Donald Y. Yamamoto | |
---|---|
United States Ambassador to Somalia | |
In office November 17, 2018 –July 2021 | |
President | Donald Trump Joe Biden |
Preceded by | Stephen Schwartz |
Succeeded by | Larry AndréJr. |
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs | |
Acting | |
In office September 3,2017 –July 23,2018 | |
President | Donald Trump |
Preceded by | Linda Thomas-Greenfield |
Succeeded by | Tibor P. Nagy |
In office March 30,2013 –August 5,2013 | |
President | Barack Obama |
Preceded by | Johnnie Carson |
Succeeded by | Linda Thomas-Greenfield |
United States Ambassador to Ethiopia | |
In office November 9,2006 –July 28,2009 | |
President | George W. Bush Barack Obama |
Preceded by | Vicki J. Huddleston |
Succeeded by | Donald E. Booth |
United States Ambassador to Djibouti | |
In office September 15,2000 –June 16,2003 | |
President | Bill Clinton George W. Bush |
Preceded by | Lange Schermerhorn |
Succeeded by | Marguerita Dianne Ragsdale |
Charge d’Affaires ad interim to Eritrea | |
In office May 11,1997 –June 29,1998 | |
President | Bill Clinton |
Preceded by | John F. Hicks |
Succeeded by | William Davis Clarke |
Personal details | |
Born | Donald Yukio Yamamoto 1953 (age 68–69) Seattle,Washington |
Children | 2 |
Education | Columbia College (AB) Columbia University (MIA) |
Occupation | Diplomat |
Awards | Superior Honor Award (4) |
Donald Yukio Yamamoto (born 1953) [1] is an American diplomat who served as the United States ambassador to Somalia from 2018 to 2021. [2] Before that he was the acting assistant secretary of state for african affairs with a term of appointment starting September 3,2017 until July 23,2018. Yamamoto previously served as the senior vice president of International Programs and Outreach at the National Defense University from 2016 to 2017. Prior to that,he was senior advisor to the Director General of the Foreign Service on personnel reform from 2015 to 2016;he served as Chargéd'Affaires at the U.S. Mission Somalia office in Mogadishu in 2016;and in senior positions in Kabul,Mazar e-Sharif,and Bagram,Afghanistan from 2014 to 2015. [3]
He was the former acting assistant secretary of state for african affairs from March 30,2013 to August 5,2013,U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia from 2006 to 2009 and principal deputy assistant secretary within the Bureau of African Affairs. He was appointed by President George W. Bush in November 2006 and presented his credentials to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa on December 6,2006. [4] He was formerly the U.S. ambassador to Djibouti from 2000 to 2003 and chargéd’affaires ad interim for Eritrea from 1997 to 1998. [5]
Yamamoto was born in Seattle,Washington to a Japanese immigrant father and a Nisei mother. [6] Yamamoto later graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1975 and School of International and Public Affairs,Columbia University in 1978. [7] [8] [9]
Yamamoto entered the United States Foreign Service in 1980,serving primarily in Africa,with assignments in the Middle East and Asia,including U.S. Embassy Beijing (as staff aide to the Ambassador and Human Rights Officer during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989), [10] and U.S. Consulate Fukuoka (as Principal Officer,1992-1995). [11] He received a master's degree from the National War College in 1996 and worked on Capitol Hill on a Congressional Fellowship in 1991. [3]
He is the recipient of a Presidential Distinguished Service Award,Presidential Meritorious Service Award,Secretary's Distinguished Honor Award,over a dozen Senior Performance Awards,the State Department's 2006 Robert Frasure Memorial Award for advancing conflict resolution in Africa,and numerous other awards. [3] He is also one of the youngest diplomats to be promoted to the rank of Career Minister. [12]
From April 22–23,2006,Yamamoto met with current Chadian President Idriss Déby to discuss Chad's dispute with the World Bank over allocation of its petroleum funds and the possibility of a U.S.-led,United Nations-monitored peace keeping force to end the Chadian-Sudanese conflict.
The Government of Chad repeatedly accused the Government of Sudan of complicity in United Front for Democratic Change incursions from Darfur into eastern Chad. Yamamoto is the first official in any government outside of Chad to repeat this claim,saying,"It is evident that there was safe haven and logistical support provided to rebel groups." [13]
Chad produces around 100,000 bpd (barrels of oil per day,2013 figures) which travels through the Chad-Cameroon pipeline,owned and operated by US companies ExxonMobil and Chevron and Malaysian Petronas. The Déby administration threatened to cut off the supply of oil at the end of April if the international community did not intervene to end the rebellion or if Exxon Mobil did not pay the government $100 million. [14] The dispute was later resolved,and Chad's oil continues to flow to other countries.
Yamamoto tried unsuccessfully to convince President Déby to delay the upcoming presidential election which was held on May 3. He later said, "We held a very direct and private discussion on the issue [of whether to postpone the election]... When people say that it's too late to delay an election... it's never too late to do anything. We must focus on what is important... to have a process in place and actual ability of all the people to participate in the process. Any election that doesn't have full participation of all groups then raises issues that they would have to answer for." [15]
Yamamoto met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on April 22, 2006, to discuss the ongoing process of democratization in Ethiopia and the Ethio-Eritrea boundary dispute. Both leaders were positive about the outcome of the meeting. [16] In 2021 a widely circulated video showed Yamamato consulting with a TPLF representative on TPLF's military operation to overthrow the Ethiopian government. [17]
Yamamoto became acting assistant secretary of state for african affairs on March 30, 2013, replacing Johnnie Carson. [18]
On 14 July 2018, President Donald Trump nominated Donald Yamamoto as the United States ambassador to Somalia. [19] [20] Yamamoto was subsequently confirmed for the position on 19 October 2018. [21] [22] While the US Mission to Somalia is based on the grounds of the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, a permanent diplomatic mission was established in Mogadishu in December 2018. [23] [24]
The foreign relations of Chad are significantly influenced by the desire for oil revenue and investment in Chadian oil industry and support for former Chadian President Idriss Déby. Chad is officially non-aligned but has close relations with France, the former colonial power. Relations with neighbouring Libya, and Sudan vary periodically. Lately, the Idris Déby regime waged an intermittent proxy war with Sudan. Aside from those two countries, Chad generally enjoys good relations with its neighbouring states.
Chad, officially the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon to the southwest, Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west. Chad has a population of 16 million, of which 1.6 million live in the capital and largest city of N'Djamena.
This is a list of diplomatic missions of Somalia, excluding honorary consulates. Foreign relations of Somalia are handled primarily by the President as the head of state, the Prime Minister as the head of government, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Government.
Ambassadors of the United States are persons nominated by the president to serve as the country's diplomatic representatives to foreign nations, international organizations, and as ambassadors-at-large. Under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, their appointment must be confirmed by the United States Senate; while an ambassador may be appointed during a recess, they can serve only until the end of the next session of Congress, unless subsequently confirmed.
Idriss Déby Itno was a Chadian politician and military officer who was the president of Chad from 1990 until his death in 2021.
Meles Zenawi Asres was an Ethiopian soldier and politician who served as President of Ethiopia from 1991 to 1995 and then Prime Minister of Ethiopia from 1995 until his death in 2012.
Seyoum Mesfin Gebredingel was an Ethiopian politician and diplomat. He was Ethiopia's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1991 to 2010 and served as Ethiopia's Ambassador to China from 2011 to 2017.
Jendayi Elizabeth Frazer is the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, heading the Bureau of African Affairs. She was a Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and Department of Social and Decision Sciences.
Foreign relations of the Republic of Somaliland are the responsibility of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Somaliland. The region's self-declaration of independence remains unrecognised by the international community.
The most recent Chadian Civil War began on December 18, 2005. Since its independence from France in 1960, Chad has been swamped by the civil war between the Arab-Muslims of the north and the Sub-Saharan-Christians of the south. As a result, leadership and presidency in Chad drifted back and forth between the Christian southerners and Muslim northerners. When one side was in power, the other side usually started a revolutionary war to counter it.
The Government of Chad had been ruled and controlled by Idriss Déby and his Patriotic Salvation Movement since December 2, 1990, and officially since February 28, 1991. An amendment to the Constitution of Chad, passed in 2005, allowed Déby to run for his next term which would be his third. He ran for it and won, although the election was criticized harshly.. The Chadian Government would be dissolved following Deby's death on April 20, 2021.
Somalia–United States relations are bilateral relations between the Federal Republic of Somalia and the United States of America. Somalia has an embassy in Washington, D.C., and the United States maintains an embassy in Mogadishu which was reopened in late 2019.
Geeta Pasi is a retired American diplomat. She was the American ambassador to Djibouti from 2011 to 2014. She was appointed American ambassador to Chad in June 2016 and served until 2018. In September 2018, she left the ambassadorship to become Principal Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.
The Embassy of the United States of America to Somalia is a diplomatic mission of the United States in Mogadishu, Somalia from 1960 to 1991. In 1957, the US opened a consulate-general in Mogadishu—the capital of the Trust Territory of Somalia, a UN trusteeship under Italian administration. The consulate was upgraded to embassy status in July 1960, when the US recognized Somalia's independence and appointed an ambassador. The embassy served to counter Soviet influence during the Cold War and also served as a base for the United States Agency for International Development, which had a large presence in the country. In 1989, the embassy moved from a dilapidated building in central Mogadishu to a new compound on the outskirts of the city.
The Oromo conflict is a protracted conflict between the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and the Ethiopian government. The Oromo Liberation Front formed to fight the Ethiopian Empire to liberate the Oromo people and establish an independent state of Oromia. The conflict began in 1973, when Oromo nationalists established the OLF and its armed wing, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA). These groups formed in response to prejudice against the Oromo people during the Haile Selassie and Derg era, when their language banned from public administration, courts, church and schools, and the stereotype of Oromo people as a hindrance to expanding Ethiopian national identity.
Hinda Déby Itno is a former Chadian First Lady who served from 2005 until the death of her husband, President Idriss Déby, in April 2021.
The Tigray War is an ongoing civil war that began on 3 November 2020 in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. The local Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) are fighting the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF), the Ethiopian Federal Police, regional police, and gendarmerie forces of the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions with the involvement of the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF).
Presidential elections were held in Chad on 11 April 2021. Incumbent Idriss Déby, who served five consecutive terms since seizing power in the 1990 coup d'état, was running for a sixth. Déby was described as an authoritarian by several international media sources, and as "strongly entrenched". During previous elections, he forbade the citizens of Chad from making posts online, and while Chad's total ban on social media use was lifted in 2019, restrictions continue to exist.
Since the start of Tigray War in November 2020, the Eritrean government has been heavily involved in the war against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in support of the Ethiopian government.