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And the government is telling people living in the capital to register their weapons and organize for defending their neighbourhoods. It's always such a clear example of a successful state with a functional military that they want random nobodies to defend their capital... https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/addis-ababa-government-urges-residents-register-arms-media-2021-11-02/
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Nov 2, 2021 17:35
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Tuna-Fish posted:And the government is telling people living in the capital to register their weapons and organize for defending their neighbourhoods. It's always such a clear example of a successful state with a functional military that they want random nobodies to defend their capital... I saw this headline and got massive whiplash. There is no way they could possibly mount an assault right?
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Nov 2, 2021 22:39
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Earlier this year the Ethiopian government was making similar statements about people defending themselves, though I don't think it was the capital. I don't know how possible it is for the capital to call or even be directly attacked-- I still find this conflict quite opaque and confusing to be honest
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Nov 3, 2021 01:31
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Lawman 0 posted:I saw this headline and got massive whiplash. dozens of cities have been assaulted and taken during this war, and the majority of the population of Addis is Oromo anyway
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Nov 3, 2021 02:46
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PawParole posted:dozens of cities have been assaulted and taken during this war, and the majority of the population of Addis is Oromo anyway
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Nov 3, 2021 02:59
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Grouchio posted:What does an Oromo populace have to do with besieging Addis? the outlying slums are mostly made up of displaced Oromo farmers, so they might lend their support to the OLF, who promise them a change in their situation
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Nov 3, 2021 03:11
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Grouchio posted:What does an Oromo populace have to do with besieging Addis? how much morale do you think that mass mobilization that was just called up will have
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Nov 3, 2021 06:15
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PawParole posted:dozens of cities have been assaulted and taken during this war, and the majority of the population of Addis is Oromo anyway https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/addis-ababa-population ? "Close to half of the population [of Addis] is of the ethnic group Amhara, while the majority of the remaining population is split among the groups Oromo, Gurage, and Tigray." I mean I doubt they have the best statistics, and definitely the outlying areas will be more Oromo than the city, but given how much inward migration Addis has gotten from Ethiopia and given the long-term domination of Habesha people for the government, I imagine its demographics are pretty mixed.
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Nov 3, 2021 10:39
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I wonder if Ethiopia will balkanize after this civil war. I also wonder how Abiy Ahmed could've avoided this.
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Nov 3, 2021 13:44
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Saladman posted:https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/addis-ababa-population ? the city of Addis is not the city of Addis. you need to include the suburbs and slums outside it, which definitely have an oromo majority. The outskirts are where the defense will be mounted, If they reach Arat Kilo then the war is over PawParole fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 18:19
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/borken...580%258C/%3famp A very interesting propaganda post about ethiopia, absolutely hilarious attempt at smearing the tpf and olf forces
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Nov 4, 2021 06:25
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Lawman 0 posted:I saw this headline and got massive whiplash. I believe that the actual fighting forces of ENDF facing the offensive have been beaten in combat and are either killed, captured or dispersed. The only thing left between the TPLF and the capital are various ethnic militias, some of which are allied with the TPLF. This is probably happening. The capital itself will probably be reinforced heavily by what is left elsewhere, but this will mean withdrawing from and losing by default the minor bush wars that those forces are engaged in keeping down. WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:https://www.google.com/amp/s/borken...580%258C/%3famp It's written in an exaggerating and inflammatory style, but most of it is not really wrong, at most it's lacking in context. Civil wars are not neat and clean, especially those with an ethnic component. There are no hollywood heroes and villains here. Or, the empire might be evil, but the rebels are definitely also celebrating by burning the villages of their neighbours with the inhabitants inside them. https://twitter.com/JP4Ethiopia/status/1379596940812369920 (warning, some of the followup tweets have videos that are very  as the rebels celebrate and display their handiwork.)
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Nov 4, 2021 10:34
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:https://www.google.com/amp/s/borken...580%258C/%3famp I like how it refers to Forbes as a "news organization" and not "an online blog where anyone can post their work". TPLF is pretty grifty and autocratic though and while it's written hysterically the main points aren't that wrong. People should celebrate their throwing off the raping-marauding-and-pillaging EDF and the abusive-or-worse ENDF in Tigray, but them and the OLA overthrowing Abiy is not going to be a great outcome for Ethiopia either. The best bet for Ethiopia probably would have been if Abiy and the ENDF had not spent their six month total control of Tigray destroying everything and raping and starving people, but I guess that's a long since gone opportunity. I'm still surprised at how little info leaks out of TPLF-controlled areas, like no news at all about Lalibela. You'd think that the TPLF would love to show videos of them praying in an undamaged Saint George's Church or whatever.
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Nov 4, 2021 11:22
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:https://www.google.com/amp/s/borken...580%258C/%3famp Borkena is an Ethiopian/Amhara nationalist website, idk why you’d find them writing that so surprising. the TPLF was extremely corrupt in its time in office and commited horrible crimes against many ethnicities, but the TDF is mostly made up of non-tplf Tigrayan opposition parties, and apolitical people who were galvanized by Abiys invasion of Tigray TPLF is actually the only major party in Tigray that isn’t seccionist, in 1991 they lost a lot of popularity among Tigrayans by not seceding.
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Nov 4, 2021 15:30
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In this report, the Guardian casually throws out that up to 100,000 government soldiers may have died since the start of the conflict, which seems an eye-poppingly huge figure: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ethiopia-turkey-pact-fuels-speculation-about-drone-use-in-tigray-war Does that seem at all plausible, or has the Guardian carelessly added an extra zero or two?
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Nov 4, 2021 16:03
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Pistol_Pete posted:In this report, the Guardian casually throws out that up to 100,000 government soldiers may have died since the start of the conflict, which seems an eye-poppingly huge figure: if you include militias then that is an undercount. A lot of them were given only machetes and sent out to fight people with tanks and artillery, because the state cannot trust them not to turn their weapons on the government. I believe the 23rd division was totally destroyed back in November too, which means that all of the largest command either defected or was destroyed. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/ethiopia/army-orbat-2011.htm Here is the order of battle for the Ethiopian army from 2011, listing the ethnicities of the officer corps of each division. It misspells Tigray as Tigre ( a completely different nationality), but otherwise is correct. One of the reasons for the tigrayan success is that 90 percent of officers are tigrayan.
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Nov 4, 2021 17:03
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PawParole posted:if you include militias then that is an undercount. A lot of them were given only machetes and sent out to fight people with tanks and artillery, because the state cannot trust them not to turn their weapons on the government. so did nobody tell abiy this before he sent in the army or what in the world was he thinking?
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Nov 5, 2021 03:35
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PawParole posted:if you include militias then that is an undercount. A lot of them were given only machetes and sent out to fight people with tanks and artillery, because the state cannot trust them not to turn their weapons on the government.
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Nov 5, 2021 06:43
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V. Illych L. posted:so did nobody tell abiy this before he sent in the army or what in the world was he thinking? Yeah, I assumed this was just the central government cracking down on a rebellious province, shows what I know lol.
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Nov 5, 2021 08:33
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Pistol_Pete posted:In this report, the Guardian casually throws out that up to 100,000 government soldiers may have died since the start of the conflict, which seems an eye-poppingly huge figure: I wonder if they confused "casualty" with "death". I imagine there have been at least 100k government casualties+captured, but deaths that sounds like really a lot and unlikely unless the Tigrayans murdered all of the POWs.
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Nov 5, 2021 09:57
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Anyway, looks like momentum's really with the rebels now: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/05/nine-ethiopian-factions-to-form-alliance-against-government quote:Nine anti-government factions in Ethiopia are to form an alliance, as pressure mounts on the country’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, with rebel forces advancing toward the capital.
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Nov 5, 2021 15:00
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I was always under the impression that Abiy Ahmed's goals were to centralize the govt in order to improve infrastructure, and vice versa. All I remember of the catalyst was Abiy fending off an attempted Tigrayan coup and sending troops to 'pacify' Tigrinya. What's really going on here?
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Nov 5, 2021 18:24
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So is Tigray like the Prussia of Ethiopia or what.
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Nov 5, 2021 20:42
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My understanding is that Tigrayan and Eritrean forces were key in overthrowing the junta at the end of the cold war. Eritrea obviously got it's independence, while the TPLF became the dominant political and military force in the new system. Abiy's centralisation obviously threatened this hence the previous coup attempt and now the civil war. What Abiy hadn't seem to have considered is that the army was still very heavily linked with the TPLF even if they'd been ousted from the civilian government, and local militias weren't really going to cut it against a an entity that had most of the officers and the ability to control a lot of Ethiopia's military materiel. I am by no means an expert on this so expect to be corrected!
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Nov 6, 2021 08:33
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Grouchio posted:I was always under the impression that Abiy Ahmed's goals were to centralize the govt in order to improve infrastructure, and vice versa. All I remember of the catalyst was Abiy fending off an attempted Tigrayan coup and sending troops to 'pacify' Tigrinya. What's really going on here? it's pretty confusing what i've gotten out of it is that ethiopia has traditionally been aligned with china economically since the 1991 revolution that put the TPLF in power. the TPLF and a bunch of the other factions here, including most of the parties that fused together into abiy's coalition were at least nominally left-wing at the time of the revolution, which as you might imagine was an awkward position to be in in 1991, and have sort of split the middle between the US and china by supporting US foreign policy but chinese economic policy; domestically, though, the TPLF were mostly just authoritarian and repressive toward non-tigrayans and especially toward oromo. abiy (who is oromo) was selected by all of the other major parties in 2018 and the TPLF took this as a "gently caress you" from everyone else and didn't join the coalition. this posed a problem because, yeah, the military was overwhelmingly staffed with TPLF supporters and abiy wasn't able to replace them all before this war broke out abiy's economic policy is sort of confusing in that it seems tailored to appeal to the west (liberalization, privatization) but the US doesn't seem to be on his side like at all, so perhaps it's really benefiting china while appearing superficially liberal. the trump admin didn't seem to give a poo poo about ethiopia, but the biden admin very obviously shifted toward tacit support of the TPLF. what that actually looks like in terms of material support is anyone's guess - the US may have just seen the writing on the wall in terms of the military situation and aligned with the winner, but it's pretty suspicious imo that they're backing a faction that's been heavily involved with china against a guy who was a poster boy for liberalization before the war. how relevant any of these external factors are compared to the internal ones is really hard to determine, i haven't seen a single article analyzing the larger geopolitical situation here or to what degree this might be a proxy war. as far as what the TPLF is aiming to do, they're looking either to seize the reins back or to splinter the country. holding onto the central government seems like it would be an extremely bloody enterprise at this point but that might not dissuade them from trying
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Nov 6, 2021 09:44
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Grouchio posted:All I remember of the catalyst was Abiy fending off an attempted Tigrayan coup and sending troops to 'pacify' Tigrinya. Tigrinya is a different ethnic group by the way, separate from Tigrayans. Tigrinya is also a language, which is spoken by both the Tigrayan and Tigrinya people. Tigrinya people are the largest ethnic group in Eritrea. I don't know a perfect analogy, maybe like how Walloons speak French, but they are not currently considered French, nor would most Walloons consider themselves French, and how the word "French" refers to either a language or an ethnic/ethnonationalist group of people, without the two necessarily intersecting. As someone mentioned earlier, "Tigre" is also both the name of a language and a demonym of an ethnic group in the region (mostly Eritrea), which is separate from both Tigrayans and Tigrinya.
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Nov 6, 2021 17:44
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Are the Tigrinya and Tigre languages mutually intelligible? I think one of the most confusing aspects for someone ignorant (like me) is how Eritrea fits into this historically as well as for the current war.
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Nov 6, 2021 18:37
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Something concerning is occurring, Ethiopian authorities are arresting Thai grands all over the country and deporting them to places unknown
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Nov 6, 2021 20:53
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Redmark posted:Are the Tigrinya and Tigre languages mutually intelligible? I think one of the most confusing aspects for someone ignorant (like me) is how Eritrea fits into this historically as well as for the current war. Okay so have you heard of Axum? It was the ancient kingdom with the monoliths and they spoke Ge'ez (which is still the liturgical language of the oriental orthodox churches in the region). Tigrinya and Tigre are both different but are the languages that are most similar to Ge'ez. They are different languages rather than just dialects, but they share a common root. I guess it's like if Ge'ez is Latin than Tigre would be Sardinian and Tigrinya would be Italian? The Aksumite kingdom was centred in what is now Eritrea and the Tigray region. After Axum collapsed the Tigre and Tigrinya people lived in the more coastal region which became more tied to the arab states on the other side of the red sea, and through that became a largely autonomous part of the ottoman empire, though they (mostly) stayed oriental orthodox instead of converting to islam. Then after the construction of the suez canal the region was taken over by Italy fairly peacefully (by the standards of the day) as Italian Eritrea. The then coalescing Ethiopian empire had their owndesigns on the region but had to back down when faced with the italians. The Tigrayans (who speak also speak Tigrinya) were the ones in the more inland mountainous part of the old aksumite kingdom and by dint of their location were less tied into the arab peninsula and instead fell into the orbit of the other rising states in the Ethiopian highlands. Because of this they ended up in the Ethiopian empire before italy could get its hands on them. After WW2 the Eritreans wanted independence but Haile Salaise was able to use his status as one of the allied powers to take over the region pretty much unopposed. After the DERG took over Ethiopia the Tigrinya and Tigrayans worked together to get independence for Eritrea and to overthrow the junta in Ethiopia. So Tigrinya and Tigrayans are pretty much the same but Tigrinya were never part of the Ethiopia before WW2 so are now Eritreans, whilst Tigrayans were part of the Ethiopia and are happy to stay that way but like their autonomy. Tigre are different but similar and are mostly Eritreans. a pipe smoking dog fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Nov 7, 2021 |
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Nov 7, 2021 00:11
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a pipe smoking dog posted:Okay so have you heard of Axum? It was the ancient kingdom with the monoliths and they spoke Ge'ez (which is still the liturgical language of the oriental orthodox churches in the region). Tigrinya and Tigre are both different but are the languages that are most similar to Ge'ez. They are different languages rather than just dialects, but they share a common root. I guess it's like if Ge'ez is Latin than Tigre would be Sardinian and Tigrinya would be Italian? Tigrinya were the independent kingdom of Medri Bahri, before the Tigrayan national hero Ras Alula conquered it temporarily. Britain handed them over to Ethiopia after WW2 (along with the Somali Region) in exchange for a promise to respect their autonomy, and then Selassie immediately ripped up the eritrean constituion and imposed amharic and banned tigrinya.
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Nov 7, 2021 03:21
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Thanks for the overview. If I understand correctly then, Tigray fought on the side of Eritrean independence and Afwerki and TPLF were allies? What changed to make Eritrea intervene against TPLF now? Have the Ethiopian state and Eritrea resolved their political differences, or would that change again under another Ethiopian leader?
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Nov 7, 2021 04:41
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Redmark posted:Thanks for the overview. If I understand correctly then, Tigray fought on the side of Eritrean independence and Afwerki and TPLF were allies? What changed to make Eritrea intervene against TPLF now? Have the Ethiopian state and Eritrea resolved their political differences, or would that change again under another Ethiopian leader? The way I heard it explained was that after being an important part of the coalition that won the civil war in the early 90s, the Eritreans demanded a clause put in the new constitution that any region could hold a plebiscite to secede via simple popular vote, due to their historical desire for independence. In 1993, they called for and won exactly that, becoming a separate nation. Tigray didn't fight specifically for Eritrea and Eritrean independence in the war, so much as against Mengistu and the Derg junta; to some extent they were allies of convenience against a common enemy. But obviously with shared language and similar culture there are also many ties between Eritreans and Tigrayans. Despite the initially fairly clean break after the internationally observed and recognized referendum, there were a lot of disputes between Ethiopia and Eritrea over the precise demarcation of the border, and in 1998 that broke out into full-scale war. Those disputed areas were along the Tigray-Eritrea border, and those areas are what Eritrea invaded at the start of the war. And considering Tigrayans still made up most of the Ethiopian armed forces in the 90s after the revolution, including as mentioned the officer corps, I imagine it didn't take much at that point to engender bad blood between Tigray and Eritrea.
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Nov 7, 2021 06:06
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Redmark posted:Thanks for the overview. If I understand correctly then, Tigray fought on the side of Eritrean independence and Afwerki and TPLF were allies? What changed to make Eritrea intervene against TPLF now? Have the Ethiopian state and Eritrea resolved their political differences, or would that change again under another Ethiopian leader? abiy ceded some disputed territory - the town of badme - that eritrea and the ethiopian state have been fighting over since eritrea won independence. badme was part of tigray and while the tplf certainly did help the eritreans gain independence, the relationship between the two turned hostile very soon afterward because eritrea was claiming small slices of territory that the tplf considers tigrayan eritrea's involvement in the current war seems basically intended to shave the rest of their claimed territory off of ethiopia and the tplf are the ones holding that territory so they're the people that eritrea is fighting.
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Nov 7, 2021 06:15
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Redmark posted:Thanks for the overview. If I understand correctly then, Tigray fought on the side of Eritrean independence and Afwerki and TPLF were allies? What changed to make Eritrea intervene against TPLF now? Fuschia gave a good response to that, but I'll just add: think how the USA and the USSR fought on the same side in WW2 and their leaders were chilling in Yalta together and trading weapons, and then within 4 years of WW2 ending they were at each others' throats.
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Nov 7, 2021 07:59
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PawParole posted:Tigrinya were the independent kingdom of Medri Bahri, before the Tigrayan national hero Ras Alula conquered it temporarily. Britain handed them over to Ethiopia after WW2 (along with the Somali Region) in exchange for a promise to respect their autonomy, and then Selassie immediately ripped up the eritrean constituion and imposed amharic and banned tigrinya. Of course, but I don't think any of the allies actually expected Selassie to uphold the autonomous status of Eritrea that he'd agreed to.
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Nov 7, 2021 08:25
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https://twitter.com/MapEthiopia/sta...425649707196419 https://twitter.com/MapEthiopia/status/1457483721473503235 better than the machetes from last week PawParole fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Nov 8, 2021 |
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Nov 7, 2021 23:35
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If Ethiopia falls apart the smaller states are doomed. Gumuz will be annexed by Oromia or Amhara especially for the dam, Harar by Oromia, Gambella probably by South Sudan and SNNP who have splintered into 3 with 2 new states for Sidama & South West left confused. Oromia & the Somali Region would have to slug it out for Dire Dawa. https://twitter.com/MapEthiopia/status/1457425613501906946 Big gains if true. My gut says its more than likely true based on the increasingly dire calls by the U.S. embassy for Americans to get the hell out of dodge - plus the continuing flood of other countries doing the same thing.
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Nov 8, 2021 01:34
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four divisions is quite a lot
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Nov 8, 2021 01:38
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i say swears online posted:four divisions is quite a lot ethiopian divisions are around 3500, so it's 14000 troops. https://twitter.com/MapEthiopia/status/1414611830329290757 PawParole fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Nov 8, 2021 |
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Nov 8, 2021 01:59
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PawParole posted:If Ethiopia falls apart the smaller states are doomed. I feel like if the war becomes clearly unwinnable the army will probably remove Abiy and make peace with the TPLF to keep the country together. Abiy has lost a lot of support because of how much he's hosed up and unless ethopian forces start winning soon I can't see him lasting much longer.
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Nov 8, 2021 10:49
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