United States calls on nationals to leave warring Ethiopia “immediately”

On Monday, November 15, the United States again urged its nationals to leave ” at once “ Ethiopia at war on their own, adding that there will be no military evacuation operation – as was the case with Afghanistan. The American embassy has been urging its fellow citizens for several days to take commercial flights to leave the country, where rebel groups no longer rule out marching on Addis Ababa. It offers loans to those who are unable to purchase a ticket immediately.

“We do this not out of pessimism about the prospects for peace, but out of practicality”, explained Monday, to the press, the spokesman of the State Department, Ned Price, by launching a new appeal. He said he dreaded a “Misunderstanding” on the part of the public, which could “To think that what took place in Afghanistan can be reproduced by the American government everywhere else in the world”.

In mid-August, when the Taliban took Kabul even before the end of the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, the United States had sent thousands of soldiers in disaster to the airport in the Afghan capital to improvise an evacuation operation. unprecedented.

Don’t wait “until the last minute”

In just over two weeks, with the help of its allies, the American army had set up an airlift and evacuated more than 123,000 people: Americans, foreigners, but also and especially Afghans fearing reprisals from the country’s new Islamist masters, especially for having worked with Westerners in the past.

However, the government of President Joe Biden has been criticized for failing to evacuate these people upstream, rather than in general bailout, and for leaving Americans behind after the withdrawal of foreign forces. The State Department announced an internal investigation to determine how it could have better anticipated and organized these evacuations.

Obviously anxious to take the lead, Ned Price insisted on Monday about Ethiopia: “What we did in Afghanistan was unique”, “A military airlift of nearly 125,000 people”, “This is not something the US government can replicate elsewhere”. “There is no reason for Americans to wait until the last minute” to leave Ethiopia with commercial flights, he insisted.