World

The Ethiopian government said Thursday that it would participate in peace talks next week led by the African Union to try to resolve the nearly two-year war in Tigray. 

International calls for a halt to violence in northern Ethiopia have mounted since an AU bid failed earlier this month to bring the warring sides to the negotiating table.

“AUC (African Union Commission) has informed us that the Peace Talks is set for 24 Oct, 2022 to be held in South Africa. We have reconfirmed our commitment to participate,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s national security adviser Redwan Hussein posted on Twitter.

When asked by AFP if they would attend the talks, Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) spokesman Getachew Reda said in a message: “We have already announced that we will take part in an AU-led process.”

Earlier this month the government and TPLF leaders agreed to join talks to be mediated by AU envoy Olusegun Obasanjo, South Africa’s former deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta.

But the meeting in South Africa never took place, with logistical problems blamed.

Fighting has since spiralled.

The government this week vowed to seize airports and other federal sites from rebel control as part of “defensive measures”.

Ethiopian forces and their Eritrean allies say they have captured a string of towns in the embattled region, which has been largely under rebel control since mid-2021.

Their advance has stoked fears for civilians, aid workers and displaced people caught in the crossfire.

– ‘Staggering’ toll –

Witnesses had reported heavy shelling of civilian centres like Shire, a town where an International Rescue Committee aid worker was among three people killed last week before its capture by pro-government forces.

A humanitarian source said a World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse storing non-food items and fuel had been looted in Shire, where there were also reports of civilians being abused.

“We hear about a lot of women having been raped,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A spokesperson for WFP said they were trying to verify reports that the warehouse had been looted.

The UN warned this week that the situation in Tigray was spiralling out of control and inflicting an “utterly staggering” toll on civilians.

Tigray and its six million people are virtually cut off from the outside world, facing dire shortages of fuel, food and medicines and lacking basic services, including communications and electricity.

An estimated two million people have been driven from their homes in northern Ethiopia and millions more are in need of aid, according to UN figures. Reports of widespread atrocities include massacres and rape. 

The death toll remains unknown. 

The conflict began on November 4 2020 when Nobel Peace laureate Abiy sent troops into Tigray after accusing the TPLF of attacking federal army camps. 

The TPLF dominated Ethiopia’s ruling political alliance for decades before Abiy took power in 2018 and sidelined the party.

With his shaved head and uncompromising scowl, General Sergey Surovikin has become the face of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine in just a few days.

A veteran of Moscow’s wars since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Surovikin has a ruthless reputation and is the man behind the massive bombing campaign on Ukraine.

Dubbed “General Armageddon” in Western media, the 56-year-old was named commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine on October 8.

His task is to turn the tide after a series of battlefield defeats that have forced Russian forces to retreat on several fronts.

While the army has remained silent about its setbacks on the ground, he appeared on Russian state television on Tuesday.

Dressed in military uniform and surrounded by Russian flags, Surovikin said of operations in Ukraine that the “situation is tense”.

“We will not exclude taking the most difficult decisions,” he said.

– ‘Ruthless commander’ –

Born in Siberia, Surovikin fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s, after which he was involved in the hardliner coup in 1991 that heralded the fall of the Soviet Union.

He went on to fight in the second Chechen war in the 2000s and the Syrian campaign in 2015.

“He is very well known. The military talk a lot about him. He has a reputation for being a crazy, traumatised, ruthless commander,” a Russian military expert told AFP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

President Vladimir “Putin adores him. In Syria, he kicked officers out of the general staff to go and head up assaults,” he said.

Vasily Kashin, an expert in geopolitics at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, said he had “managerial and strategic qualities”.

“It is clear that Russian leaders consider Surovikin as the commander best able to head up such a major military effort,” he said.

Independent analyst Alexander Khramchikhin noted that Surovikin previously headed up Russian forces in southern Ukraine which were the ones that had “succeeded the most”.

“It is the only requirement in the current situation,” he said.

The change of strategy is already noticeable.

Two days after Surovikin’s nomination, the Russian army unleashed a wave of drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure targets, causing electricity blackouts and water outages in several cities.

The bombings have continued and promise a harsh winter, with Ukrainian officials urging people to limit their electricity use.

– Prison sentences –

Before Ukraine, Surovikin was one of the commanders of Russian forces in Syria.

Human Rights Watch in 2020 said he was among the Russian officers “who may bear command responsibility” for violations, including attacks on schools and hospitals.

In Russia he is known above all for his role in the failed coup in 1991.

He was imprisoned after troops under his command killed three pro-democracy protesters but was freed a few months later.

“The second time he was jailed was at the end of the 1990s for illegal arms trading but the sentence was suspended on appeal,” said the expert who requested anonymity.

Surovikin’s reputation has earned the respect of those seeking a tougher line in Ukraine.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has been critical of the Russian military, said he was “100 percent satisfied” with the appointment.

Russian opposition figure Leonid Volkov accused Surovikin of being a “legendary thief” who got rich through illegal logging.

“He is a businessman, not a general,” he wrote on Twitter.

Surovikin will be judged for his capacity to reverse Russia’s fortunes in Ukraine and deal with the problems and mistakes that have piled up since the assault began in February.

Given recent Ukrainian advances on the southern front, he faces a particular tough challenge in the coming days — give up the occupied city of Kherson or stay and fight.

The Ethiopian government said Thursday that peace talks on the nearly two-year-old war in Tigray would start in South Africa next week.

International calls for a halt to escalating violence in northern Ethiopia have been mounting since a failed bid by the African Union earlier this month to bring the warring sides to the negotiating table.

“AUC (African Union Commission) has informed us that the Peace Talks is set for 24 Oct, 2022 to be held in South Africa. We have reconfirmed our commitment to participate,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s national security adviser Redwan Hussein posted on Twitter.

“However, we are dismayed that some are bent on preempting the peace talks & spreading false allegations against the defensive measures.”

A spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was not immediately available for comment.

The government and TPLF leaders had agreed to join talks this month that would to be mediated by AU envoy Olusegun Obasanjo, South Africa’s former deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta.

But the meeting in South Africa never took place, with logistical problems blamed.

Fighting meanwhile has spiralled.

The government this week vowed to seize airports and other federal sites from rebel control as part of “defensive measures”.

Ethiopian forces and their Eritrean allies say they have captured a string of towns in the embattled region, which has been largely under rebel control since mid 2021.

– Fear for civilians –

Their armies’ advance has stoked fears for civilians, aid workers and displaced people caught in the crossfire.

Witnesses had reported heavy shelling of civilian centres like Shire, a town where an International Rescue Committee aid worker was among three people killed last week.

The UN this week that the situation was spiralling out of control and inflicting an “utterly staggering” toll on civilians.

Tigray and its six million people are virtually cut off from the outside world, facing dire shortages of fuel, food and medicines and lacking basic services, including communications and electricity.

An estimated two million people have been driven from their homes in northern Ethiopia and millions more are in need of aid, according to UN figures, with reports of widespread atrocities including massacres and rape. 

The death toll remains unknown. 

The conflict began on November 4 2020 when Abiy — a Nobel Peace Prize winner — sent troops into Tigray after accusing the TPLF of attacking federal army camps. 

The TPLF had dominated Ethiopia’s ruling political alliance for decades before Abiy took power in 2018 and sidelined the party.

Embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday faced more calls from her own party to step down after a key minister quit and lawmakers rebelled during “a day of extraordinary mayhem”.

Truss is being urged to resign just six weeks into office after a forced U-turn on disastrous tax cuts that caused a market meltdown during an already severe cost-of-living crisis.

Right-wing broadsheet The Times reported the prime minister was “clinging to power”, and cited a Truss supporter in her cabinet as saying: “It’s terminal.”

Its tabloid sister paper The Sun ran the front page headline “Broken”, saying Truss’s “authority is in tatters after a day of extraordinary mayhem”.

Conservative peer Ed Vaizey said the “only way out of this mess is for Liz Truss to stand down and for somebody to be appointed as prime minister by Conservative MPs.”

The party could avoid a lengthy leadership contest by consolidating around a single replacement, but Truss has shown no sign of being willing to resign.

If she resigned this would lead to a Tory leadership contest that could be shortened if Tory MPs could agree on a single replacement. Otherwise the MPs could unite to trigger a no-confidence vote.

– ‘Must leave’ –

The fresh calls came a day after Truss’s interior minister Suella Braverman left following just six weeks in office, ostensibly for sending an official document in a personal email but using her resignation message to attack Truss.

Her sacking was the second reshuffle this month after Truss sacked close ally Kwasi Kwarteng over the tax cut debacle, replacing him with Jeremy Hunt, who swiftly reversed almost all the policy announcements.

The Daily Telegraph reported that Braverman left after a “heated face-to-face row” with Truss and Hunt “over their demands to soften her stance on immigration”.

Truss appointed Grant Shapps to replace Braverman though had previously fired him as transport secretary when she took office. He had supported her rival for the leadership, Rishi Sunak.

Braverman, seen as a hardliner on immigration, said she had resigned over a “technical infringement” of government rules.

“I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility; I resign,” she wrote in her resignation letter, while adding she had “serious concerns” that Truss was breaking manifesto promises.

Truss has faced widespread criticism for failing to step down herself, after forcing Kwarteng to take the blame for the botched budget of September 23, which sent markets into freefall.

“Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see we’ve made them, and hoping things will magically come right is not serious politics,” Braverman wrote, clearly hinting at Truss’s own behaviour.

– ‘Not a quitter’ –

Braverman’s resignation message came hours after Truss sought to dispel doubts over her leadership with a combative appearance in parliament.

Truss faced harsh putdowns from opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer as she took part in her first Prime Minister’s Questions since humiliating U-turns on tax cuts.

Starmer asked the House of Commons: “What’s the point of a prime minister whose promises don’t even last a week?” as opposition MPs jeered and booed Truss and her own party’s MPs remained silent.

Truss insisted that she would not stand down, saying: “I am a fighter and not a quitter”.

Later on Wednesday there were chaotic scenes in parliament as the opposition proposed a debate on Truss’s controversial decision to resume fracking — drilling onshore for gas.

Opposition Labour MPs alleged that Conservative MPs were physically forced to vote against the proposals by the whips who enforce party discipline while dozens failed to vote along party lines.

Opposition leader Starmer was set Thursday to make a speech at the conference of the TUC trade union federation.

Polls show Truss’s personal and party ratings have plummeted, with YouGov saying Tuesday that she had become the most unpopular leader it has ever tracked.

A separate survey of Conservative members found that less than two months after electing her as party leader and prime minister, a majority now think she should go.

Apart from the blown-up tanks and plants singed by seven months of war, the road leading to Izyum — once nicknamed “highway to hell” — could be a normal road in Europe.

The asphalt paving machine has been past and the bomb craters have been filled in.

A team of workers in orange reflector vests has painted white lines on the road surface to indicate where it is safe to pass a vehicle.

Five weeks after the re-capture of this small but strategic town in eastern Ukraine, a new battle for reconstruction is taking place.

An army of construction machinery and builders is busy rebuilding what is left of the infrastructure and erasing any sign of Russian occupation as quickly as possible.

Ukrainians have started by making use of what Russian forces left in their wake — like the remains of a pontoon bridge on a tank marked with the letter “Z” lying in the Donets River.

“We’re going to recycle every piece, re-shape them and use them here or somewhere else that we need it,” said Lieutenant Denys Ponomarenko, a 27-year-old military engineer.

At the entrance to the city, a board with the yellow and blue colours of the Ukrainian flag carries the message: “Friends, you are free!”

And now Izyum is coming out of its long isolation.

Roads and rail links are working again and the 4G mobile phone network was partially restored a few days ago.

But essential services like water, gas and electricity were devastated, leaving residents dependent on humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations.

Out of a pre-war population of 46,000 inhabitants, only 8,000-9,000 people remain.

– ‘Doing what we can’ –

In the city’s central square, which President Volodymyr Zelensky visited on September 14 to raise the Ukrainian flag once again, a queue has formed of people hoping for aid.

“Apart from this, nothing is working,” said Ivan Zakharchenko, a 70-year-old resident, who said he hopes buses will be restored so he can go and get his pacemaker checked.

Nearby, a worker on a telescoping ladder is nailing chipboards to the empty windows of the church, which was built in 1648, that same year as the town’s fortress.

“The restoration of the church is a symbol of the restoration of the town,” said Semyon, 48, the local Orthodox priest.

The rest of the town is largely in ruins.

“I have some water at my house but I live on the third floor and the pressure is very weak. I also have electricity but we have no gas or heating and we do not know if we’ll have any for the winter,” said one resident, 47-year-old Nadiya Nesterenko.

“My daughter lives above me on the 5th floor and she still has a missile stuck in her roof. And her kitchen and bathroom are open to the elements,” she said.

“Nobody has come to take it away. We have seen nobody,” Nesterenko said.

Izyum mayor Valery Marchenko told AFP that local officials were focused on repairing damaged apartments “to heat them this winter”.

He said they were being helped by “volunteers” but admitted no major reconstruction work could begin before spring.

“We are doing what we can,” he said.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Thursday he would “isolate and finish” exiled opposition figure Sam Rainsy, as the strongman continues to squeeze political challengers ahead of next year’s national election.

Hun Sen — who has ruled the kingdom for 37 years — is running for office again and has backed his eldest son Hun Manet to succeed him.

Stepping up the rhetoric against his long-term foe, Hun Sen told reporters on Thursday he would “eliminate the extremist ideology of three-generation traitor” Rainsy to preserve the country’s peace.

Hun Sen also said he would “isolate and finish” 73-year-old Rainsy, who had appealed on Sunday to the Cambodian people and army to liberate the country from the ruler’s family.

Hun Sen warned any political party with links to the politician would face dissolution, and that people who offer him assistance could face repercussions.

His latest comments come a day after a Cambodian court sentenced Rainsy — who has taken refuge in France, where he is a dual national — to life imprisonment for allegedly attempting to cede territory to a foreign entity.

Rainsy is the co-founder of the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which was dissolved ahead of 2018’s widely criticised elections.

Rights groups say 70-year-old Hun Sen — Asia’s longest-serving leader — has wound back democratic freedoms and used the courts to stifle opponents, jailing scores of opposition figures and activists.

And earlier this month a court in France cleared Rainsy in a defamation case brought by Hun Sen.

Cambodia will come under the international spotlight next month when it hosts an ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh. 

At a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers in August, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed concerns about the kingdom’s ailing democracy.