house divided

Tigray conflict divides Ethiopian diaspora, complicating US policy

By Julian Pecquet

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Posted on August 3, 2021 12:49

 © Members of the Ethiopian diaspora, the largest outside of Ethiopia, in Washington, U.S., July 28, 2018.             REUTERS/Mike Theiler
Members of the Ethiopian diaspora, the largest outside of Ethiopia, in Washington, U.S., July 28, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Theiler

As chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, US Congress representative Karen Bass (Democrat-California) has the tricky task of threading the needle on the proper congressional response to the conflict in Tigray. She also represents part of Los Angeles, home to the nation’s second-largest Ethiopian diaspora community after Washington, DC.

As if things weren’t complicated enough, many of her Ethiopian-American constituents who have long supported the congresswoman’s almost two-decade political career are no longer on speaking terms with each other.

Those tensions were apparent on a Friday afternoon in late July as the fractured community clamoured for a say in Bass’s pending House resolution condemning the violence.

To avoid a potential shouting match, Bass opted to hold not one but two Zoom sessions: one with supporters of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s response to the conflict, the other with activists who accuse him of abetting genocide in Tigray.

Meanwhile ethnic lobbies critical of both Abiy and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) have launched their own advocacy campaigns to make sure attacks against their group aren’t swept under the rug.

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