The United States has been accused by Ethiopia’s government of adopting a “partisan” strategy by asserting that both its forces and Eritrean troops committed war crimes during the two-year conflict in Tigray.
After Washington accused all parties to the conflict of committing war crimes, it singled out Ethiopian, Eritrean, and local Amhara forces for crimes against humanity without mentioning the Tigrayan rebels, according to a statement from the foreign ministry.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited Ethiopia last week for the first time following a historic peace agreement between the federal government and Tigrayan rebels in November 2022, issued a stern call for accountability upon his return to Washington on Monday.
He claimed that after conducting a “careful review of the law and the facts,” the State Department came to the conclusion that federal troops from Ethiopia and its ally Eritrea, as well as the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and forces from the nearby Amhara region, had all committed war crimes.
“Many of these actions weren’t merely the result of war or random occurrences. They were planned and intentional “Blinken said as he delivered a yearly report on US human rights.
Blinken continued, though he omitted the TPLF, that the State Department also discovered killings and sexual assault committed by Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara forces.
The US statement “unfairly assigns blame among different parties in the conflict,” according to Ethiopia’s foreign ministry.
It criticized the US for its “unwarranted” partisan and divisive approach, calling it detrimental to the peace process.
Ethiopia, the second-most populous country in Africa and one of Washington’s key allies on the continent, suffered greatly from the war’s effects.
