Ethiopia

Africa

Sudan war drives continued refugee exodus: UN

The war in Sudan is driving continued refugee flight, leading to a deepening humanitarian crisis in the greater region, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported. The agency said that more than 3 million people have fled Sudan, seeking safety in neighboring countries, since the war began in April 2023. The refugees are faced with challenges of food shortages and continued rights violations such as killings, sexual violence and looting, as well as natural disasters such as flooding. In October, around 60,000 Sudanese escaping the escalated fighting in Darfur arrived in Chad, which is facing a resource shortage due to its increasing refugee population, now at over 1.1 million. The refugees there face an overwhelmed healthcare system, scarce food, and no education for their children who have already been out of school for two years. (Map: PCL)

Africa

Regional powers vie in Somalia

Tensions are ratcheting up in the Horn of Africa over the deployment of Egyptian troops to Somalia. Ethiopia, Somalia’s neighbor, isn’t happy. It has soldiers in Somalia acting as a buffer against al-Shabab insurgents, but now Mogadishu has asked them to withdraw. High-stakes strategic interests are at play. Ethiopia and Egypt have been locked in a long-standing dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt regards as an existential threat. Meanwhile, landlocked Ethiopia has also enraged Somalia over its determination to find a port to lease. It has turned to the breakaway region of Somaliland, dangling the prospect of recognizing its independence—an absolute red line for Mogadishu. The new defense agreement between Egypt and Somalia has underlined just how serious the tensions are. Egypt is planning to send 5,000 soldiers to Somalia to join a new-look African Union force, with a separate 5,000 stationed on the Ethiopian border. (Map: PCL)

Africa

Arms heist in Somalia

An ambush by local militia on a weapons convoy in central Somalia has been described as the country’s “single most serious incident of arms proliferation.” The looted weapons included assault rifles, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades. The convoy had crossed from Ethiopia when it was attacked near the border town of Abudwaq. The consignment is believed to have been destined for one of the clans in the area that is allied with government forces waging a stalled offensive against the jihadist group al-Shabab. The price of an AK-47 has since dropped by one third on the local market. The weapons are not only likely to fuel inter-clan conflict, but they could also be bought by a resurgent al-Shabab or by bandits in northern Kenya. As al-Shabab wins back territory, it continues its campaign of bomb attacksin the capital, Mogadishu. (Map via Wikimedia Commons)

Africa

Ethiopian forces committed genocide in Tigray: report

There is “credible” evidence that Ethiopian forces committed genocide during the two-year war in northern Tigray region, a new report has concluded. Ethiopia’s National Defense Force and its allies—the paramilitary Amhara Special Forces and the Eritrean Defense Forces—are accused of committing “at least four acts” constituting genocide against Tigrayans, including: killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent childbirth. The report by the US-based New Lines Institute called for Ethiopia to be referred to the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice. (Map: Political Geography Now)

Africa

Ethiopia: ‘secret committee’ to suppress Oromo insurgency

An investigation published by Reuters reveals that a “secret committee” of high-ranking officials in Ethiopia has been overseeing a campaign of extra-judicial killings, illegal detentions and other human rights violations in an effort to eliminate the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA)insurgent group. The so-called Koree Nageenyaa (Security Committee in the Oromo language) has ordered “hundreds of arrests” and “dozens of killings” of any persons suspected of involvement with the OLA, as well as a “massacre of 14 shepherds in Oromia in 2021 that the government has previously blamed on OLA fighters.” The Koree Nageenyaa is reportedly headed by Prime Minister Abiy’s former chief of staff and current president of the Oromia region, Shimelis Abdisa. (Map: Political Geography Now)

Africa

Ethiopian regions battle starvation

Nearly 400 people have died of starvation in Ethiopia’s Tigray and Amhara regions in recent months, according to the national ombudsman. This is a rare admission of hunger-related deaths by a federal body—the government normally dismisses famine warnings as “politicking.” Despite the lifting of a nationwide food aid freeze imposed by USAID and the World Food Program over large-scale government-linked food thefts, just 14% of 3.2 million people targeted for food relief in Tigray received rations last month. There have reportedly been technical problems over fitting GPS trackers to food trucks and putting QR codes on ration cards. A lack of money is also an issue: the UN called on donors last month to urgently ramp up funding to avoid a catastrophe in Tigray, Amhara, Afar, Oromia, and southern Ethiopia, where some 4 million people need immediate food aid. (Map via EthioVisit)

Africa

Regional lines drawn over Somaliland conflict

Addis Ababa held talks on military cooperation with Somaliland, after announcing a controversial deal on sea access through the self-governing but unrecognized republic. As the talks began, Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud visited Eritrea (Ethiopia’s regional rival) seeking support for his harsh opposition to the deal, decried as a step toward recognition of Somaliland’s independence. President Mohamud also signed a law nullifying the New Year’s Day memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the governments of Ethiopia and Somaliland, which grants the landlocked regional power a corridor to Somaliland’s port of Berbera. The Somaliland government, based in Hargeisa, claims full sovereignty, and does not recognize Mogadishu’s jurisdiction over the territory. (Map: Somalia Country Profile)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: for a meme moratorium

Meta has tweaked the Facebook algorithm to sideline links to news articles and boost “memes“—precisely the format most subject to the fabrications and distortions being aggressively peddled by both sides (yes) in the Gaza conflict. Such propaganda has already been implicated in genocide in Burma and Ethiopia. But even apart from such egregious abuses, memes are dumbing down discourse and entrenching groupthink and dogmatism—and are being pushed by Meta as part of its sinister corporate design to enclose the internet. In Episode 207 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls for a total moratorium on posting or sharing memes as a means of pressure on Meta to re-emphasize actual news articles, and deep-six the war propaganda. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: Earth First! Newswire)

Planet Watch

El Niño’s global food fallout

El Niño will drive global food aid needs even higher in the coming months, a new analysiswarns. The prediction comes as food aid agencies are already making ration cuts amid a budget squeeze. In July, meteorologists declared the onset of El Niño, a periodic climate phenomenon that usually brings drought to large stretches of the globe and wetter weather elsewhere. The analysis by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network says that humanitarian groups must prepare for “high food assistance needs.” Another climate phenomenon, the Indian Ocean Dipole, could amplify El Niño’s effects—with both compounded by the climate crisis. This September was the hottest ever recorded. “The temperature anomalies are enormous—far bigger than anything we have ever seen in the past,” Petteri Taalas, head of the UN’s meteorological agency, WMO, said in a press release. (Photo of displaced families in Somalia: UN Photo/Tobin Jones via Flickr)

Greater Middle East

Saudi border guards massacre Ethiopian refugees

Saudi Arabian border guards have killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum-seekers attempting to cross the border from Yemen, according to a report from Human Rights Watch. The report documented incidents between March 2022 and June 2023, based on interviews with migrants, satellite imagery, and social media posts. According to the report, Saudi border guards used explosive weapons such as mortars against migrants, and shot them at close range with live ammunition. Border guards reportedly fired on people even when they complied with orders. HRW called the recent pattern of killings a change from “an apparent practice of occasional shootings” to “widespread and systematic killings.” (Map via PCL)

Africa

Ethiopia: Eritrean forces still in Tigray?

Eritrea lodged a diplomatic protest with the United Kingdom after the British ambassador to Ethiopia publicly called “for Eritrean forces to withdraw completely back to their own borders.” Eritrean forces intervened in support of Ethiopia’s federal government during the two-year war in northern Tigray region, but supposedly withdrew after last year’s ceasefire. Asmara’s diplomatic statement decried “unwarranted remarks” by the ambassador, without explicitly stating that it no longer has forces in Tigray. A day earlier, the UK Minister of State for Development & Africa issued a finding that “Eritrean forces remaining in Tigray present an obstacle to the overall objective of peace and stability within the region.” The controversy comes 10 months after a formal ceasefire in Tigray that has led to a reduction of violence in the region, although rights abuses and a humanitarian crisis persist, exacerbated by a devastating drought. (Map: Political Geography Now)

Africa

Ethiopia: Amhara militia in new clashes with army

Ethiopia’s government declared a state of emergency in Amhara state over ongoing clashes between the federal army and local Amhara Fano militiamen. The Ethiopian army and the Fano militia were allies in the two-year war in the northern Tigray region. Their relationship later deteriorated, in part over recent efforts by federal authorities to disband regional paramilitary groups. (Photo via Facebook)