Ahmed won the coveted prize last year largely for forging a complex and difficult peace with neighboring Eritrea.

In doing so he greatly assisted stability in the Horn of Africa, one of the most dangerous hotspots on the planet.

He has yet to match domestically what he has achieved regionally.

In that respect he’s like the 1991 peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

She richly deserved the prize awarded for her doughty resistance to the brutal military regime in Myanmar.

Her star has faded of late because of her stubborn refusal to speak out against what is to all intents and purposes a genocide against the Rohingya people – a Muslim minority in a majority Buddhist country.

Ahmed has decided to show his muscle against the minority Tigray people.

Comprising only six percent of Ethiopia 110 million people they dominated business and politics until Ahmed from the majority  Oromo ethnic group took the helm.

The Tigrayan have a special place in Ethiopia’s history.

Legend has it their land bordering Eritrea was the home of the  Queen of Sheba.

A church in Tigray is said to house the Ark of the Covenant.

In 1991, the same year Aung San Suu Kyi won her Nobel Prize the Tigrayan led the fight to topple the cruel Derg regime in Ethiopia.

They have, of late become hugely angry at Ahmed reforms, claiming that they are becoming increasingly marginalized.

They are not the only ethnic group to oppose Ahmed’s reforms.

On November 4, Tigrayan rebels attacked a government military base.

There is no reliable indication of casualties.

Indeed the toll from three weeks of fighting is difficult to ascertain.

It is said to be hundreds, perhaps thousands.

The United Nations says if reports of attacks against civilians are true, it would amount to war crimes.

At least 40 000 Tigrayan have fled into neighboring Sudan to escape the fighting.

The Tigrayan have ratcheted up things with rocket attacks into Eritrea to the north and the Ethiopian province of Amhara to the South.

Ahmed’s assurance that the insurrection would not become a war has proved to be optimistic.

Fearful of a regional conflagration, the United Nations, European Union and African Union have all urgently called for an immediate ceasefire.

Ahmed is having none of it.

He says he will talk to the three AU envoys named to broker a peace.

Indeed he is open to negotiations with anyone except the Tigrayan leadership.

He has surrounded the Tigray capital of Mek’ele and warned residents to save themselves.

His uncompromising call to the Tigray leadership at the weekend was: “You have 72 hours to surrender.” 

He believes that Ethiopia will be pulled apart if he does not completely subdue Tigray. 

Angry and undoubtedly provoked, his bellicose language can be understood.

Nevertheless, it is not the behavior of an internationally acclaimed peacemaker.

The post Not the behavior of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

South Africa has twice proved the veracity of this.

In its first rotating term on the UN powerhouse between 2007 and 2008, the South African government – still in its heady days of President Nelson Mandela – appeared insensitive to human rights violations in Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

Eager to avoid a similar accusation in its second term between 2011 and 2012 South Africa voted for a resolution supporting “all necessary measures to protect civilians on the ground” from aerial against attacks by the forces of dictator Muammar Gadaffi. 

This led to military action that contributed to Gadaffi’s overthrow and killing which set off violence and insecurity from which the country still has not recovered.

South African protests that it never actually supported military action against Gadaffi drew chortles from observers who said it was dangerously naive of the South Africans not to realize their vote for a no-fly zone over Libya could possibly lead to anything else.

South Africa’s newly-acquired BRICS partners Brazil, Russia, India and China abstained in that vote.

Barak Obama’s U.S. Government reiterated that South Africa had merely done the right thing.

This was cold comfort for the African nations who insisted that Libya should have been left for the AU to sort out.

The Africans saw fit to put South Africa up for a third term in the diplomatic engine room.

Will South Africa be able to parlay this into eventually becoming the permanent African member on a reformed UN Security Council?

This will be the call not so much of fellow Africans but of the heavy hitters who would have to agree to the reforms.

The signs so far are rather ominous.

South Africa has sat so firmly on the fence on the fraught Ukraine issue that it has iron its soul.

In the year ahead, the Western powers on the Security Council are bound to take a tougher line against Russian aggression aimed at its western neighbour and its annexation of Crimea.

They will be looking for consistency from South Africa that has steadfastly cited moral grounds for standing against Moroccan aggression in north Africa and its invasion of Western Sahara.

European diplomats say South Africa’s decision to abstain in the UN General Assembly vote on human rights violations in Myanmar is disappointing.

There has been stronger language from Asian countries.

They are comparing South Africa’s refusal to vote in favor of human rights protection for Rohingya refugees with what they call discredited Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s abetting of genocide.

Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Lindiwe Sisulu has signaled there will be change in this stance and they are all eagerly awaiting the new position.

They will also look to South Africa to alter it abstention and actually support UN disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu’s call for an end to the use of chemical weapons by Syria.

Doing this would put South Africa at odds with Russia as it shows an increasing tendency to stay on-side with its BRICS partner.

In the vote for the new Interpol chief, for example, South Africa withdrew it’d candidate for the post and threw its support behind Russian Alexander Prokapchuk who eventually lost to South Korean Kim Yong Yan.

At stake over the next two years is more than merely irritating Western friends.

South Africa’s contributions and votes on the 15-nation Security Council will bring it directly into the cross-hairs of Donald Trump whose vengeful  petulance easily exceeds his short attention span.

If he doesn’t like something South Africa does it is easily within the realms of possibility that it might be made to pay by losing its favorable access to US markets via the American Growth and Opportunity Act or AGOA.

The Saharawi people, living under Moroccan occupation for 43 years,  will be grateful for having South Africa on the Security Council.Sisulu has promised South Africa will use its position to press for self-determination for the Western Sahara. By implication this means getting Morocco to quit the territory.

So, however we look at it, for the next two years South Africa will be playing high-stakes poker at the biggest game in town.

EndsIsumi

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