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Soriek  6mo ago (text post)   971 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 24

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Ethiopia

I've mentioned in the past that, not content to not wage bloody warfare against an ethnic sectarian movement, President Abiy has tried to forcibly integrate the Amhara militia Fano into the armed forces. Fano didn't like that and conflict broke out. Abiy, who received a PhD in Conflict Resolution, knew exactly how to handle such a situation and started killing the crap out of holdouts. It isn't covered much but this has been raging for a while:

Dozens of civilians have been killed this month by drone strikes and house-to-house searches in Ethiopia's Amhara region, where authorities have touted security gains since conflict erupted in July, a state-appointed human rights commission said on Monday [the 30th].

At least 183 people were killed in the first month of the conflict, the United Nations said in late August. But with internet connections down across the region, it has been difficult to get a clear picture of the situation.

On the other hand, Abiy has now walked back his earlier statements that the Red Sea was a strategically critical area that Ethiopia must control, and has now promised his very irate neighbors in Djibouti, Eritrea, and Somalia, that he's definitely not planning to invade their countries anytime soon. That's that conflict resolution PhD at work.

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