Audio: KGNU – Hemispheres Interview with Nebiyu Asfaw, co-founder Taste of Ethiopia, Ethiopian Community Activist in Colorado. November 22, 2022.

Taste of Ethiopia – August, 2019

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“To be an enemy of America can be dangerous; but to be a friend is fatal”

a quote attributed to Henry Kissinger

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(Note: – the audio is edited so as to concentrate on the content of the interview with the introductions cut out. For the complete audio – go to ww.kgnu.org – then to archives – then to Hemispheres for November 22, 2022)

Tonight on Hemispheres it’s the Middle East Dialogues with Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince. This evening – leaving the Middle East temporarily for the Horn of Africa – Rob will return to the series “Colorado and the Horn of Africa”. On Tuesday, November 22 from 6-7 pm, KGNU continues with its series “Colorado and the Horn of Africa” bringing back Nebiyu Asfaw of Colorado’s Ethiopian Community to speak about the peace agreement signed recently in South Africa between the Addis Ababa government of Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

The agreement came as Ethiopian government forces were closing in on the TPLF stronghold of Mekelle in Tigray Province. During this armed conflict in which the TPLF attempted to overthrow the Addis government, the U.S. State Department as well as the mainstream media in the USA  presented a distorted narrative of the unfolding events. The TPLF was little more than Washington’s proxy in the Horn – no more, no less. As the two year war appears to have come to and, questions remain about Ethiopia’s future and that of the broader Horn of Africa and what has been an apparent zigzag in U.S. policy toward Ethiopia, long a key U.S. ally in the Horn, but now the two countries appear to be heading in different directions.

Nebiyu Asfaw, of Colorado’s Ethiopian Community and frequently a spokesperson for that community, appeared on KGNU a year ago and gave an excellent presentation. We bring him back for a return act. He is a co-founder of the Taste of Ethiopia – an annual summer event which brings people from all over the Horn of Africa in the tens of thousands in a weekend of culture, food, history both of Ethiopian and the Ethiopian Community in Colorado, today by some estimates more than 35,000 in the Denver-Aurora area.