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Civil War Threat in Ethiopia

As an aside I was surprised to read that Ethiopia is around 5 times as big as the UK and has a population of 110 million (UK population 68 million). My sense of scale of Africa is all wrong, no matter how much I look at maps

(just reading about China opening shoe making factories in Ethiopia, and the wages being $26 a month - fuck this world, seriously)
 
ska invita said:
As an aside I was surprised to read that Ethiopia is around 5 times as big as the UK and has a population of 110 million (UK population 68 million). My sense of scale of Africa is all wrong, no matter how much I look at maps

(just reading about China opening shoe making factories in Ethiopia, and the wages being $26 a month - fuck this world, seriously)
Click to expand...

The maps are part of the problem. Most projections shrink countries near the equator and make the UK larger than life.
 
ska invita said:
As an aside I was surprised to read that Ethiopia is around 5 times as big as the UK and has a population of 110 million (UK population 68 million). My sense of scale of Africa is all wrong, no matter how much I look at maps

(just reading about China opening shoe making factories in Ethiopia, and the wages being $26 a month - fuck this world, seriously)
Click to expand...

Most people's scale of Africa is all wrong.

www.visualcapitalist.com

Mapped: Visualizing the True Size of Africa

Common map projections warp our view of the globe. This graphic reveals the true size of Africa, which could fit the U.S., China, India, and more.
www.visualcapitalist.com www.visualcapitalist.com

1616103691030.png
 
Here's the latest, and it's not good: random extrajudicial executions of civilians, in broad daylight, in front of foreign NGO workers:

msf.or.ke

MSF driver assaulted, staff witness men dragged off buses and killed in Tigray | MSF Eastern Africa

MSF driver assaulted, staff witness men dragged off buses and killed in Tigray
msf.or.ke msf.or.ke

That latter detail, about letting witnesses live, indicate that they're entirely unconcerned about comeback for this. My guess as to why - on the QT Addis has been told that it's all cool, and they can do what they like Tigray, just like Saudi has evidently been told it can do what it likes in Yemen.
 
Ethiopia: 1,900 people killed in massacres in Tigray identified
Fri 2 Apr 2021
Almost 2,000 people killed in more than 150 massacres by soldiers, paramilitaries and insurgents in Tigray have been identified by researchers studying the conflict. The oldest victims were in their 90s and the youngest were infants.

The identifications are based on reports from a network of informants in the northern Ethiopian province run by a team at the University of Ghent in Belgium. The team, which has been studying the conflict in Tigray since it broke out last year, has crosschecked reports with testimony from family members and friends, media reports and other sources.
Click to expand...
 
Idris2002 said:
I was just about to post that, yield. I'll bet you anything it's a lot more than 1900 people dead in these massacres.
Click to expand...

Tbf the article says that.

The full list of victims the team has compiled from social media posts and other sources runs to more than 7,000.
Click to expand...

1900 are just people who have been identified individually.

It's a depressing article in full. Women raped to death, or left for dead. Jesus Christ.
 
Thanks very much for that one hitmouse. The final paragraph where she talks about Ethiopia as an imperialist state is spot on, and one made back in the 1970s by pro-Eritrean groups. The difference between now and past episodes of Ethiopian history is that it's no longer a simple Centre/Periphery split. The pattern in Ethiopian history was that a centralised state would emerge in the highlands and then become an empire by expanding outward into the Ethiopian periphery. Now, for the first time as far as I know, there are multiple competing centres of power in the country. That's maybe why the assault on Tigray (regardless of whether or not the TPLF engaged in provocations) has been so savage, and so murderous towards civilians.
 
hitmouse said:
If anyone's interested, there's a long interview here, both audio and transcribed: An Ethiopian Anarchist Perspective on the War in Tigray | The Final Straw Radio Podcast

But yeah, some really fucking grim stuff there.
Click to expand...

unsurprised to find out that this came from Asheville. still a hippie town after all.
en.wikipedia.org

WSFM-LP - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

e2a i've read the article too and very informative. i had interpreted the war as the amhara getting theirs back after 3 decades of exclusion from the levers of power. my visit to "Red Terror" Martyrs' Memorial Museum - Wikipedia showed that the resistance groups against the Derg all claimed socialist inspiration, but that there were many of them, from many sections of the country, who were eventually excluded by the TPLF. the interview helpfully expands on that (in the first half).
 
Last edited:
Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan resume talks on big dam amid tensions
03/04/21
CAIRO (AP) — A new round of talks between three African nations began Saturday, officials said, aimed at resolving a yearslong dispute over a giant dam Ethiopia is building on the Nile River’s main tributary.

The three-day talks are taking place in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the current chair of the African Union. The AU is mediating the negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Click to expand...

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Cairo wants the negotiations to eventually lead to a legally binding agreement over the operation and filling of the dam’s massive reservoir.

Foreign and irrigation ministers of the three nations were attending the talks, along with experts from the African Union, according to Ethiopia’s Irrigation Minister Seleshi Bekele.
Click to expand...
 
It seems to have been the same story again and again for the last decade. At least they failed to get it done relatively quickly this time.
 
Reasons the international community is unable to end the war in Tigray
21 April, 2021
The fear is that if the Ethiopian government is pushed too hard, it might embolden other disgruntled groups to launch armed resistance.

Conflicts will then mushroom everywhere, and millions will become displaced. “A horror of unimaginable proportions,” according to the diplomat mentioned above. He is, of course, referring to the potential refugee flows out of the country and the creation of fertile grounds for terrorist groups to flourish.
Click to expand...

Therefore, members of the international community are engaged in wishful thinking that somehow the war in Tigray will end soon, secretly hoping the federal government will emerge as the winner.

Second, members of the international community are hesitant to denounce Abiy Ahmed, someone they hailed as a political reformer and an economic liberalizer, so much to award him a Nobel Peace Prize just a year and a half ago.

How could they now turn and hold the same man responsible for the many atrocities committed by his soldiers or those he allowed and encouraged to march into Tigray undeterred: Eritrean troops and Amhara regional forces.
Click to expand...
Not sure of the source? Seems like a decent overview?
 
Wrt to Eritrea, came across this on Twitter:




You will need VPN to watch it in the UK and most probably the EU as well
 
I'm seeing stuff to the effect that the Tigray Defence Force is getting the upper hand in the war, or at least proving that it retains the ability to resist.

I'm not sure what to make of those claims. On the basis of the video in this tweet, however, the TDF retains at least some operational capacity. That's if being able to shoot down a C-130 counts:

 
The Ethiopian military has occupied the Tigray region since last November, after invading in cooperation with Eritrean and militia forces to wrest control from the regional government. The Tigrayan forces, known as the Tigray Defense Forces, spent months regrouping and recruiting new fighters, and then in the past week began a rolling counterattack back toward the capital, Mekelle.

New York Times journalists in Mekelle saw thousands of residents take to the streets on Monday night, waving flags and shooting off fireworks after hearing that Tigrayan forces had advanced to the city.

The Tigrayans’ rapid advance was a significant setback for the government of Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who had declared when he sent his forces into the restive Tigray region last year that the operation would be over in a matter of weeks.

www.nytimes.com

Ethiopian Forces Retreat in Tigray, and Rebels Enter the Capital (Published 2021)

After months of civil war and government occupation, Tigrayan rebels have pushed a counterattack that quickly brought them to Mekelle’s doorstep. Times journalists are there.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
A setback? Or was this the plan all along? Smash Tigray to pieces, and then withdraw, leaving the TPLF to govern a (de facto or de jure) independent Tigray that will no longer be capable of annoying either Addis or Asmara?
 
video from mekelle

www.nytimes.com

Jubilant Tigray Capital Greets Insurgents After Ethiopian Retreat (Published 2021)

The capture of the capital, Mekelle, by Tigrayan forces was a major blow to Ethiopia’s leader, eight months into a war that has resulted in widespread famine and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

Idris2002 said:
A setback? Or was this the plan all along? Smash Tigray to pieces, and then withdraw, leaving the TPLF to govern a (de facto or de jure) independent Tigray that will no longer be capable of annoying either Addis or Asmara?
Click to expand...

sounds plausible to me, but the NYT is sticking by their line:

The Ethiopian government has said it withdrew its forces voluntarily, for humanitarian reasons, as part of a unilateral cease-fire declared on Monday, but the military had steadily lost ground in recent days to fighters from Tigray, now calling themselves the Tigray Defense Forces.

Mr. Getachew accused the Ethiopian troops, on their retreat, of robbing banks, looting and cutting off electricity and telecommunications. He said that Tigrayan leaders would consider a cease-fire and negotiate with Mr. Abiy’s government only if services were restored and Tigrayan territory returned.
 
We saw how a scrappy Tigrayan force overcame one of the largest armies in Africa through force of arms, but also by exploiting a wave of popular rage. Going into the war, Tigrayans were themselves divided, with many distrustful of a governing Tigrayan party seen as tired, authoritarian and corrupt.

But the catalog of horrors that has defined the war — massacres, ethnic cleansing and extensive sexual violence — united Tigrayans against Mr. Abiy’s government, drawing highly motivated young recruits to a cause that now enjoys widespread support.

however ...

Mr. Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 and has staked his prestige on the Tigray campaign, has downplayed his losses. In a self-assured address to Parliament on Tuesday, of a kind that once dazzled admiring Westerners, Mr. Abiy insisted that his military’s retreat from Tigray was planned — the latest phase of a fight the government was on course to win.

www.nytimes.com

How Local Guerrilla Fighters Routed Ethiopia’s Powerful Army (Published 2021)

A scrappy force of local Tigrayan recruits scored a cascade of battlefield victories against the Ethiopian military, one of Africa’s strongest. Times journalists witnessed the decisive week in an eight-month civil war.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

so - if addis and asmara are in tacit cahoots, i can see where the money and arms come from. where is tigray getting its funding and arms? the article suggests:

The Tigrayan offensive was continuing to the north, using captured heavy guns against the Ethiopian troops who had brought them in.

is that enough to counter an army with an air force?
 
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