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      Pulling Levers in Exile, Belarus Opposition Leader Works to Keep Her Influence Alive

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      As a crackdown widens in her country, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is trying to build a broad phalanx of Western opposition to a dictatorship that she says is on its “last breaths.”VILNIUS, Lithuania — She has met Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and President Emmanuel Macron of France. Just this week, she was feted in Washington, where she was received by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.But while Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the unlikely pro-democracy leader from Belarus, may have little trouble getting a meeting, her high-flying company only underscores her predicament.It’s been almost a year since Ms. Tikhanovskaya was forced to flee Belarus after claiming victory in presidential elections. Now the challenge she faces is how to maintain influence in Belarus from abroad. The support of Western leaders may help, but goes only so far.Still, the meetings are part Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s strategy to build a broad Western phalanx against the Belarus dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, who has limited her ability to challenge him inside the country, where her return would mean certain imprisonment.Only months ago, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets to demand that Mr. Lukashenko resign. It was a rare democratic outburst in an eastern European country — outside the European Union and NATO — that has carefully tried to maneuver between Russia and the West, but has turned to Moscow as a primary source of support.But now opposition figures are disappearing into prisons, and protests are dwindling.“Now it’s impossible to fight openly,” Ms. Tikhanovskaya said. “It’s difficult to ask people to go out for demonstrations because of a sense of fear. They see the brutality of the regime, that the most outstanding leaders and prominent figures are in jail. It’s really scary.”An opposition rally protesting the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus, in October, 2020.Associated PressUnable to encourage protests inside Belarus, and with Moscow supporting Mr. Lukashenko, Ms. Tikhanovskaya is using the primary tool available to her in exile: Western support.This week, she had meetings at the State Department, the White House, the Senate and attended the launch of the Friends of Belarus Caucus in the House of Representatives.“I asked the U.S. to be the guarantors of our independence,” she told the Voice of America on Tuesday after meeting with Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser.In a series of meetings, she sought more comprehensive sanctions on Belarus’s elites and businesses, to show them that it was “becoming more costly for them to support Lukashenko.”Though there were statements of support and admiration from members of Congress and the Washington elite, no new measures were announced.She and her team also sought to postpone a nearly $1 billion planned disbursement by the International Monetary Fund to Belarus, but have so far been unable to convince the institution to cancel the payment.Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s trip will continue in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, underscoring the value of Western support — and its limits.Her task, she said in an interview in Vilnius, Lithuania, where she and her team have made their base, was to convince her international supporters that change can come to Belarus with their assistance.“We can’t postpone this aim because we postpone freedom of our prisoners and we have to convince other countries in this as well,” she said before leaving for the United States.Supporters of Ms. Tikhanovskaya rallied in June in Warsaw, Poland, where they held up posters of prominent opposition bloggers who are in detention.Omar Marques/Getty Images“And with these detentions, with this violence, they show that they don’t have other methods of persuading people that they are strong, except violence,” she said. “It can’t last long, really. This is like the last breaths before death, because you can’t tighten the screws endlessly.”Some who support Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s movement worry about how it can remain relevant inside Belarus with its leader abroad.“When you are abroad in a safe situation, then all your calls to action will be very skeptically accepted in Belarus,” said Pavel Slunkin, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former Belarusian diplomat.Ms. Tikhanovskaya was clear that local actors make the decisions, and that when she sought funding, it was for supporters in Belarus. “When they are ready, it’s they who decide, not us,” she said.Mr. Slunkin acknowledged that Ms. Tikhanovskaya has been a tireless and effective advocate for her country internationally. Even so, the repression in Belarus is widening.This month, the Belarus Supreme Court sentenced Viktor Babariko, a former bank chief who was barred from running for president in elections last August, to 14 years in prison for bribery and money laundering in a verdict widely seen as politically motivated.On July 14, Belarusian law enforcement officers conducted what Amnesty International called an “unprecedented wave of searches and detentions,” raiding the offices of at least a dozen civil society and human rights organizations and opposition groups.In the past year, more than 35,000 people have been detained, according to the United Nations. Tens of thousands of Belarusians have fled abroad. The list of political prisoners kept by the human rights organization Viasna, itself raided recently, includes 577 individuals.In May, a European plane traveling through Belarus’ airspace was forced to land in Minsk, where Roman Protasevich, a prominent Belarusian dissident aboard, was seized.Belarus riot police detaining a demonstrator during an opposition rally in Minsk, Belarus, in 2020.Associated PressThe environment was “very dangerous,” Ms. Tikhanovskaya acknowledged, but she insisted she and her supporters could still be effective.“God bless the internet,” she said. “I am in constant dialogue with people who are on the ground. I don’t feel like I am in exile.”There are complications as she tries to coordinate the opposition from Lithuania, which borders Belarus and where she and her team were give special diplomatic status in early July.“The more time you spend abroad, the more time you are detached from the public you represent,” Artyom Shraibman, founder of Sense Analytics and a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said by phone from his self-imposed exile from Belarus in Ukraine.“If we are honest, spending a year outside of the country where the society is changing and you have not been observing it — you are only communicating with the part of society that is as engaged as you are.”Many experts, like Mr. Slunkin, believe the key way to resolve the crisis is to increase the price of Russian support for Belarus. Ms. Tikhanovskaya has been careful not to criticize Moscow openly, but neither have they succeeded in reaching out to Russian officials.“She is being perceived by many as being pro-Western, and unacceptable to Moscow, which is true,” Mr. Shraibman said. “And this is not her choice.”President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus with his primary backer, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in May.Pool photo by Sergei IlyinWith everything she does, Ms. Tikhanovskaya said, she is mindful of how her actions can affect people behind bars in Belarus, including her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, who ran a popular YouTube channel before announcing his own candidacy for president.He, like Mr. Babariko, and a prominent opposition politician, Valery Tsepkalo, was barred from running and jailed ahead of the ballot. Ms. Tikhanovskaya collected signatures for her candidacy and ran in the place of her husband.In detention since May 2020, he is currently on trial, accused of organizing riots and “inciting social hatred.”“I’m always keeping in mind that my husband is a hostage, the same as thousands of people,” Ms. Tikhanovskaya said.But she was adamant that she wants to keep the promise she campaigned on last August: new elections in which she is not necessarily on the ballot.“I’m the same woman, already with experience, already with more braveness than I had before. But look, I’m not I’m not making my career here. After elections, I will step away from all this with ease.” More

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      US Backed Haiti's Jovenel Moïse Even as Democracy Eroded

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      Washington dismissed warnings that democracy was unraveling under President Jovenel Moïse, leaving a gaping leadership void after his assassination.As protesters hurled rocks outside Haiti’s national palace and set fires on the streets to demand President Jovenel Moïse’s resignation, President Trump invited him to Mar-a-Lago in 2019, posing cheerfully with him in one of the club’s ornate entryways.After members of Congress warned that Mr. Moïse’s “anti-democratic abuses” reminded them of the run-up to the dictatorship that terrorized Haiti in decades past, the Biden administration publicly threw its weight behind Mr. Moïse’s claim on power.And when American officials urged the Biden administration to change course, alarmed that Haiti’s democratic institutions were being stripped away, they say their pleas went unheeded — and sometimes never earned a response at all.Through Mr. Moïse’s time in office, the United States backed his increasingly autocratic rule, viewing it as the easiest way of maintaining stability in a troubled country that barely figured into the priorities of successive administrations in Washington, current and former officials say.Even as Haiti spiraled into violence and political upheaval, they say, few in the Trump administration took seriously Mr. Moïse’s repeated warnings that he faced plots against his life. And as warnings of his authoritarianism intensified, the Biden administration kept up its public support for Mr. Moïse’s claim to power, even after Haiti’s Parliament emptied out in the absence of elections and Mr. Moïse ruled by decree.President Donald Trump welcomed Mr. Moïse and other Caribbean leaders to his Mar-a-Lago resort in March 2019.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Moïse was assassinated this month, it left a gaping leadership void that set off a scramble for power with the few elected officials remaining. The United States, which has held enormous sway in Haiti since invading the country more than 100 years ago, was suddenly urged to send in troops and help fix the mess.But in interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials, a common refrain emerged: Washington bore part of the blame, after brushing off or paying little attention to clear warnings that Haiti was lurching toward mayhem, and possibly making things worse by publicly supporting Mr. Moïse.“It was predictable that something would happen,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont. “The message that we send by standing alongside these people is that we think they are legitimate representatives of the Haitian people. They’re not.”Critics say the American approach to Mr. Moïse followed a playbook the United States has used around the world for decades, often with major consequences for democracy and human rights: reflexively siding with or tolerating leaders accused of authoritarian rule because they advance American interests, or because officials fear instability in their absence.Mr. Moïse’s grip on power tightened notably under Mr. Trump, who spoke admiringly of a range of foreign autocrats. Mr. Trump was also bent on keeping Haitian migrants out of the United States (they “all have AIDS,” American officials recounted him saying). To the extent that Trump officials focused on Haitian politics at all, officials say, it was mainly to enlist the country in Mr. Trump’s campaign to oust his nemesis in the region: Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela in Caracas in 2018.Miraflores Palace, via ReutersThe Biden administration arrived in January consumed by the pandemic and a surge of migrants at the border with Mexico, leaving little bandwidth for the tumult convulsing Haiti, officials say. It publicly continued the Trump administration policy that Mr. Moïse was the legitimate leader, infuriating some members of Congress with a stance that one senior Biden official now calls a mistake.“Moïse is pursuing an increasingly authoritarian course of action,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, now the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement with two other Democrats in late December, warning of a repeat of the “anti-democratic abuses the Haitian people have endured” in the past.“We will not stand idly by while Haiti devolves into chaos,” they said.In a February letter to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, they and other lawmakers called on the United States to “unambiguously reject” the push by Mr. Moïse, who had already ruled by decree for a year, to stay in power. They urged the Biden administration to push for “a legitimate transitional government” to help Haitians determine their own future and emerge from “a cascade of economic, public health, and political crises.”But Mr. Biden’s top adviser on Latin America, Juan Gonzalez, said that at the time, the administration did not want to appear to be dictating how the turmoil should be resolved.Rep. Gregory Meeks during a hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs after testimony from Secretary of State Antony Blinken in March.Pool photo by Ken Cedeno“Tipping our finger on the scale in that way could send a country that was already in a very unstable situation into crisis,” Mr. Gonzalez said.Past American political and military interventions into Haiti have done little to solve the country’s problems, and have sometimes created or aggravated them. “The solution to Haiti’s problems are not in Washington; they are in Port-au-Prince,” Haiti’s capital, Mr. Gonzalez said, so the Biden administration called for elections to take place before Mr. Moïse left office.“The calculus we made was the best decision was to focus on elections to try to use that as a way to push for greater freedom,” he added.In reality, critics say, the Biden administration was already tipping the scales by publicly supporting Mr. Moïse’s contention that he had another year in office, enabling him to preside over the drafting of a new Constitution that could significantly enhance the president’s powers.Mr. Moïse was certainly not the first leader accused of autocracy to enjoy Washington’s backing; he was not even the first in Haiti. Two generations of brutal Haitian dictators from the Duvalier family were among a long list of strongmen around the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere who received resolute American support, particularly as allies against Communism.“He may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt supposedly said of one of them (though accounts vary about whether the president was referring to American-backed dictators in Nicaragua or in the Dominican Republic).Supporters of the former dictators held photos of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier during a court hearing in Port-au-Prince in 2013.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressThe debate has continued in both Democratic and Republican administrations about how hard to push authoritarian allies for democratic reforms. Once the threat of Communist expansionism faded, American administrations worried more about instability creating crises for the United States, like a surge of migrants streaming toward its shores or the rise of violent extremism.Elliott Abrams, a foreign policy official in multiple Republican administrations and a special representative on Venezuela in the Trump administration, argued that Washington should support democracy when possible but sometimes has few alternatives to working with strongmen.“In Haiti, no one has developed a good formula for building a stable democracy, and the U.S. has been trying since the Marines landed there a hundred years ago,” he said.Early on in the Trump administration, Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former co-star on “The Apprentice” and new adviser to the president, began pressing Mr. Trump and his aides to engage with Haiti and support Mr. Moïse.Officials were wary. Haiti supported Venezuela at two meetings of the Organization of American States in 2017, turning Mr. Moïse into what one official called an enemy of the United States and scuttling her efforts to arrange a state visit by him..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“I believed that a state visit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Moïse would have been a strong show of support for Haiti from the U.S. during a time of civil unrest,” Ms. Newman said, adding in a separate statement: “Jovenel was a dear friend and he was committed to being a change agent for his beloved Haiti.”Mr. Moïse just after being sworn in as president of Haiti in February 2017.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressThe episode underscored the degree to which some top Trump officials viewed Haiti as just a piece of its strategy toward Venezuela. And in the eyes of some lawmakers, Mr. Trump was not going to feel empathy for Haiti’s problems.“We are all aware of his perception of the nation — in that he spoke about ‘s-hole’ countries,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, a co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus.By 2019, nationwide protests grew violent in Haiti as demonstrators demanding Mr. Moïse’s ouster clashed with the police, burned cars and marched on the national palace. Gang activity became increasingly brazen, and kidnappings spiked to an average of four a week.Mr. Trump and his aides showed few public signs of concern. In early 2019, Mr. Trump hosted Mr. Moïse at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of a meeting with Caribbean leaders who had lined up against Mr. Maduro of Venezuela.By the next year, Mr. Moïse’s anti-democratic practices grew serious enough to command the attention of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who publicly warned Mr. Moïse against delaying parliamentary elections.A Haitian police officer aimed his weapon at protesters who were calling for the resignation of President Moïse in Port-au-Prince in 2019.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressBut beyond a few statements, the Trump administration did little to force the issue, officials said.“No one did anything to address the underlying weaknesses, institutionally and democratically,” over the past several years, said Peter Mulrean, who served as the American ambassador to Haiti from 2015 to 2017. “And so we shouldn’t really be surprised that the lid blew off again.”After Mr. Biden’s election, lawmakers and officials in Washington took up the issue with new urgency. Mr. Moïse, who came to office after a vote marred by low turnout and allegations of fraud, had been ruling by decree for a year because the terms of nearly all members of Parliament had expired and elections to replace them were never held.Mr. Moïse won a five-year term in 2016, but did not take office until 2017 amid the allegations of fraud, so he argued that he should stay until 2022. Democracy advocates in Haiti and abroad cried foul, but on Feb. 5, the Biden administration weighed in, supporting Mr. Moïses’s claim to power for another year. And it was not alone: International bodies like the Organization of American States took the same position.Port-au-Prince at dusk last week.Federico Rios for The New York TimesMr. Blinken later criticized Mr. Moïse’s rule by decree and called for “genuinely free and fair elections this year.” But the Biden administration never withdrew its public position upholding Mr. Moïse’s claim to remain in office, a decision that Rep. Andy Levin, a co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus, blamed for helping him retain his grip on the country and continue its anti-democratic slide.“It’s a tragedy that he was able to stay there,” Mr. Levin said.The Biden administration has rebuffed calls by Haitian officials to send troops to help stabilize the country and prevent even more upheaval. A group of American officials recently visited to meet with various factions now vying for power and urge them “to come together, in a broad political dialogue,” Mr. Gonzalez said.The Americans had planned to visit the port to assess its security needs, but decided against it after learning that gangs were occupying the area, blocking the delivery of fuel.“How can we have elections in Haiti when gang members control 60 percent of the territory?” said Pierre Esperance, executive director of the Haitian National Human Rights Defense Network. “It will be gangs that organize the elections.”David Kirkpatrick contributed reporting. More

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      EE. UU. apoyó a Jovenel Moïse incluso al deteriorarse la democracia

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      Washington desestimó las advertencias de que la democracia se desmoronaba durante el mandato de Jovenel Moïse, lo que ha dejado un vacío de liderazgo después de su asesinato.Mientras los manifestantes lanzaban piedras afuera del palacio nacional de Haití y encendían hogueras en las calles para exigir la renuncia del presidente Jovenel Moïse, el presidente de Estados Unidos Donald Trump lo invitó a Mar-a-Lago en 2019, para luego posar sonriente junto a él en una de las entradas decoradas del club.Después de que miembros del Congreso advirtieron que los “abusos contrarios a la democracia” de Moïse les recordaban el periodo previo a la dictadura que aterrorizó a Haití en décadas pasadas, el gobierno de Biden respaldó en público el reclamo del poder de Moïse.Y, cuando los funcionarios estadounidenses instaron al gobierno de Biden a cambiar de rumbo, alarmados por el hecho de que las instituciones democráticas de Haití estaban desapareciendo, según dicen, sus súplicas no fueron escuchadas y en ocasiones no obtuvieron respuesta alguna.Durante el mandato de Moïse, Estados Unidos apoyó su gobierno, cada vez más autócrata, por considerarlo la manera más sencilla de mantener la estabilidad en un país con problemas que apenas figuraba en las prioridades de los sucesivos gobiernos de Washington, según funcionarios actuales y de gobiernos anteriores.Incluso cuando Haití entró en una espiral de violencia y agitación política, dicen, pocos en el gobierno de Trump tomaron en serio las repetidas advertencias de Moïse de que había complots para acabar con su vida. Y mientras se intensificaban las advertencias sobre su autoritarismo, el gobierno de Biden mantuvo su apoyo público al reclamo de poder de Moïse, incluso después de que el Parlamento de Haití quedó vacío por falta de elecciones y Moïse gobernó por decreto.El presidente Donald Trump recibió a  Moïse y otros líderes caribeños en Mar-a-Lago en marzo de 2019.Tom Brenner para The New York TimesEl asesinato de Moïse este mes dejó un enorme vacío de liderazgo que desencadenó una lucha por el poder entre los pocos funcionarios electos que quedaban. Estados Unidos, que ha tenido una enorme influencia en Haití desde que invadió el país hace más de cien años, de repente, se vio instado a enviar a su ejército y a ayudar a arreglar el desorden.Sin embargo, en entrevistas con más de una decena de funcionarios actuales y anteriores un comentario se repitió con frecuencia: Washington tiene parte de la culpa, después de haber ignorado o prestado poca atención a las claras advertencias de que Haití se tambaleaba hacia el caos y de que tal vez haya empeorado las cosas al apoyar de manera abierta a Moïse.“Era predecible que ocurriera algo”, aseveró el senador de Vermont Patrick Leahy. “El mensaje que enviamos al apoyar a estas personas es que creemos que son representantes legítimos del pueblo haitiano. No lo son”.Los críticos afirman que la estrategia que Estados Unidos aplicó con Moïse se basó en un manual que este país ha usado en todo el mundo desde hace décadas, a menudo con serias consecuencias para la democracia y los derechos humanos: aliarse o tolerar por reflejo a líderes acusados de gobernar de manera dictatorial porque promueven los intereses estadounidenses o porque los funcionarios temen la inestabilidad en su ausencia.El control de Moïse sobre el poder se fortaleció de manera importante durante el mandato de Trump, quien profesó su admiración por varios autócratas extranjeros. Trump también se empeñó en mantener a los migrantes haitianos fuera de Estados Unidos (funcionarios estadounidenses recordaron haberlo escuchado decir que “todos tienen SIDA”). Según fuentes oficiales, si los funcionarios de Trump se centraron en la política haitiana, fue principalmente para reclutar al país en la campaña de Trump para derrocar a su némesis en la región: el líder de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.El presidente Nicolás Maduro de Venezuela en Caracas en 2018Palacio de Miraflores, vía ReutersLos funcionarios agregan que el gobierno de Biden llegó a la Casa Blanca en enero consumido por la pandemia y una oleada de migrantes en la frontera con México, lo que dejó poco espacio de maniobra para el tumulto que convulsiona a Haití. El nuevo gobierno dio continuidad a la política del gobierno de Trump, según la cual Moïse era el líder legítimo, postura que enfureció a algunos miembros del Congreso y que un alto funcionario de Biden ahora califica de error.“Moïse está siguiendo un curso de acción cada vez más autoritario”, dijo el representante Gregory Meeks, quien preside la Comisión de Asuntos Exteriores de la Cámara de Representantes, en una declaración conjunta con otros dos demócratas a finales de diciembre en la que advirtió de una repetición de los “abusos antidemocráticos que el pueblo haitiano ha soportado” en el pasado.“No vamos a quedarnos de brazos cruzados mientras Haití se sumerge en el caos”, dijeron.En una carta enviada en febrero al Secretario de Estado Antony J. Blinken, ellos y otros legisladores pidieron a Estados Unidos que “rechazara sin ambigüedades” el intento de Moïse, que ya había gobernado por decreto durante un año, de mantenerse en el poder. Instaron al gobierno de Biden a impulsar “un gobierno de transición legítimo” para ayudar a los haitianos a determinar su propio futuro y salir de “un torrente de crisis económica, de salud pública y política”.No obstante, el principal asesor de Biden para América Latina, Juan González, declaró que en ese momento el gobierno no quería dar la impresión de que quería imponer cómo debía resolverse la crisis.El congresista Gregory Meeks durante una audiencia del Comité de Asuntos Exteriores de la Cámara de Representantes después de la comparecencia del secretario de Estado Antony Blinken en marzo.Foto de consorcio por Ken Cedeno“Hacer que la balanza se inclinara de esa manera podría llevar a un país que ya estaba en una situación muy inestable a la crisis”, afirmó González.Las anteriores intervenciones políticas y militares de Estados Unidos en Haití hicieron poco por resolver los problemas del país y en ocasiones los generaron o agravaron. “La solución a los problemas de Haití no está en Washington, sino en Puerto Príncipe”, la capital de Haití, dijo González, por lo que el gobierno de Biden pidió que se celebraran elecciones antes de que Moïse dejara el cargo.“El cálculo que hicimos fue que la mejor decisión era centrarse en las elecciones para tratar de utilizarlas como una forma de impulsar una mayor libertad”, añadió.A decir de los críticos, la realidad es que el gobierno de Biden ya había inclinado la balanza al apoyar de manera pública el argumento de Moïse de que le quedaba un año más en el cargo, lo que le permitiría presidir la redacción de una nueva Constitución que podría aumentar de manera significativa las facultades del presidente.Moïse no es el primer gobernante acusado de ser un autócrata que cuenta con el apoyo de Washington; ni siquiera es el primero en Haití. Dos generaciones de brutales dictadores haitianos de la familia Duvalier forman parte de una larga lista de autócratas de todo el Caribe, América Latina, el Medio Oriente y otros lugares que recibieron el apoyo decidido de Estados Unidos, en particular como aliados contra el comunismo.“Puede que sea un desgraciado, pero ese desgraciado está con nosotros”, se dice que declaró el presidente Franklin Delano Roosevelt sobre uno de ellos (aunque las versiones varían sobre si el presidente se refería a los dictadores apoyados por Estados Unidos en Nicaragua o en la República Dominicana).Los partidarios de los exdictadores sostienen fotos de Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier y Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier durante una audiencia judicial en Puerto Príncipe en 2013.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressEl debate sobre cómo presionar a los aliados autócratas para que realicen reformas democráticas ha continuado durante gobiernos demócratas y republicanos. Después de que la amenaza del expansionismo comunista se desvaneció, los gobiernos estadounidenses se preocuparon más por la inestabilidad que creaba crisis para Estados Unidos, como la oleada de migrantes que llegaban a sus costas o el aumento del extremismo violento.Elliott Abrams, funcionario de relaciones exteriores en varios gobiernos republicanos y representante especial en Venezuela durante el gobierno de Trump, argumentó que Washington debe apoyar la democracia cuando sea posible, pero a veces tiene pocas alternativas cuando se trata de autócratas.“En Haití, nadie ha desarrollado una buena fórmula para construir una democracia estable y Estados Unidos lo ha intentado desde que los marines desembarcaron allí hace cien años”, aseveró.Al principio del mandato de Trump, Omarosa Manigault Newman, ex coprotagonista de “El Aprendiz” y luego asesora del presidente, comenzó a presionar a Trump y a sus asesores para que se comprometieran con Haití y apoyaran a Moïse.Funcionarios del gobierno se mostraron cautelosos. Haití apoyó a Venezuela en dos reuniones de la Organización de Estados Americanos en 2017, lo cual convirtió a Moïse en lo que un funcionario calificó de enemigo de Estados Unidos y echó por tierra sus esfuerzos para organizar una visita de Estado a Estados Unidos.“Creía que una visita de Estado entre Trump y Moïse habría sido una muestra contundente del apoyo de Estados Unidos a Haití en un momento de agitación civil”, dijo Newman, quien agregó en otra declaración: “Jovenel era un buen amigo y estaba comprometido a ser un agente del cambio para su amado Haití”.Moïse poco después de tomar posesión como presidente en febrero de 2017.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressEl episodio subrayó hasta qué punto algunos altos funcionarios de Trump consideraban a Haití como una pieza más de su estrategia hacia Venezuela. Y a los ojos de algunos legisladores, Trump no iba a sentir empatía por los problemas de Haití.“Todos somos conscientes de su percepción de la nación, cuando hizo referencia a los países de mierda”, comentó la representante republicana de Nueva York Yvette Clarke, quien copreside el caucus de Haití de la Cámara de Representantes.Para 2019, las protestas en todo Haití se volvieron violentas cuando los manifestantes que exigían la destitución de Moïse se enfrentaron a la policía, quemaron automóviles y marcharon hacia el palacio nacional. La actividad de las pandillas se volvió cada vez más descarada y los secuestros se dispararon a un promedio de cuatro a la semana.Trump y sus asesores mostraron escasos signos públicos de preocupación. A principios de 2019, Trump recibió a Moïse en su club Mar-a-Lago en Palm Beach, Florida, como parte de una reunión con los líderes del Caribe que se habían alineado contra el presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.Al año siguiente, las prácticas antidemocráticas de Moïse se agravaron lo suficiente como para llamar la atención del Secretario de Estado Mike Pompeo, quien advirtió en una declaración que Moïse no debía retrasar las elecciones parlamentarias.Un oficial de policía haitiano dirige su arma hacia los manifestantes que pedían la renuncia del presidente Moïse en Puerto Príncipe en 2019.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressSin embargo, salvo algunas declaraciones, el gobierno de Trump hizo poco para impulsar la cuestión, dijeron los funcionarios.“Nadie hizo nada para abordar las debilidades subyacentes, institucionales y democráticas” en los últimos años, afirmó Peter Mulrean, quien se desempeñó como embajador estadounidense en Haití entre 2015 y 2017. “Y, por lo tanto, no deberíamos sorprendernos realmente de que la situación se haya desbordado de nuevo”.Después de que Biden resultó electo, los legisladores y funcionarios en Washington retomaron el tema con nueva urgencia. Moïse, quien llegó al cargo tras una votación empañada por la escasa participación y las acusaciones de fraude, llevaba un año gobernando por decreto debido a que el mandato de casi todos los miembros del Parlamento había expirado y nunca se celebraron elecciones para sustituirlos.Moïse ganó un mandato de cinco años en 2016, pero no tomó posesión sino hasta 2017 en medio de acusaciones de fraude, por lo que argumentó que debía permanecer en el cargo hasta 2022. Los defensores de la democracia en Haití y en el extranjero manifestaron su descontento, pero el 5 de febrero, el gobierno de Biden se pronunció y apoyó el reclamo de Moïse de permanecer un año más en el poder. Y no fue el único: organismos internacionales como la Organización de Estados Americanos adoptaron la misma postura.Puerto Príncipe al atardecer esta semanaFederico Rios para The New York TimesPosteriormente, Blinken criticó que Moïse gobernara por decreto y convocó a que hubiera “elecciones de verdad libres y justas este año”. No obstante, el gobierno de Biden nunca se retractó de su postura pública de apoyar el reclamo de Moïse de permanecer en el cargo, una decisión que según el representante Andy Levin, quien copreside el Caucus de Haití de la Cámara de Representantes, ayudó a que el presidente haitiano mantuviera su control sobre el país y a que continuara su declive antidemocrático.“Es una tragedia que haya podido permanecer allí”, dijo Levin.El gobierno de Biden ha rechazado los llamados de las autoridades haitianas para que envíe al ejército a ayudar a estabilizar el país y así evitar más disturbios. Hace poco, un grupo de funcionarios estadounidenses visitó el país para reunirse con las distintas facciones que se disputan el poder e instarlas a “unirse en un amplio diálogo político”, comentó González.Los estadounidenses habían planeado visitar el puerto para evaluar sus necesidades de seguridad, pero decidieron no hacerlo tras enterarse de que las pandillas se habían apoderado de la zona y bloqueaban la entrega de combustible.“¿Cómo podemos celebrar elecciones en Haití cuando los miembros de las pandillas controlan el 60 por ciento del territorio?”, preguntó Pierre Esperance, director ejecutivo de la Red Nacional de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos de Haití. “Serán las pandillas las que organicen las elecciones”.David Kirkpatrick colaboró con este reportaje. More

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      Dueling Claims to Power. Broken Institutions. How Does Haiti Fix This?

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      Other countries have faced similar challenges, often with poor results, from protracted limbo to, in the worst cases, civil war.PARIS — Battered by gang violence and corruption, its Parliament near vacant, its judiciary in tatters, its Constitution subject to dispute, its poverty crushing and its history a chronicle of unrest, Haiti was in bad shape even before its president was assassinated and rival factions laid claim to power.Now, it’s in meltdown.“Haitian democracy has been slipping away for a long time and with each round it’s been getting worse,” said Peter Mulrean, a former United States ambassador to Haiti. “There is not much left to save.”Claude Joseph, the interim prime minister, and eight of the 10 remaining members of Parliament in the entire country of 11 million people have both said they have a legitimate right to assume power and fill Haiti’s vacuum of authority.Mr. Joseph, as the incumbent, has tepid backing from a Biden administration desperate not to be sucked into a quagmire. The vestigial Senate, having been elected, has some legal imprimatur, but is dogged by accusations of corruption and self-dealing.When power is disputed, institutional strength and the rule of law become paramount. Haiti has little or none. It finds itself in a desperate void. As the battle for power escalates, there is scarcely a Haitian democratic institution standing that can adjudicate the dispute stemming from the assassination of the president, Jovenel Moïse, in his home on Wednesday.After the last United States election result was contested, a mob incited by former President Trump stormed the capitol on Jan. 6, but American legal checks and balances held in the end. Further violence was averted, but only just.Haiti’s interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, claims to be in charge of the country. Haiti’s senate says he is not.Joseph Odelyn/Associated PressAbsent strong institutions, some powerful international investment in stability is critical. Afghanistan is scarcely more stable than Haiti. Neither state can make a claim to have a monopoly on the use of organized violence within its own borders, a classic definition of a government’s authority.Yet Afghanistan overcame a similar crisis last year. After the 2020 election, both the incumbent, Ashraf Ghani, and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, claimed victory. Mr. Abdullah initially denounced the election result as a “coup.” A violent clash seemed possible. But the United States, through intense diplomacy, was able to mediate a compromise.“The United States had troops in the country,” said Barnett Rubin, a former State Department official with deep knowledge of Afghanistan. “It had advisers. It was invested. It was tacitly on Mr. Ghani’s side.”The United States had an overriding national interest in resolving the conflict and opening the way for peace talks with the Taliban — even if those efforts seem fleeting now that the United States is withdrawing its troops and the Taliban advances across the country.In Haiti, there is no clear rule of law nor any indication that the United States is eager to intervene militarily and force a resolution. If it has any national interest, it lies in preventing upheaval so close to its shores and avoiding another mass Haitian migrant exodus like the one that followed the 1991 coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.The potential for the crisis in Haiti to worsen is evident. Mr. Joseph immediately declared “a state of siege,” a form of martial law, but his right to do so was unclear. In many ways rampant gang violence had already reduced Haiti to a condition resembling a country under siege.The Senate, or what’s left of it, wants Joseph Lambert, its president, to become provisional president and Mr. Joseph replaced as provisional prime minister by Ariel Henry. Before his death, Mr. Moïse had named Mr. Henry, a neurosurgeon, to the prime minister’s position, but he had not yet been sworn in.The Haitian senate has said that the senate president, Joseph Lambert, center, should be Haiti’s president.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe path to breaking a standoff is murky. Under Mr. Moïse, Parliament was eviscerated. The terms of two thirds of the nation’s senators had expired, as did those of every member of the lower house, with no elections to replace them.Critics accused Mr. Moïse of presiding over the collapse deliberately, to further consolidate power. When he was assassinated, the nation was suddenly rudderless.Countries can function, to varying degrees, with nobody in power, or power disputed. In the postwar years, Italy and Belgium have managed with no government for long periods, but they had solid democratic institutions.Lebanon, in dire financial straits, has limped along for many years with two military forces — the national army and the Hezbollah militia — and a sectarian power-sharing system that looks to a millennial generation like a license for the political elite to loot with impunity while the country suffers. Still, it has avoided spiraling back into civil war.In the Ivory Coast, though, violence ultimately settled dueling claims to power after two people declared victory in the 2010 presidential election. The incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to step down despite the fact that international electoral observers had recognized his rival, Alassane Ouattara, as the winner. Several thousand people were killed in a brief civil war before the French army helped pro-Ouattara forces oust Mr. Gbagbo.In Venezuela, also deep in economic misery, Nicolás Maduro, the nation’s authoritarian leader, has clung to power through more than two years of turmoil despite the rival claims of Juan Guaidó, an opposition leader who has been backed by dozens of foreign governments, including the United States, as the rightful president.President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has clung to power despite the rival claims of Juan Guaidó, who was backed by the United States. Miraflores Palace, via ReutersAmerican sanctions have cut off much of the Maduro government’s revenue. The result has been mass migration of precisely the kind the Biden administration wants to avoid in the case of Haiti.Democracies take root slowly and painfully, and Haiti, since becoming the first independent state of Latin American and the Caribbean in 1804, has suffered turmoil almost without respite. Crippled by debt imposed by France, occupied by the United States for almost two decades in the early 20th century, undermined by corruption and coups, hit in 2010 by an earthquake and over the past year by the coronavirus pandemic, the country is at its most vulnerable and combustible.But the Biden administration, at the very moment when the president has been pulling the country back from its forever wars, is wary of any deep Haitian involvement, especially of a request from Haitian officials to deploy American troops. Haitian leaders tend to look to Washington for backing and approval to reinforce their political credentials.For the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, the path of least resistance may well be to seek to resolve the power conflict by urging Haiti to move forward with elections planned for September. The Biden administration has already done just that, as if voting was some panacea.But in an article in Just Society, Mr. Mulrean, who was the American ambassador to Haiti between 2015 and 2017, wrote that holding the elections would be “a mistake.”“It is tempting to think that new elections will clarify the situation and restore stability, but experience teaches us the opposite,” he wrote. “What Haiti needs is to take stock of what is broken and fix it.”A broad coalition of opposition parties and civil society is calling for just that. Voting, they note, solves nothing if the institutions that secure democracy have ceased to function. More

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      The Strange, Sad Death of America’s Political Imagination

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      .interactive-content { max-width: 100%; width: 100%; } .opinionlabel { text-transform: uppercase; color: #D0021B; font: 700 0.9375rem/1.1rem “nyt-cheltenham”, georgia, “times new roman”, times, serif; letter-spacing: 0.07em; } .secondary{ color: white; } .opinionlabel.secondary:after { content: “”; display: block; width: 65px; height: 1px; background-color: white; margin: 20px auto 0; } h1.headline.nosecondary:before { content: “”; display: block; width: 65px; […] More

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      After Biden Meets Putin, U.S. Exposes Details of Russian Hacking Campaign

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      The revelations, which dealt with a Russian espionage campaign, came after President Biden demanded that President Vladimir V. Putin rein in more destructive ransomware attacks.WASHINGTON — Two weeks after President Biden met President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and demanded that he rein in ransomware attacks on U.S. targets, American and British intelligence agencies on Thursday exposed the details of what they called a global effort by Russia’s military intelligence organization to spy on government organizations, defense contractors, universities and media companies.The operation, described as crude but broad, is “almost certainly ongoing,” the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, known as GCHQ, said in a statement. They identified the Russian intelligence agency, or G.R.U., as the same group that hacked into the Democratic National Committee and released emails in an effort to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald J. Trump.Thursday’s revelation is an attempt to expose Russian hacking techniques, rather than any new attacks, and it includes pages of technical detail to enable potential targets to identify that a breach is underway. Many of the actions by the G.R.U. — including an effort to retrieve data stored in Microsoft’s Azure cloud services — have already been documented by private cybersecurity companies.But the political significance of the statement is larger: It underscored the scope of hacking efforts out of Russia, which range from the kind of intelligence gathering engaged in by the G.R.U. and the intelligence agencies of many states to the harboring of criminal groups like the one that brought down Colonial Pipeline. The company provides much of the gasoline, jet fuel and diesel used on the East Coast, and when it was attacked, it shut down the pipeline for fear that the malicious code could spread to the operational controllers that run the pipeline.Ever since the pipeline attack, the Biden administration’s focus on cyberattacks shifted, homing in on the potential for disruption of key elements of the nation’s economic infrastructure. It has focused on Russia-based criminal groups like DarkSide, which took credit for the Colonial attack, but then announced it was shutting down operations after the United States put pressure on it. The F.B.I. later announced it had recovered some of the more than $4 million in ransom that Colonial paid the hackers to unlock the company’s records.Whether those ransomware attacks abate will be the first test of whether Mr. Biden’s message to Mr. Putin at the summit in Geneva sunk in. There, Mr. Biden handed him a list of 16 areas of “critical infrastructure” in the United States and said that it would not tolerate continued, disruptive Russian cyberattacks. But he also called for a general diminishment of breaches originating from Russian territory.“We’ll find out whether we have a cybersecurity arrangement that begins to bring some order,” Mr. Biden said at the end of the meeting, only minutes after Mr. Putin declared that the United States, not Russia, was the largest source of cyberattacks around the world. Mr. Biden also repeatedly said that he was uncertain Mr. Putin would respond to the American warning or the series of related financial sanctions imposed on Moscow over the past five years.According to administration officials, the White House or intelligence agencies did not intend the advisory as a follow-up to the summit. Instead, they said, it was released as part of the National Security Agency’s routine warnings, said Charlie Stadtlander, an agency spokesman, “not in response to any recent international gatherings.”But that is unlikely to matter to Mr. Putin or the G.R.U., as they try to assess the steps the Biden administration is willing to take to curb their cybercampaigns — and in what order.For now, it is the ransomware attacks that have moved to the top of the administration’s agenda, because of their effects on ordinary Americans.Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said days after the summit that it might take months to determine whether the warning to Mr. Putin resulted in a change in behavior. “We set the measure at whether, over the next six to 12 months, attacks against our critical infrastructure actually decline coming out of Russia,” he said on CBS. “The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, so we will see over the course of months to come.”It was unclear from the data provided by the National Security Agency how many of the targets of the G.R.U. — also known as Fancy Bear or APT 28 — might be on the critical infrastructure list, which is maintained by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. At the time of the attacks on the election system in 2016, election systems — including voting machines and registration systems — were not on the list and were added in the last days of the Obama administration. American intelligence agencies later said Mr. Putin had directly approved the 2016 attacks.But the National Security Agency statement identified energy companies as a primary target, and Mr. Biden specifically cited them in his talks with Mr. Putin, noting the ransomware attack that led Colonial Pipeline to shut down in May, and interrupted the delivery of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel along the East Coast. That attack was not by the Russian government, Mr. Biden said at the time, but rather by a criminal gang operating from Russia.In recent years, the National Security Agency has more aggressively attributed cyberattacks to specific countries, particularly those by adversarial intelligence agencies. But in December, it was caught unaware by the most sophisticated attack on the United States in years, the SolarWinds hacking, which affected federal agencies and many of the nation’s largest companies. That attack, which the National Security Agency later said was conducted by the S.V.R., a competing Russian intelligence agency that was an offshoot of the K.G.B., successfully altered the code in popular network-management software, and thus in the computer networks of 18,000 companies and government agencies.There is nothing particularly unusual about the methods the United States says the Russian intelligence unit used. There is no bespoke malware or unknown exploits by the G.R.U. unit. Instead, the group uses common malware and the most basic techniques, like brute-force password spraying, which relies on passwords that have been stolen or leaked to gain access to accounts.The statement did not identify the targets of the G.R.U.’s recent attacks but said that they included government agencies, political consultants, party organizations, universities, and think tanks.The attacks appear to mostly be about gathering intelligence and information. The National Security Agency did not specify ways that the Russian hackers damaged systems.The recent wave of G.R.U. attacks has gone on for a relatively long time, beginning in 2019 and continuing through this year. Once inside, the G.R.U. hackers would gain access to protected data and email — as well as to cloud services used by the organization.The hackers were responsible for the primary breach of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 which resulted in the theft, and release, of documents meant to damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton.On Thursday, the National Security Agency released a list of evasion and exfiltration techniques the G.R.U. used to help information technology managers identify — and stop — attacks by the hacking group.That lack of sophistication means fairly basic measures, like multifactor authentication, timeout locks and temporary disabling of accounts after incorrect passwords are entered, can effectively block brute force attacks. More

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      From Nobel Hero to Driver of War, Ethiopia’s Leader Faces Voters in Election

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      Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed plunged Ethiopia into a war in the Tigray region that spawned atrocities and famine. On Monday, his country goes to the polls.ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — As war raged in northern Ethiopia, and the region barreled toward its worst famine in decades, a senior American envoy flew to the Ethiopian capital last month in the hope of persuading Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to pull his country out of a destructive spiral that many fear is tearing it apart.Mr. Abiy, though, wanted to go for a drive.Taking the wheel, the Ethiopian leader took his American guest, the Biden administration’s Horn of Africa envoy, Jeffrey D. Feltman, on an impromptu four-hour tour of Addis Ababa, American officials said. The prime minister drove him past smart new city parks and a refurbished central plaza and even crashed a wedding where the two men posed for photos with the bride and groom.Mr. Abiy’s attempt to change the channel, showcasing economic progress while parts of his country burned, was just the latest sign of a troubled trajectory that has baffled international observers who wonder how they got him so wrong.Not long ago Mr. Abiy, who faces Ethiopian voters on Monday in long-delayed parliamentary elections, was a shining hope for country and continent. After coming to power in 2018 he embarked on a whirlwind of ambitious reforms:  freeing political prisoners, welcoming exiles home from abroad and, most impressively, striking a landmark peace deal with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s old foe, in a matter of months.A light rail and rapid transit train, the first in sub-Saharan Africa, traveling past skyscrapers under construction in Addis Ababa in 2019. Mr. Abiy is pushing his vision of a modernized, economically vibrant Ethiopia.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesA worker with the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia explaining ballots last week in Addis Ababa before Monday’s general election.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesThe West, eager for a glittering success story in Africa, was wowed, and within 18 months Mr. Abiy, a one-time intelligence officer, had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.But in just nine months Mr. Abiy’s halo has been brutally shattered. The civil war that erupted in the northern region of Tigray in November has become a byword for atrocities against Ethiopian citizens.Mr. Abiy’s forces have been accused of massacres, sexual assault and ethnic cleansing. Last week a senior United Nations official declared that Tigray was in the throes of a famine — the world’s worst since 250,000 people died in Somalia a decade ago, he said.Elsewhere in Ethiopia, ethnic violence has killed hundreds and forced two million people to flee their homes. A smoldering border dispute with Sudan has flared into a major military standoff.Even the election on Monday, once billed as the country’s first free vote and a chance to turn the page on decades of autocratic rule, has only highlighted its divisions and fueled grim warnings that Ethiopia’s very future is in doubt.“These elections are a distraction,” said Abadir M. Ibrahim, an adjunct law professor at Addis Ababa University. “The state is on a cliff edge, and it’s not clear if it can pull back. We just need to get past this vote so we can focus on averting a calamity.”The prime minister’s office did not respond to questions and an interview request.An October 2019 street scene in Badme, the disputed town over which the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea was fought from 1998 to 2000. Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesAn Afar militiaman on the salt flats of the Danakil Depression in 2019. In the past month, 400,000 people have been forced from their homes in the Amhara and Afar regions.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesMr. Abiy’s Prosperity Party, formed in 2019 from the rump of a former governing coalition, is widely expected to win the election easily. But there will be no voting in 102 of Ethiopia’s 547 constituencies because of war, civil unrest and logistical failures.Senior opposition leaders are in jail and their parties are boycotting the vote in Oromia, a sprawling region of about 40 million people that is more populous than many African countries.Mr. Abiy has put a brave face on his nation’s problems, repeatedly downplaying the Tigray conflict as a “law and order operation” and pushing his vision for a modernized, economically vibrant Ethiopia. The United States, which gave Ethiopia $1 billion in aid last year, is pressuring him to shift focus immediately.After being chauffeured around Addis Ababa by Mr. Abiy in May, Mr. Feltman wrote a detailed analysis of his trip for President Biden and other leaders in Washington, even mentioning a sudden jolt by the vehicle that sent coffee spilling on the envoy’s shirt.Weeks later, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken imposed visa bans on unnamed Ethiopian officials.Other foreigners have left Ethiopia concerned that ethnic cleansing was underway. Pekka Haavisto, a European Union envoy who visited in February, told the European Parliament last week that Ethiopian leaders had told him “they are going to destroy the Tigrayans, that they are going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years.”Ethiopia’s foreign ministry dismissed Mr. Haavisto’s comments as “ludicrous” and a “hallucination of sorts.”Global condemnation of Mr. Abiy, 44, most recently at last week’s Group of 7 summit, represents a dizzying fall for a young leader who until recently was globally celebrated.The whirl of reforms he instituted after being appointed prime minister in 2018 were a sharp rebuke to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a party of rebels turned rulers who had dominated Ethiopia since 1991 in an authoritarian system that achieved impressive economic growth at the cost of basic civil rights.After coming to power in 2018, Mr. Abiy freed political prisoners and welcomed exiles home.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesJawar Mohammed, a media baron, is  one of Ethiopia’s most prominent opposition figures.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesMr. Abiy promised a new way. He allowed once-banned opposition parties, appointed women to half the positions in his cabinet and struck the peace with Eritrea that earned him a Nobel Prize.But in moving swiftly, Mr. Abiy also unleashed pent-up frustrations among ethnic groups that had been marginalized from power for decades — most notably his own group, the Oromo, who account for one-third of Ethiopia’s 110 million people. When mass protests erupted, he reverted to the old playbook: arrests, repression and police brutality.At the same time, tensions escalated with the T.P.L.F., which resented Mr. Abiy’s swaggering reforms. The party leadership retreated to Tigray where, last September, it defied Mr. Abiy by proceeding with regional elections that had been postponed across the country because of the pandemic.By early last November, word reached Washington that war was looming in Tigray. Senator Chris Coons, who has a longstanding interest in Africa, phoned Mr. Abiy to warn about the perils of resorting to military force.Mr. Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, said he reminded the Ethiopian leader that the American Civil War and World War I had started with promises of swift military victory, only to drag on for years and cost millions of lives.Mr. Abiy was undeterred. “He was confident it would be over in six weeks,” Mr. Coons said. Days later, on the evening of the American presidential election, fighting erupted in Tigray.Mr. Abiy has given few interviews. But people who have dealt with him describe a man brimming with self-confidence, even “messianic” — a description encouraged by Mr. Abiy’s own accounts that his ascent to power was preordained. When he was 7, Mr. Abiy told The New York Times in 2018, his mother whispered into his ear that he was “unique” and predicted that he would “end up in the palace.”Watching a television newscast showing Mr. Abiy shortly after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, at a roadside restaurant in the northern Afar region in 2019.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesRiot police officers, in a show of force, marching Saturday in a parade in Addis Ababa.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesA former adviser said that a strong Christian faith also guides Mr. Abiy. He is a Pentecostal Christian, a faith that has soared in popularity in Ethiopia, and is a staunch believer in the “prosperity gospel” — a theology that regards material success as God’s reward — said the former adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals. It is not a coincidence, the adviser added, that the party founded by Mr. Abiy in 2019 is called the Prosperity Party.Mr. Abiy’s evangelical faith has attracted influential supporters in Washington, including Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who told the Senate in 2018 how he first met Mr. Abiy at a prayer meeting where “he told the story of his journey and faith in Jesus.”Last month, Mr. Inhofe traveled to Ethiopia to show his support for Mr. Abiy against the American sanctions.Another crucial relationship for Mr. Abiy is with the dictatorial leader of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki. Eritrean troops who flooded into Tigray to support Mr. Abiy’s campaign have been accused by the United Nations and rights groups of the worst atrocities of the conflict. Now they are a major factor in the region’s famine.Eritrean soldiers “using starvation as a weapon of war” are blocking aid shipments headed for the most vulnerable parts of Tigray, Mark Lowcock, the top U.N. humanitarian official, told the Security Council last week.The Eritrean issue is Mr. Abiy’s largest international liability, and some analysts describe him as being manipulated by Mr. Isaias, a veteran fighter with a reputation for ruthless strategic maneuvering. By other accounts, Mr. Abiy has little choice — were the Eritreans to leave suddenly, he could lose control of Tigray entirely.The election is likely to highlight the mounting challenges in the rest of Ethiopia. In the past month alone, 400,000 people have been forced from their homes in the Amhara and Afar regions, Mr. Lowcock said. The military has taken control in several parts of Oromia, where an armed rebellion has erupted.Weighing sheet metal at a recycling depot in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is grappling with daunting economic and social challenges.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesDowntime at a coffee kiosk in a market in Addis Ababa. Washington said last month that it was cutting security and economic assistance to Ethiopia.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesMr. Coons, sent by Mr. Biden to reason with Mr. Abiy in February, warned the Ethiopian leader that the explosion of ethnic hatred could shatter the country, much as it did the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.Mr. Abiy responded that Ethiopia is “a great nation with a great history,” Mr. Coons said.Mr. Abiy’s transformation from Nobel Peace Prize laureate to wartime leader has prompted quiet soul-searching among some of his allies. The glitter of the Nobel Prize, and a burning desire for a success story in Africa, blinded many Western countries to his evident faults, said Judd Devermont, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for Africa, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.With limited interest in Africa, the West too readily categorizes the continent’s leaders as “good” or “bad” with little room for nuance, he added.“We have to acknowledge that we helped to contribute to Abiy’s view of himself,” he said. “We papered over these challenges very early. We gave him a blank check. When it went wrong, we initially turned a blind eye. And now it may be too late.”An urban park where letters spell “Addis Ababa” in Amharic.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times More

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      Iranian Hard-Liner Ebrahim Raisi Wins Presidential Election Vote

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      The government announced his victory on Saturday, a day after a vote that many Iranians skipped, viewing it as rigged.TEHRAN — Iran’s ultraconservative judiciary chief, Ebrahim Raisi, has been elected president after a vote that many Iranians skipped, seeing it as rigged in his favor. The Interior Ministry announced the final results on Saturday, saying Mr. Raisi had won with nearly 18 million of 28.9 million ballots cast in the voting a day earlier. Turnout was 48.8 percent — a significant decline from the last presidential election, in 2017. Two rival candidates had conceded hours earlier, and President Hassan Rouhani congratulated Mr. Raisi on his victory, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported.Huge swaths of moderate and liberal-leaning Iranians sat out the election, saying that the campaign had been engineered to put Mr. Raisi in office or that voting would make little difference. He had been expected to win handily despite late attempts by the more moderate reformist camp to consolidate support behind their main candidate — Abdolnasser Hemmati, a former central bank governor.The Interior Ministry said Mr. Hemmati came in third with around 2.4 million votes, after the second-place finisher, Mohsen Rezaee, a former commander in chief of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps who won around 3.4 million votes.There were also about 3.7 million “white” ballots, or ballots cast without any candidate’s name written in. Some Iranians said they turned in white ballots as a way of participating in the election while protesting the lack of candidates who represented their views.Voters lining up to cast their ballots in Tehran on Friday.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesMr. Raisi, 60, is a hard-line cleric favored by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and has been seen as his possible successor. He has a record of grave human rights abuses, including accusations of playing a role in the mass execution of political opponents in 1988, and is currently under United States sanctions.His background appears unlikely to hinder the renewed negotiations between the United States and Iran over restoring a 2015 agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs in exchange for lifting American economic sanctions. Mr. Raisi has said he will remain committed to the deal and do all he can to remove sanctions.Key policies such as the nuclear deal are decided by the supreme leader, who has the last word on all important matters of state. However, Mr. Raisi’s conservative views will make it more difficult for the United States to reach additional deals with Iran and extract concessions on critical issues such as the country’s missile program, its backing of proxy militias around the Middle East and human rights.To his supporters, Mr. Raisi’s close identification with the supreme leader, and by extension with the Islamic Revolution that brought Iran’s clerical leaders to power in 1979, is part of his appeal. Campaign posters showed Mr. Raisi’s face alongside those of Mr. Khamenei and his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, or Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian commander whose death in an American airstrike last year prompted an outpouring of grief and anger among Iranians.Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, voted in Tehran on Friday.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesMr. Raisi’s supporters also cited his résumé as a staunch conservative, his promises to combat corruption, which many Iranians blame as much for the country’s deep economic misery as American sanctions, and what they said was his commitment to leveling inequality among Iranians.Voter turnout was low despite exhortations from the supreme leader to participate and an often strident get-out-the-vote campaign: One banner brandished an image of General Suleimani’s blood-specked severed hand, still bearing his trademark deep-red ring, urging Iranians to vote “for his sake.” Another showed a bombed-out street in Syria, warning that Iran ran the risk of turning into that war-ravaged country if voters stayed home.Voting was framed as not so much a civic duty as a show of faith in the Islamic Revolution, in part because the government has long relied on high voter turnout to buttress its legitimacy.Though never a democracy in the Western sense, Iran has in the past allowed candidates representing different factions and policy positions to run for office in a government whose direction and major policies were set by the unelected clerical leadership. During election seasons, the country buzzed with debates, competing rallies and political arguments.But since protests broke out in 2009 over charges that the presidential election that year was rigged, the authorities have gradually winnowed down the confines of electoral freedom, leaving almost no choice this year. Many prominent candidates were disqualified last month by Iran’s Guardian Council, which vets all candidates, leaving Mr. Raisi the clear front-runner and disheartening relative moderates and liberals.A voter looking at the list of the candidates on Friday. Many prominent candidates were disqualified last month by Iran’s Guardian Council.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesAnalysts said that the supreme leader’s support for Mr. Raisi could give him more power to promote change than the departing president, Hassan Rouhani. Mr. Rouhani is a pragmatic centrist who ended up antagonizing the supreme leader and disappointing voters who had hoped he could open Iran’s economy to the world by striking a lasting deal with the West.Mr. Rouhani did seal a deal to lift sanctions in 2015, but ran headlong into President Donald J. Trump, who pulled the United States out of the nuclear agreement and reimposed sanctions in 2018.The prospects for a renewed nuclear agreement could improve with Mr. Raisi’s victory. Mr. Khamenei appeared to be stalling the current talks as the election approached. But American diplomats and Iranian analysts said that there could be movement in the weeks between Mr. Rouhani’s departure and Mr. Raisi’s ascension. A deal finalized then could leave Mr. Rouhani with the blame for any unpopular concessions and allow Mr. Raisi to claim credit for any economic improvements once sanctions are lifted. More