 Today is May 40th here, looking out at the beautiful Brisbane River. Thursday afternoon, December 15th. No country holds more of Ethiopia's external debt than China. The Ethiopians still haven't figured out how they're going to pay down the debt, which is a problem a US diplomat with extensive experience in the Horn of Africa totally. I'm sure the Chinese will be very understanding. This is a New Yorker article about the leader of Ethiopia. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, and then his army has committed genocide in 2020. I'd be occasionally fretted over how much money he was borrowing. If you are a really good person, you told me. Pray for me for just one thing, that I can manage our debt. He told me that he would like to work more with Western companies, but that the Chinese had been useful. The Americans should step up their role here, he said. But if they don't come, there are others who are interested. Ethiopia's relationship with the United States was a preoccupation for a bee. During a helicopter trip through the countryside, he turned away from the view and declared how much he loved the US. Really, he said, America is a beautiful country. So I'm not sure how effective it is to ask a secular New Yorker reporter to pray for you and pray for your country. And the Americans are very good people. And I know the country may be better than some Americans. I've driven from Washington all the way to California. In the mid-2000s, Ethiopia became a regional ally of the US, sending troops to invade Somalia to fight al-Shabaab. Isn't Ethiopia our greatest ally? So I guess there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies in the world, while there are shifting interests. Surgeon group linked to al-Qaeda. After a bee's time in the military, he worked for the government in cybersecurity and intelligence and spent some time in US training programs. In the Iraq war, I fought with him, he said. I was the one who would send intelligence from this part of the world to the NSA on Sudan and Yemen and Somalia. Yeah, why do we have troops in these countries who end up getting killed by Islamic terrorists? Just not sure it's really in our best interest. The NSA knows me. I would fight and die for America. A bee gave a disgusted wave of his hand. Then these guys came. He was referring to the Biden administration. They don't know where their true friends are, you said, since the war began. So I noticed with Democratic presidents, they're from the Democratic Party, I mean. They're more likely to want to make alliances based on human rights. And human rights is exactly an objective category. I mean, by what Democratic Party members and mainstream Republicans mean by human rights, is that they fit in with modern liberalism. LGBTQ rights. They made the mistake of talking publicly and down to me. Samantha Power announced she was coming to Ethiopia and was going to meet me without even consulting me. That's not the way it's done. So I didn't see her and she left very upset. Now there is a different approach. They know they must behave respectfully. U.S. officials have said that a bee's office ignored their attempts to schedule a meeting. Even though a bee was desperate for American investment, he couldn't bring himself to be too reverent about its politicians. Yeah. So he's desperate for their investment. He really wants America's help. But what's more important than that to him, that's flexing his ego. Like, singing what he wants to say. Like, singing the song he wants to sing. So that's more important to him than his own country's best interests. When you're going to be a servant of the people, you're going to want to submerge your own ego at times. There are more important things than your own ego. He told me that he had taken a big intake of breath when he heard that Joe Biden had fallen off his bicycle. I wish he acted his age, he said. He went on, Obama was good at making inspiring speech. That's a great point. Like, 80-year-olds should not be riding bicycles. Generally speaking, I think 70-year-olds should not be riding bicycles. Your bones break much more easily as you age. So there are other exercises you can do. There's a stationary bike where you're less likely to fall and hurt yourself. Which is, but you made more promises than you could fulfill. I'd be grimaced when I asked about Donald Trump. He did a lot of damage to America's image. Let's not even talk about him in the same way as the others. Without discernible irony, Abbey said that he was concerned by the tumultuous condition of the United States. America's politics have been ruined by entertainment culture and media. Yeah, he's concerned about the state of democracy and the stability of the United States. Isn't that kind of him? The Ethiopian is afraid for the stability and democracy of the United States. That's why its politicians are always trying to behave as if they are in a drama. He said, the world needs America, but it needs it to be stable and for its system to reflect institutional continuity. Jeff Feldman, who served as a U.S. special envoy to the Horn of Africa until this spring, told me that he was familiar with Abbey's complaints and with his habit of discounting the evidence of war crimes. I had the same tour as you, he said. Abbey was saying what a man of vision he was that the U.S. simply did not understand him. This guy loves to talk a lot. He doesn't really like to listen, which is not usually an effective attitude or a procedure. He was trying to move Ethiopia into the future and that to Gray was just a distraction. The charm offensive didn't work. A current senior U.S. official put it succinctly. We'd like to support the PM's economic domestic program, but we can't until there are no more human rights atrocities. Oh, yeah. So every nation has human rights atrocities. This is just self-defeating attitude that you're going to run much of your foreign policy on the basis of some subjective liberal partisan conception of human rights. Abbey's war with the Tigrayans had a brutal second act. In June 2021, days after the election in which he secured his second term, the TPLF launched a lightning counteroffensive retaking its capital, Makali, and parading thousands of captured Ethiopian soldiers through the streets. Abbey was humiliated. Almost overnight, his army had been routed and Tigray had been lost. There was even talk among Tigrayans of seceding from Ethiopia. The conflict settled into a dismal stalemate. Abbey's government sought to isolate Tigray, cutting off its electricity, communications, air links, and food supplies. The United Nations warned of widespread starvation and called for humanitarian relief to feed 4 million of Tigray's roughly 6 million people. Last one. So fulfilling the human right of feeding these people simultaneously undercuts a political program to unite the country and to bring a rebel area under control. So we had a flood here, 2011. Another one in 1974, then another one just a few months ago. The 1974 flood was the biggest of all. Ball, in an effort to break the siege, Tigrayan forces went on the offensive again, overrunning several Amhero cities and marching to within 120 miles of Addis Ababa. Right, so if you want to win a war, you usually have to put human rights considerations second, or third, or fourth. And sometimes winning a war is the most effective way to bring peace and an end to massive human rights violations. So yeah, sometimes the ends do justify the means. Hoping to rally a patriotic defense of the capital, Abiy traveled to the front, where he was photographed in fatigues alongside his soldiers. As the international community urged the Tigrayans to withdraw, Abiy's forces struck with the help of drones, reportedly supplied by Turkey, Iran, and the UAE. By Christmas, the Tigrayan forces had retreated. With the Tigrayans trapped in the north, Abiy seemed to be looking for a way to de-escalate. Gabriel Negatu, an influential Ethiopian businessman who lives in Washington, DC, but remains close to Abiy, told me that the offensive had been halted for financial reasons. The war was costing hundreds of millions of dollars. That was why the PM pulled back, he said. Also, he didn't want to be responsible for two to three million degrees of starvation possible. Yeah, well, sometimes millions of people starving is an effective tool for winning a war. And war is the continuation of politics, right, by other means. So if you can't talk to people and arrange some kind of settlement, people won't listen to reason, then war becomes increasingly likely. To death, because they hadn't been able to plant seeds. Abiy thought that a long-term occupation of Tigray was unsustainable, Negatu said. But parts of the military felt that he had given up the fight too soon. Some Hera allies and the Eritreans were angry too. They wanted to finish off the TPLF. So we're in the wonderful Botanic Gardens here in Brisbane. Brisbane is not as stunningly beautiful as Sydney. It's got its own subtle and destated charms. Abiy's aides insisted that he was still seeking unity. The PM believes our strength lies in our diversity, one told me. Our strength lies in our diversity. Wait a second. You've got a massive civil war going on that risks millions of lives. Civil war that is first and foremost probably generated, stimulated, produced by this diversity. And yet you want to argue that diversity is your strength. But as the conflict grew more intense, Abiy began referring to TPLF members as the cancer of Ethiopia and as devils and weeds. Right, so sometimes diversity is a good thing. Sometimes you can enlist it as an argument. Sometimes diversity provokes and promotes growth. But this is often diversity and proximity lead to deadly conflict, such as in Ethiopia.