Transcripts For ALJAZ Inside Story 20240711

Founder well the celebrations have been held by joe biden supporters across the country and have been several rallies for president his supporters have been responding to claims that democrats are trying to steal the white house we both know tensions are high they can be high after a tough election one like weve had already remember we have to remain calm patient with the process work out. As we count all the books you know were proving again what weve true for 244 years in this country democracy works your vote will be counted. I dont care how hard people try to stop it i will not let it happen. In other news president trumps chief of staff mark meadows sr said positive for corona virus its unclear when the 61 year old contracted the virus or Trump Campaign aids has also been infected the u. S. Has seen another record jump in corona virus infections more than 120000 cases were nights on thursday another new record rise in infections has been records in france for the 2nd straight day and almost 60500 new coronavirus cases on friday and 828 deaths a 3 Week National laaksonen has started in greece as authorities try to stop a rapid rise in corona virus infections kindergartens and primary schools will stay open but not secondary schools this is the countrys 2nd lockdown and the government says it has double the fine for violations. Well thats why its a date to keep it here on out in syria inside story is next. On counting the cost the end of austerity the ideology decimation of the weakest of society for the economic mismanagement of the rich and powerful may be consigned to history and the russian german gas pipeline opposed by washington and european capitals. Counting the cost on aljazeera. Has reshaped ethiopia and want to Nobel Peace Prize now all they are met is facing a leadership test as he starts an offensive against the taker a region so just what are the causes of tension there and is ethiopia heading for civil war this is inside story. Hello and welcome to the program im homage to grays leaders have dominated ethiopias Ruling Coalition of ethnically based parties for decades but after i became Prime Minister in 2018 they refused to join his single Party Alliance theyve also resisted his sweeping reforms and in september they went ahead with local elections defying obvious decision to suspend polls because of coronavirus he now says his patience has run out with a great hes ordered a military operation in the region after accusing the t p l f of attacking federal troops an accusation denied by the groups its feared the feud could lead to the breakup of ethiopia and the un is calling for the escalation of tensions in elise you reports. It was business as usual in the ethiopian capital but many here are on alert as an Armed Conflict simmers in the north of the country but to conduct and i say even yes i love me but were not people who fight and kill each other therefore i personally feel that the 2 great and federal governments should solve their differences through dialogue and negotiations and prioritize the interests of our nation. Under good chaos creates a perfect opportunity for robbery our country needs peace im now sick of this in a very disgusting time im telling you the truth the Prime Minister met launched a military offensive in the northern Tigray Regional accusing the opposition led local government of attacking federal troops and looting their assets in the regions ruled by the to grey Peoples Liberation front or t p l f yes the ghats today the apostate ethiopian has stabbed ethiopia what makes this attack one of the most shocking attacks is that is viewing the Ethiopian National Defense Forces as a foreign army i declare that we will do all we can to shame and destroy this force. Be declared a 6 month state of emergency integrate and shut down electricity phone and Internet Services there in a statement aired on to great t. V. A Regional Government spokesman accuses the Nobel Prize Winning Prime Minister of cowering the people of to grey into submission by force tensions between the 2 sides escalated in september went to gray went ahead with Regional Elections despite a ban from the federal government. Postpone the polls citing the coronavirus pandemic but the t. P. O. Of says he delayed them to stay in power. The t. P. L. F. Dominated if the opium politics were more than 3 decades and says abby squeezed him out of the federal government when he came to power in 2018. Analysts warn the conflict into gray could turn into a civil war. The stabilization and the fracturing of egypt is military to green offices based integrate they may not be loyal to the federal government in terms of its efforts to the. Leadership so this could lead to a. Crisis. And it could also spread to the all of. The un has called on both sides to deescalate tensions and find a peaceful solution to the dispute the secretary general underlined the importance of stability for. The horn of africa a region with a long history of border conflicts and political unrest and they sue. All right lets bring in our guests from london our wall allo a senior lecturer at Keele University and a horn of africa analyst from addis ababa is. The ethiopian minister in charge of democratization and also from london is martin clout a Senior Research fellow at the institute of commonwealth studies thank you all for joining us on the let me start with you today Prime Minister said that the federal military operations in the north have quote Clear Limited and achievable objectives where do things stand there now and what are those objectives zob loud and clear. Were going to be aware of our Northern Command base has been very good about. 30 has been looted and i dont. Which is any clearer break or is that all of that with a rather always im off the lap so were out of there to. Make sure that the roar of lorries our politics. And. Law of the land which is a consideration is respected so the 1000000 is mean and then our of us our 2nd objective is to make sure that our citizens living 0. Living there freely without the interference of that ability to military do so this is objectively and as a premise that has communities depleted our military operation of us here is meant to achieve this 2 major objectives are all just how close is ethiopia to civil war right now. I think itd be easy in a state of signal are already. Well we have an ultimate confrontation between the federal Government Forces and forces that are loyal to the Regional Government the Regional Government that controls a large large swaths of territory a Regional Government that has sufficient resources and ill miss to the kind of talk this is a civil war but just to address the points that it was making earlier that the government was forced into this this confrontation i mean to be quite honest we know that the right things are already on the wall that what is coming in terms of the political confrontation between the 2 forces and the wanting to get out and now is basically an extension of the one other diaby government has been prosecuting in places like the only reason why we have here talking about our big confrontation is because people left which runs the tickler region has an army its contorted its already good it has resources that allows it to defend itself but that the evidence very clearly shows that there has already been provoked at the military deployment on the border so if t. P. L. F. As if your government claiming now tries to loot for example the resources of the Northern Command its probably because its so thats what is coming and thats what it is and thats because there has been threats of use of force against them martin so what are the reasons for the conflict and why has it escalated so much was the Tipping Point for all this the holding of the election. I think that was the immediate cause in a sense you cant hold an election in an area where the part of your country where the federal government says you cant hold that election that its illegitimate and if you go ahead with it its a direct challenge to the state but they perhaps even more directly when the federal government attempt to send a military commander to the north to take control of the army the to graemes basically told him to go home that he wasnt going to be allowed out but if you go a little bit further back that you see really the disintegration of the system of government it was brought about in 1901 when the grains took control of the Central Government and they brought about a system of ethnic federalism which basically left them controlling through a series of proxies all the various regions and the peoples of ethiopia and that gradually fell away until you get the election of Prime Minister and once that happened it open a pandoras d box and all sorts of ethnic tensions exploded that again i you were eager to jump in and respond to some what are well it said please go ahead. The way i want to. Productize its ongoing operation in todays very long. If one is too important whats happening its even without a subpoena a distinct a sense of the term carries that museum a weight off and want to between 2 between people the Common People which is the key here this is a conflict between federal government that is trying to appoint or of not integrate in iraq i mean to do into that is trying to to. Keep the good people of the great our way from the rest of the country by way of massacring looting banks and so on so this is not any way to come up to civil or. This is not an extension of what is happening you know to me our somewhere as you know we are trying to make it here for democratic success against all odds as the reform has brought about a number of challenges and as a country that has been out there looking for a democratic a possible democratic government we know what this brings about so. Whats whats happening in iran me out in the south this is an enormous challenge and the way we are responding to the challenge is we believe the right way to do like there is no this kind of attack are going to start on our military bases. Or in. The south so this is not a close this is not an extension of whats happening in order me around the south and hes not a little in any way a civil war this is simply the diplomatic route again is this. Going to move by that by that appellate. Whenever our army makes its way in then a shower in some other part of the region now the people are coming out in mass and then will coming out and it shows that the people of the are not behind this. Attack on out of Northern Command did it would be interesting its really interesting to hear the. Minister responsible for democratization what he was just said. The pike minister dissolved the former governing e. P. Added if party and it created a new party that does a lot of reflect existing fault lies in the country that does not reflect existing social cleavage is or the kind of predominant more sort of organizing mobilization that exists in the country he changes the party in a baby rushed way in december of last year by in may he realized that there is no way that that party could we anything are example either competitive. So the Prime Minister uses the term because the emergency relation to corbett to postpone the election now after essentially eliminating every kind of. Powerful or for a middle political adversary within or b i which is the most significant region that eliminating the jailing everybody the Prime Minister is saying now we can go for elections in those militias just a case in which is quite a bit has not been as well been dealt with the numbers are going up more people are dying so so you can see that the difference between these 2 forces is ultimately political is ideological its ideological in the sense that we have a Prime Minister that is determined to impose his own vision of the future on these european people he wants to make that youre going to take again an idea which is opposed by a significant majority in that country and you have on the other hand people who are opposed to salvage it now in terms of keeping unless i have to say that the people left who was the architect of the kind of political settlement mismanaged the project they dishonored the project that it was a member of the party has been ideal for the party for a long period of time he knows the situation the question is not so much that he p. L. S. Is here some kind of. Say but the while itself is very much a reflection of the ideological difference between the 2 actors and it should not have morphed into im a confrontation of this sort and the reason is that the government is giving is really not the real reason behind the one and martin i want to take a step back here for a moment because the the to take im sorry i will get i will get back to you as soon as ive asked martin another question and ill give you a chance to respond i know you want to respond to martin and also to some what all is saying let me just ask martin this question 1st martin i want to take a step back as i was saying you know the to grants have held a great deal of power. Since 1991. Since Prime Minister abbay has come to power has he sidelined the t. P. I. Left or the to grand or has he just attempted to redistribute power among ethiopias various ethnic groups no i mean he has definitely sidelined the grains and they did they feel that i mean very much so but i mean you know there was a very good point made by one of my colleagues and he said that the governments argument this is a just war d comes down to a very specific claim that ethnic conflict and Political Violence since april 2018 has occurred because the t. P. O. Left that he grans have planned and executed it to win this argument concrete evidence will have to be made public and that is really the heart of what theyre having to show if they believe if the Prime Minister of be believes that there is direct evidence that the grounds have been behind every single one of the problems that they have been across the country let him show it one more challenge list let the ethiopians and the to grans allow reporters independent reporters both from the from ethiopia and from the International Community to go up to the front lines and witness whats going on for themselves and end the cutting off of telecommunications the to great let information flow then will begin to know whats really going on are exotic please go ahead i know you want to jump in before heres your chance to respond. Ok i want to 1st 2nd what i would have said you know if you had only if i were you saying that the Prosperity Party the new established party which is a continual practice in some sense is established by the Prime Minister this is very wrong the prime this is part and parcel of the effort to was to change care they can to Prosperity Party so it is not only the Prime Ministers vision it is a shared to be in among the rank and file of the Prosperity Party and i will said the difference between developed and Prosperity Party is that a radical difference thats very wrong is as hurting our Northern Command is that starting our soldiers and i dont recall differences can never be the case it is simply an attempt by the terrorist group to impose its will on the on the on our military base which ajax it is call it time and they can call to do it in a sort of this sense. And Prosperity Party is stablish in a way that allegations that the problems here the problems in the country its aware of the fault lines and and then did the way our program is designed is in a way the soles of our long standing problems if you care to this program would mean to solve our longstanding problems you could have solved what we are seeing is a part because if you had this didnt solve our problems it simply wasnt or postpone it some other time and. A little also said that there lection was the election was postponed. For the wrong reason thats thats been dont you know 50 plus countries have cost won the election due to copy 19. 00 indeed it was not our will we want to go out with their action and compete compete openly but it is up to the National Nationalist level to do saw the National Product board failed because it ethiopia is not ready for election so we were to follow suit we were part of the members will respect these who said. Who oppose the decision of the National Power board you know naturally thought i was chaired by but to them big and on a position figure and nobody can cost is their credibility and this is the more credible than any of us so. This is not our will this is the we of the national i look at our board and we were mean to accept it and now you know cop it has become a way of life you dont have a proof that it will go away someday we will never nobody has a proof that would be able to get the vaccine anytime soon so we cannot post even if the g. O. P. If people realize i was for and for a limited number of time for an undetermined number of times and even now this is not up to us the National Health of what came up with the solutions that since we have learned a lot since we have come to know how to live with the cockpit then we can go ahead with the election and make it happen in 9 months time so and we have something organized with a decision or a National Sort of got together with the parliament that a liar i dont think what i will is i. Founded and its not this is that is not this is again this is on the ground all right as i think i can see now i want to i want to talk about what matters is that. You know were starting to run out of time let me let me get back to you with another question a few minutes you can you can respond to what martin said but i want to go to our now because he only wanted to jump in and respond to some of what you were saying just now go ahead are well its astonishing that people like to go to the Prime Minister would tell us what he saw wrong with the t. P. 3 here but with the carefree give this people were an intel park or the e. P. A. Today every day that it was one of the ideologues the Prime Minister he was one of the people he was a minister he was responsible for one of the security agencies in that country now it is easy having the separate in that region now to say that there is even has a disorder that. Constitution was not committed to democratize vision what was the reason that we have to believe that the people who are now to leave the country are actually committed to democracy mission when we see on the ground taxes that are completely the opposite of what they say that it said the electoral vote is independent there is no evidence to show that they look for bodies after the independent the Prime Minister is in control of the government and most of the things that are happening in the country out of happening precisely because he missed money the transitional process in this month of the transitional process to say that while he was given a very specific mandate when he came to power i think its important to understand at this time that that was not elected that he was selected by the party after a popular protest by the or more use sources of the Prime Minister to resign when he was selected by his party was given a very specific very limited mandate which is to leave the country to democratize to transition to democracy while Building Political consensus and promoting national consolation that was the monies that he was given and still doing that the Prime Minister basically presented himself as somebody who called a fresh minded from the electorate and he started making interventions that have the constitutional implication he wanted to recreate if youre going to stay if you wanted to push the political settlement in a different direction that is what is the core of the problem that we see now but in terms of this violence that is being blamed i guess the p. L. F. And other forces i think its important to highlight that wild one cannot rule out that people have might have an interest in instigating violence at the same time there are reasons to believe that the government might be behind some of the violence that we see. When a family for example a significant number of people were killed Security Forces were simply standing there and watching they said we have not been instructed to intervene now as somebody who grew up in ethiopia i know that it is a country where that kind of law and order culture prensa deep Security Forces would ask a lead one to enforce law and order even when they are not on duty so when you look at it well the 2nd is that when you look at for example the way in which the recent violence in the world. Has been suspended by the government there are reasons to suspect that the government may be behind it about this but i must say that there is a clear evidence that when they are accused in 11 other forces they are expected to come forward with evidence so that people would be able to judge but they are also resists to suspect that the government and maybe we had some our let me let me just start interrupt you but i i know is that its been trying to get in a point he wanted to respond to something martin said as arctic please go ahead but please be mindful we dont have much time left and id like to try to get martin start on what you have to say about his response earlier as well go ahead ok one thing well one thing i want to get a straight corrected is we havent we are not the ones that are interrupted the telecommunication connectivity in to correct it is it appears for jim. Its a paradox that interrupted the telephone has connectivity and the government has no problem subscribing itself to an independent review and we have been building. For that but i also want to respond to what our has been saying you know yes we are were part of the region but we the Prime Minister and other people other officials including myself asked for our people asking our people for an apology and we were given the chance to get our. Sled and the difference the difference between us and the definitive here dip. If taus not be part of a new political settlement not to subscribe to some of what according to a fair share of power they got out of the put it be that the pyramid the soyuz the privilege that becomes im sorry to interrupt is that were really almost out of time and i want to i want to ask martin here as well a last question i want to know from your perspective martin how likely is it that we originally as a military gets pulled into this now i think that is a real danger we have seen some reports that people with d air travel air trans are have been found on the battlefield. In uniform that cannot be. Corroborated yet there was some suggestions of mobilization inside eritrea as saves cannot be corroborated but let me just put one point to you which is that theres been a warning the United States institute of peace which includes people like chet crocker and Johnny Carson the a former assistant secretary of state for africa both of them warned of the danger of the collapse of the ethiopian state the largest state collapse in modern history thats what they say is is possible this is a really really dangerous position and you know the idea that it could reach across the region makes it even more more serious i think people have to be very very concerned about whats going on all right weve run out of time so were going to have to leave it there thanks so much to all our guests our alo. And martin clout. And thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website aljazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com forward slash a. J. Inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a. J. Inside story for me how much im doing the whole team here by for now. November on aljazeera. Following huge protests and the introduction of the beijing back National Security law carrie lamb sets out have vision for hong kong. All hail the lockdown explores the complexities of our Global Response to the coronavirus pandemic. In a series of special reports we examine the Global Gaming boom as other entertainment businesses struggle to survive up front returns with Emmy Award Winning journalist Richelle Carey shell cut through the headlines and be rigorous debate and former french president Nicolas Sarkozy will face trial on corruption charges well bring you the latest november on aljazeera. Around the World Council and cities are working to manipulate and influence us trolls just bought a 6 a can you just algorithms that a teen developed a designed to push content that says click me every click we make is value just sold off the one and in the further of a 5 part series i did raise in mexico examining how propaganda and proper shape content all failed the algorithm on the jersey i jumped into the stream and julian on Global Community bio diversity is biosecurity it is that essential for our species to survive be part of the debate i know you have my days and you can be part of this conversation when no topic is off the table the police are not neutral and all of these cases goal here is to terrorize and heres the other part of this theres no consequence to this dream on out is there. Holding the powerful to account as we examine the u. S. Its role in the world on aljazeera. My. Were going to win this race joe biden stopped short of the clear in victory in the u. S. President ial election but hes inching closer to the white house see expanses leads over president trump. As ballots continue to be counted the supreme courts orders the segregation of votes that arise in pennsylvania after election day. Alamo hes in and this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up france records an all time high of daily coronavirus