Late Trump neglect

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· The present Ethiopia/Tigray crisis has a problem seen from the point of view of Washington : there is nobody firmly in charge and no policy view is offered

· So everything falls back on Under-Secretary Tibor Nagy’s lap and ,by default, to Peter Pham’s attention . Mr Pham has recently been put in charge of Congo [Kinshasa] as the temperature rises there with the growing conflict between official President Tshisekedi and actual President Kabila. Contrary to Mr Nagy, he really knows Africa and particularly the Horn.

· But , always a lukewarm Trumpist, he has only a limited political reach in the already devastated Africa Bureau of the State Department

· President Donald Trump , whose racism is blatant , as always considered African countries as “shithole countries” (sorry , but this is the President’s vocabulary)

· His only concern, in a recently asked question to the TPLF, was: “If you win, what will be your attitude to China?” His main beef concerning the past years of the TPLF in power in Addis Ababa was the exorbitant influence he thought Beijing had acquired in Ethiopia and, as a consequence, on the whole African continent.