Dispatches

See,

1) José Naranjo (Dakar), “Etiopía, la guerra más mortal del siglo: 600.000 civiles muertos en dos años; Las estimaciones de las instituciones europeas y de algunos académicos achacan el grueso de los fallecimientos al bloqueo de la región de Tigray,” El País, el 26 de enero, 2023 (23:40 EST);

Analysis

More than 600,000 people may have died in the civil war in Tigray province in Ethiopia. The case is not a case of simple invasion as is the case in the Ukraine war. Rather it is a case of a province trying to break away from the national government in Addis Addaba, the capital of Ethiopia, and the national government’s brutal repression of thevrebellion.

Many of the deaths seem to have resulted from a blockade of Tigray Province and resulting starvation.

In addition to the Ethiopian army, one or more militias were involved as were Eritrean army forces that came to assist the national Ethiopian army.

While this conflict does not appear to involve the illegal use of force across an international frontier–Eritrean forces presumably intervened at the invitation of the Ethiopian government–it is a conflict of a kind the United Nations should be able to control–at least in the future.

The chances of that happening if Russia succeeds in tearing down the U.N. Charter and international law are virtually nil. Nil. None. No chance.

The conflict may involve acts of genocide against the Tigrayan population. That raises difficult legal issues, as did the crimes against humanity committed by the Syrian forces of Bashar al-Assad and the Russian army in the Syrian civil war.

Nonetheless, in a world of eight billion people, we should be moving toward mechanisms and norms that can deal with these types of situations.

If Russia succeeds in overthrowing the U.N. Charter and international law, this will not be even theoretically possible.

Without international law and efforts to enforce it, anarchy will be loosed upon the world.

That is one reason why Russia must be defeated, and why all Russian troops must be forced to withdraw from all Ukrainian territory.

The Trenchant Observer