiyesa Lilesa denounced the conditions reserved to the Oromo ethnonational group, to which he belongs, by the federal authorities of the time.

This sequence eventually engendered a successful palace war: the former regional allies of the dominant party (TPLF) in the ruling coalition (EPRDF) changed their support and chose Abiy Ahmed as the new Prime Minister and chief of the EPRDF in April 2018.

I left my functions in Ethiopia in August 2018, but continued to follow the situation.

Then we had the Covid.

Then, the tensions skyrocketed between the new federal authorities and the former political masters of the country, who were then confined to their originating region in Tigray.

In this communication, I first evoke rapidly the diplomatic tensions observed during the War in Tigray, then I elaborate on the general questioning that I am following here, and finally I present some empirical objects of interest for current and further investigation.

# 1/ Diplomatic Pressures and Retaliation in the Name of Sovereignty Amidst the War in Tigray

In November 2020, the war sparked between the federal government and the Tigrayan Defense Forces.

It was a high-intensity, devastating, long-lasting war, inducing a massive number of violations of the humanitarian international law.

As a special envoy appointed by the African Union, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo ranged the number of direct and indirect death to some 600.000 people.

Ironically, the Ethiopian federal government operated there in a very similar manner to what the Israeli government has been practicing in Gaza after the terrorist attacks led by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which is, a complete embargo on the war zone.

On its part, the TPLF tried its best to increase international awareness on the conflict.

The embargo was blocking humanitarian relief and it was also blocking foreign eyes who could witness the scale of the violence.

During the war, though, various voices from outside Ethiopia tried to influence foreign states and the public in a way or another.

These states did react, particularly the Biden administration through the voice of its Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, as well as the European Union and some member states individually at one point or another (Ireland, Finland).
Sanctions were adopted, including against the Ethiopian Federal authorities. The UN Human Rights Council even created an International Commission of Human Rights Expert for Ethiopia by the end of 2021.

Addis Ababa rapidly retaliated, expelling diplomats, UN senior officers (including the head of UNICEF and OCHA in October 2021), ICG analyst (William Davison) in the very first days of the conflict, etc., and denouncing the neocolonialist posture of these Western states accused to violate their sovereignty, although no military intervention was ever considered as an option. The statement made by the government spokesperson Redwan Hussein in December 2020 illustrates the Ethiopian side's reaction: "Ethiopia does not need a babysitter", he said.

And yet, Ethio-American business-as-usual relations resumed once the war was officially over in November 2022. The war was apparently doomed to be forgotten. At least diplomatic partners seemed prone to put this episode aside.

In their 2022 article, Harry Verhoeven and Michael Woldermariam thoroughly described this sort of dependency that emerges from the supportive posture initially adopted by Washington towards Abiy Ahmed government.

This dependency means that it becomes practically harder for Washington to first provide support then to condition seriously its continuous support to an effective compliance of minimal rules from the international humanitarian law<fnref n="1" />.

Washington failed to implement a sort of red line instruction to its ally.

But these authors' conclusion in 2022 was that the U.S. had lost Ethiopia.

Well, Ethiopia did enlarge the spectrum of its partnerships, particularly with the United Arab Emirates, also with Turkey, and seemed to use a sort of blackmailing of deepening relations with Russia. But we cannot say so far that Ethiopia has been lost by the U.S.

## 2/ Questioning Sovereignty Claims and Diplomatic Dissent

In 2023, I have decided to revisit this sequence before my memories and my personal notebooks are completely lost.

My interest here is to better understand these sovereignty claims expressed by the Ethiopian government in such critical moments, and the more or less “undiplomatic” manners that are chosen.

Speaking of “undiplomatic” manners entails the notion of a break in previous codified practices, a break in practices that had become normal, normalized.

In this case, one needs to consider how new, how disruptive, the moves made by both sides were, or were not.

This questioning of mine is of course nurtured by a larger context, which became obvious by the very end of the 2000s, where Western states turn to be more sensitive than ever to expressions of distrust or open resistance by partners from the “Global South”.

This is due to a new competitive structure of international politics, which can be illustrated by the emergence of the BRICS alliance and its recent extension to middle-range regional powers, including Ethiopia.

<footnote n="1">¹ Verhoeven H., Woldermariam M., « Who lost Ethiopia? The Unmaking of an African Anchor State and U.S. Foreign Policy », *Contemporary Security Policy*, vol. 43, n° 4, 2022, pp. 622-650.</footnote>
In fact, the omnipresent question is that of the challenges coming from Global South state authorities eager to diversify their relationships with new actors and affirm vigorously their sovereignty, in order to obtain an equal treatment on the international scene. And of course this is not new at all.

So here we need to consider how African foreign policy decision makers assess strategically their international environment and engage with it, sometimes proactively sometimes more reactively. This is for instance how Errol A. Henderson (Penn State University) intends to grasp African states' decision to resort to international warfare or not, proposing a realist analysis deprived of this form of "racism" (Henderson's word) that in the past has prevented IR scholars from taking African states' strategic thinking seriously<fnref n="2" />.

### 3/ Empirical Objects for Current and Further Investigation

I'll mention four sorts of objects for further empirical research:

1. If you focus on official statements on Ethio-American relations over time, you are rapidly convinced that the kind of megaphone diplomacy used by Ethiopia against Western neocolonialism during the War in Tigray was anything but a novelty. If one comes to the aftermath of the disputed general elections in 2005 and the "antiterrorist" struggle waged by Addis Ababa against Berhanu Nega's Ginbot7 armed movement, signs of mutual irritation became more and more obvious between the EPRDF and Washington and its European allies. Later on, during the Oromo Protests, I observed myself how irritated Ethiopian military senior officers were after Human Rights Watch published its report denouncing the incredible level of repression occurring in 2016 against mobilized Oromo youth. In 2017, my colleague Thomas Mandrup and colleagues from South African and Denmark organized in 2017 a conference with the Ethiopian International Peacekeeping Training Center, where I was also kindly invited to speak.

Forgetting these recurrent moments of tensions between Ethiopia and the U.S. and Western diplomacies would thus be a mistake.

2. What is of course important in this situation, for each side, is to keep opened, alternative channels to maintain dialogue despite the current diplomatic dissent.

From the U.S., the most severe charges were not made by the Department of State, but by think tanks like the Institute of Peace in Washington, which organized various expert meetings online in order to create awareness on the possible humanitarian and regional consequences of the conflict.

On the Ethiopian side, the political alternation in 2018 came also with a changing landscape of the Ethiopian think tanks dedicated to peace and security issues.

The Ethiopian Foreign Relations Strategic Studies Institute (EFRSSI) lost any influence, as its founder, Sebhat Nega, a founding figure of the TPLF was arrested in rough conditions, then released in 2021 after Jeffrey Feltman (Blinken Special Envoy for the Horn) came in Addis and obtained this appeasement gesture.

On the contrary, the Centre for Dialogue, Research and Cooperation and its main figure, Abdeta Dribssa Beyene, who was less committed with the former regime (despite a joint publication with Seyoum Mesfin in 2018), maintained a solid influence on regional issues.

I could observe how influential these Ethiopian experts could be when discussing with foreign chancelleries locally. They know how to liaise and be convincing with foreigners, with

<footnote n="2">² Errol A. Henderson, *African Realism? International Relations Theory and Africa's Wars in the Postcolonial Era*, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015.</footnote>
provocative and critical views on their own government, more than the rank-and-file diplomat who is often constrained by his or her fears to say too much to foreigners, as this suspicion is quite strong in the Ethiopian state apparatus.

3. A third interesting aspect is conflicting loyalties within the state elite in Ethiopia when the war sparked.

At least two “diplomatic” voices publicly condemned the violence deployed by the federal army. One was the deputy chief of the Ethiopian embassy in Washington, Berhane Kidanemariam, who defected in March 2021³. The second was of course Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, who remained silent in the first months then voiced in summer 2022 against the humanitarian catastrophe that was occuring in Tigray<fnref n="4" />.

4. A final point relates to the diaspora. Reports have been issued showing how diaspora organisations in the U.S. got committed to one side or another during this conflict.

The *Amhara Association of America* and the *Oromo Legacy Leadership and Advocacy Association* for instance congratulated Abiy Ahmed after the victory of his new Prosperity Party during the 2021 general elections, and advocated for a clear condemnation of the violations of human rights committed by the TPLF during the war in the U.S. Congress. Online activity of the *American Ethiopian Public Affairs Committee* (AEPAC) also made obvious their hostility against the TPLF<fnref n="5" />.

On the other side, the *Tigray Center for Information and Communication* contracted a lobbyist firm (Von Batten-Montague-York LC) in order to obtain the vote of the resolution 97 in the Senate in 2021 calling for an immediate ceasefire in Tigray<fnref n="6" />.

Here, this “politics of animation”<fnref n="7" /> by diasporic organizations in the U.S. was particularly targeting congresspersons belonging to the Congressional Black Caucus, notably in California (Karen Brass, current Los Angeles mayor), or congresspersons members of the subcommittee on Africa within the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs (like Sara Jacobs).

These different actors contribute to either fuel or appease these diplomatic dissents on sovereignty grounds, and deserve a close examination.

<footnote n="3">³ Rodney Muhumuza, « Ethiopia diplomat quits US post, cites atrocities in Tigray », *AP*, 10 mars 2021, https://apnews.com/general-news-8568411bce180b7297b7093ae3933fef.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Peter Beaumont and agencies, « ‘Colour of the skin’: WHO chief hits out over Tigray crisis indifference », *The Guardian*, 18 août 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/18/tigray-ethiopia-conflict-crisis-who-chief-hits-out-over-global-indifference*</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ https://aepact.org</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ Roos Baudewyns, Jonas Krohn, Hannah Magnes, Eden Roberts, Phillip Togado, The Influence of Ethiopian Diaspora in the United States on Communal Violence in their Homeland, Governance in Conflict Network, date not mentioned, https://www.gicnetwork.be/the-influence-of-ethiopian-diaspora-in-the-united-states-on-communal-violence-in-their-homeland/</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ Alexander Betts and Wil Jones, *Mobilising the Diaspora. How Refugees Challenge Authoritarianism*, Cambridge University Press, 2016.</footnote>