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KiteAuraan posted:You're repeating a relatively debunked narrative, based on outdated views of early expansions of human populations as being primarily megafaunal hunters (they weren't), the anthropological data suggest a very different narrative. What about New Zealand, where there's plenty of great documentation about how the first settlers killed all of the megafauna? The first settlers of Madagascar did a pretty good job of wiping out nearly all of the large lemurs there too, also within documented history although there the timeline is a little fuzzier (though still quite clear from a broad perspective). It's actually kind of impressive that the Maori were able to kill every moa and haast's eagle within a couple hundred years, given how big New Zealand is. I have no idea about the older extinction events, and/or if coevolution played any role in African megafauna surviving, but small human populations are pretty well documented in recent history as wiping out large animals upon first settlement of a region. I'm sure climate change played a massive role in killing off Siberian tigers, cave bears, etc, but I doubt prehistoric peoples didn't play a substantial role in any of their decline, based on what we know about historic peoples doing similar stuff.
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Oct 8, 2017 21:03
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Lead out in cuffs posted:
One thing I wondered about this: was it because the poorer white South Africans mostly left because they were poor but still had foreign passports, and only the richer ones mostly stayed (i.e. those with more invested in South Africa), or is it that the wage gap has absolutely grown, regardless of the white flight? (Edit: I see that actually 'only'' 15% left, a lot less than I thought.)
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Dec 19, 2017 12:26
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lollontee posted:So what is recommended instead? Coloured.
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Jan 5, 2018 09:59
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So is trading Zuma for Ramaphosa basically just like trading Mugabe for Mnangagwa, or is there some light at the end of the tunnel? I mean at least it's not Zuma's ex-wife, but a guy who made his personal net worth of half a billion dollars during his tenure as a politician is usually a good sign of being insanely corrupt. Still, I guess he can't be worse than Zuma unless he starts promoting rhino horn & ivory powder to slather on your virgins as a cure for AIDS. Cape Town sure has unfortunately done a great job of showing that the opposition is also probably incompetent to govern.
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Feb 13, 2018 14:46
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R. Guyovich posted:what Oh good, I thought I was the only one who had not even the slightest clue wtf he was talking about. In retrospection, I think A3th3r probably has not the slightest clue wtf they were talking about.
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Feb 21, 2018 09:47
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kustomkarkommando posted:If land is expropriated and handed to local community based co-operatives, as has often been proposed, why would it if they had sufficient government support? (which granted in the early pre-Mbeki transfers they often did not) Given how poorly the South African government seems to manage generally, why would they do a better job managing this? Forced farm transfers are an absolutely fantastic way for state capture and corruption. Don't joke yourself that anyone in the upper eschelons promoting it gives a drat about inequality, except insofar as they want to improve their personal inequality upon others. Yes it probably would not be as catastrophic as Zimbabwe, but wow that is a low bar to set.
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Feb 24, 2018 21:58
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Julius Malema seems like one of a very few people where the politics in a country would likely be better if he were disappeared. I guess it's a mixed blessing that South Africa's government is no longer competent enough to run a repressive secret police apparatus. Edit: "However, Malema said [...] "A lot of land remains idle, you don't need stats to know. Just go to Stellenbosch, which is owned by white people. It is just idling land." Possibly because they don't have any loving water in Stellenbosch. It's hard to farm without water. Also I'm also not super up on my South African history, but also wasn't Western Cape essentially uninhabited when the first white settlers came there 400 years ago? My basic understanding was that the Afrikaners are as native to Western Cape as anyone else, and looking at the ethnic groups of South Africa, I don't see any whose pre-1800s settlement was anywhere even remotely close to West Cape except for Afrikaners and the San and the Khoikhoi, who had a small population spread out over an absolutely massive area. Reading more about this, it looks like a some of the reason for their tiny population (±20,000 for both groups together in the 1700s when settlement started in earnest, ranging from Cape Town all the way up to central Namibia) was due to decimation from smallpox and other diseases. That's kind of interesting, I didn't realize that imported diseases made such havoc on any African groups. I guess they were so insanely remote that they had not previously been in close-enough contact from old trade routes. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 1, 2018 10:52
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I don’t think Cameroon was ever actually settled by colonial powers in any significant way, unlike say, Namibia, where German is still widely spoken by descendants of both whites and blacks. Also lol at the "election" in October. I’m a time traveler so I’ll ruin the surprise: Biya wins in a landslide. I had some friends who worked in Yaoundé for 5-6 years and went and visited them a while ago and we did a road trip around the western highlands. Lovey area but even at that time we were warned to stay away from the "English speaking” areas because of unrest, and this was 2011, so we didn’t get any closer than Dschang which was lovely. Dschang was a German colonial founded town but in 3 days there I didn’t see a single white person in any restaurant or hotel so if any of their descendants are still around, they’re an absurdly tiny minority, like Egyptian Jews or whatever. Also iirc the ethnic groups span across the theoretical “linguistic” borders. The Bamenda people, I’m pretty sure, span across that region and Bamenda is a common native language in that area. I’m not sure how many other common major linguistic groups there are but it’s not like Papua New Guinea, so fighting over a colonial second language (from a power that wasn’t even in control all that long in the first place) seemed to me like that is probably not the real issue, but a plaster face over underlying problems. I never really looked into it though. Also one kind of fun thing: you can tell which cities are founded (and probably majority settled by) Bamenda people because the city names overwhelmingly start with the letters/sound “Ba”.
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Jul 15, 2018 09:15
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mobby_6kl posted:They did but (white?) people still speak German in Namibia for example. A lot of Germans also moved to Namibia after it became part of South Africa as well. Part of my wife's family is Namibian, and that branch of the family left Germany in the mid 1920s in the midst of the German economic collapse. A lot of black Namibians also speak German as a second language and it is quite commonly heard and used across the country, or at least the parts of the country that tourists go to (which is basically everywhere except the densely populated farming area north of Etosha). It's a small percentage of the population, but the German-descended Namibians have such outsized economic power in private business, and Germans make up such a huge proportion of tourists, that it's still a relevant language. For whatever reason it seems to be far, far more relevant among white Namibians' private lives than either Afrikaans or English (e.g. the Windhoek carnival is primarily German) but this could also be a viewership bias of my own, given my views through my vicarious connection to Namibia and my single three week trip through the country.
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Jul 15, 2018 19:17
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Cat Mattress posted:Ten UN peacekeepers from Chad killed, 25 injured, by AQIM in Mali. This is the sub-Saharan African thread, fyi. E: More seriously, what's with Google Maps colorizing areas near there completely green, like https://www.google.com/maps/place/A...568!4d0.8567905 was that wadi really that green when they did the zoomed-in satellite image? If you zoom out it's brown and dead and more realistic-looking. Or is that some sort of Saharan grass and they just happened to have photographed it after a rare downpour? The wadis a few dozen km further south e.g. near Télabit do not have that green tint when zoomed in, but all of the ones nearby do. I guess it could be really that green? I have seen some areas of Namibia that look 10000% completely barren that come to life after the rains that come every year or two, like https://www.google.com/maps/place/A...568!4d0.8567905 is the same place as https://ssp.scottdunn.com/xp-slideshow.php?image=647901&width=1024 Saladman fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jan 21, 2019 |
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Jan 21, 2019 17:27
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Cat Mattress posted:Yes, that means "no Maghreb, Libya, or Egypt"; but Mali and Chad both definitely count as Sub-Saharan African countries. It was more a joke that it's arbitrary and geographically nonsensical to call the Aouzou strip "sub Saharan" while In Guezzam is "North Africa", hence the "more seriously". I find it kind of weird that "sub-Saharan Africa" is so frequently used as a relevant political term analogous to Western Europe or MENA or Southeast Asia, when there's probably more parallel in culture, economy, trade, politics, and ethnicity/linguistics between Argentina and Vietnam as there is between Niger and South Africa. French news is a little less unbalanced, but English-speaking news sources might as well remove South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria and rename their sub-Saharan African categorization to "countries that are never covered even in our International reporting section" and and add in Paraguay, the Guayanas, non-Afghan/Pakistan central Asia, most of the Caribbean, and the south Pacific. E: Except the Economist, which does a reasonably approximate international reporting standard for Africa. I also read Jeune Afrique which is the only better newspaper/magazine I've seen for general coverage, but it's also overwhelmingly focused on La Francophonie. That said I'm not really sure why people ITT are surprised that newspapers and news magazines are more likely to cover stories that affect areas where its readership is more likely to live or travel to or to do business with. Saladman fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Jan 21, 2019 |
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Jan 21, 2019 22:15
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I mean, this applies to the savanna as well. In the dry season, the grass turns brown and the landscape looks kinda desert-like. (And is very susceptible to wildfires.) In the wet season, it all turns green again. I'm pretty sure this is the case over a large percentage of the continent. Huh, I had figured there was only a dry season there, but looking at climate stuff using Kidal's data, I'd guess Aguelhoc probably gets around 5 inches of rain a year -- similar to coastal Egypt but with the added bonus of a catchment area instead of flowing right into the sea. E: Apparently I should not be surprised, as Aguelhoc is in the Sahel, which I had no idea extended into southern Algeria. I guess it is sub Saharan after all! Cat Mattress beats my pedantry by a couple hundred km. 
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Jan 21, 2019 22:29
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Mauser posted:One of the arbitrary differences between an international health emergency and a local outbreak/emergency is the fact that it still has not crossed a border. Also, keep in mind that just because it wasn't declared an emergency doesn't mean that international health organizations are not responding and money and aid is certainly flowing into the area. A position I am applying for said that my role might get expanded in DRC, should I get the job, to participate in the Ebola response. MSF is there actively. One of my wife's friends is in North Kivu now. It's probably not in the news as much since it's been going on so long, and also it's a lot less scary for health workers (and probably, by extension, the media circus) since there's now a vaccine that seems to work pretty well.
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May 14, 2019 14:57
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Well, if the Ethiopians let him cut a ribbon there and put up a signed photo of him and Abiy shaking hands in the control room, that would also reduce the probability of Sisi openly attacking the dam from like 1% to 0%. But I can’t imagine anyone seriously inviting Trump to any mediation, especially not for an infrastructure project in Africa that he will know literally nothing about and won’t bother informing himself (or receiving information) in advance of such discussions.
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Nov 8, 2019 16:41
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PawParole posted:There’s been massive ethnic pograms in Ethiopia between Amhara and oromos, university students have been forced to withdraw from their courses if they’re in the wrong ethnic region, and basically the country does not seem like it will last until the 2020 elections ( if EPDRF doesn’t cancel it). Have there? This seems like a lot of hyperbole to me to be honest ("massive" "pogroms" "does not seem like it will last until May"). I asked a childhood friend who has lived in Addis for years, and she thinks that there's a absolute poo poo-ton of pizzagate-level conspiracy theories rolling around in Ethiopia, especially for things related to Oromo-vs-Amharic relations. I've been reading about Ethiopia for the last couple months and haven't seen anything substantiated beyond a few violent protests centered around Adama and Hawassa. I do not see any reliable news sources that have reported on "pogroms" in Ethiopia, and I can't imagine Abiy canceling the 2020 election. There is banditry (with a flavor of "freedom fighter") in the Afar region and in almost all of the border regions, but this has also been the case for decades for those regions. It's worth noting that the Sidama region independence vote from SNNPR went totally fine, and the EPDRF just formed itself into a new coalition party ( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-50515636 ). E: I mean yeah a handful of churches and mosques have been burned down, and there has been some university stuff like you mention (e.g. https://borkena.com/2019/11/13/ethiopia-students-oromo-region-leaving-university-campuses/ ) but it's not "massive" and it's also not like Ethiopia has ever had any long period of stability without low-level ethnic violence. Talking about as if the current situation portends a near-term collapse of Ethiopia seems... dramatized. You're not the only person I've seen say that, but the only other people I've seen say that have been on Facebook, and since what I've read on FB is written in more or less grammatically-correct English, it is no doubt by Ethiopian expats living in the US and Canada who get third-hand information from their relatives through a game of telephone. I don't see anything about I mean just look at the 4 comments on that Ethiopian article I linked regarding pizzagate-level conspiracy theories. The first comment is lol. Saladman fucked around with this message at 10:47 on Nov 23, 2019 |
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Nov 23, 2019 10:38
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i say swears online posted:ethiopia's really fertile and at a pleasant altitude, its small towns are probably a lot closer together and more populated than other areas There aren't that many small towns really except on the few major paved roads. Otherwise, every hundred km or so you'll get a trading village of maybe 1000-2000 people. In between, there will be a never-ending series of little tiny communities of 10-20 huts, continuously, every kilometer, and as far as the eye can see, with terraced farming going up the highest mountains. The whole countryside if you go off the few main paved roads looks like this, in which you can see a small community in the foreground, and a few other tiny communities in the background—none of which even reach the size that you would call them 'villages' (no church even). Getting to school or to market is not easy, as you can probably imagine.  which is a photo I took near the border of Tigray and Amhara earlier this year, halfway between Sekota and Korem. The image is high res if you click and open it in a new window for full size, you can really pick out the tiny communities far into the distance thanks to the reflective metal roofs on newer constructions. This was at the tail-end of dry season so everything looks like much more marginal farming land than it actually is. Saladman fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Nov 14, 2020 |
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Nov 14, 2020 17:41
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i say swears online posted:yeah those tiny places add up. there are places in central-western nigeria where i could spin around and not see a sign of people, but it was rare. the rift valley and nile continuation to the north definitely have a higher rural population than other areas of the continent Yeah, I wasn't disagreeing with you even if it sounded like that. Highland Ethiopia has a great climate, good land, low insect disease load, and has been historically pretty stable. The lowlands of Ethiopia in contrast are basically unpopulated:  vs.  First one is population density, second one is elevation.
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Nov 14, 2020 21:58
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PawParole posted:Abiy is promising the last push to end the conflict and condemn the TPLF to the history pages. If his forces capture Mekelle, the TPLF will retreat to the mountains. Insurgency will likely ensue. If the Ethiopian army wins a quick and decisive victory in the cities without committing large-scale atrocities, I would guess it more likely that TPFL leaders will flee to the USA and run some sort of theoretical opposition there like Gülen or Haftar. Also Amhara are probably the most pro-Abiy of any ethnic group in Ethiopia, except perhaps Somalis. Also what is even the goal of an "Amhara nationalist"? The current Ethiopia is basically already the dream for Amhara nationalists as they have, by far, the most cultural influence over the country. E: One thing I noticed while going around Tigray earlier this year, is that in all the cafes and bars, they were playing Tigrayan music videos or whatever -- and ALL of them were huge on guns, military equipment, etc. Chicks in skimpy uniforms dancing, big artillery pieces firing, guys acting like commandos in the bush, etc. There were also dozens of military checkpoints around Tigray, whereas the rest of the country had basically none.
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Nov 18, 2020 09:57
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Fuschia tude posted:When I was there I heard from other Ethiopians that Amharas and Tigrayans were basically the same people, only their language is different. Considering how closely intertwined culture and language are, I was skeptical. But then I've never been to Tigray, just Amhara and regions south. Does anyone know firsthand if there's any grain of truth to that idea? Well, they are both predominantly Ethiopian Orthodox and both groups were Ge'ez like 1000 years (or whatever) ago, but that's like saying Italians and Spanish are the same people because they're both outshoots of Rome. I'm not sure if the languages are as close as Italian and Spanish either, it might be more like Portuguese and Romanian, or maybe even more different.
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Nov 18, 2020 11:06
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Squalid posted:What's the basis of his support among Somalis? I would have expected they'd be deeply suspicious of his stance on centralizing power in the Federal government. Well, let's put it this way: all young urban people in the USA were celebrating in the streets when Biden won. Does that mean they LOVE Biden? Not really, it means they loving hated Trump. So I guess "support" is rather be "much less hate towards Abiy than the previous regime". The military has a much softer presence in eastern Ethiopia now, and there are a lot more personal freedoms, you can wave a Somali flag without being thrown under someone's boot, etc. If you go around Ethiopia people make their support pro or con Abiy pretty clear from the get-go, although obviously I only spoke to English-speaking Ethiopians (which is a surprisingly large section of the population, at least anywhere near a major road/population center). I wasn't doing any survey of people's feelings towards Abiy either, but people in Tigray were quick to offer that they thought he was a bloodsucking vampire who was out to murder Tigrayans, and this was back in January. I also heard a couple pretty wild conspiracy theories from a guy in Mekelle that I don't remember anymore. Actually that's not quite right, we talked to a couple Arabic-speaking Ethiopians too, but both of them were imams, the average Muslim-Ethiopian didn't seem to speak any of Arabic. We tried quite a few times too when someone didn't speak English, as we thought "hey, Amharic/Tigrayan are semitic languages and even share a few base words, and we're close to the Arabic world, and some of these areas are predominantly Muslim," but it didn't turn out to be the case at all. Saladman fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Nov 19, 2020 |
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Nov 19, 2020 07:38
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PawParole posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/PatrickH...828673%3Fs%3D20 Where are you seeing that reliably? The Tweet you linked is just about Mekelle being an industrial center. I've also even seen reports that the ENDF is as far as Adigrat, which if true would mean the Tigrayans are screwed as far as conventional warfare goes, since they could easily steamroll to Mekelle from there as the terrain is much flatter. There's a huge mountain pass just west of Adigrat but very little in the way of natural obstacles from there on south). All the reports are very dubious, on both sides. I see similar tweets about "live" reporting from TPLF in Adigrat as well which sounds more reasonable right now, as the ENDF taking Adigrat would be impossible unless they came from Eritrea, since they're nowhere near that close coming east from Axum. https://ethiopia.liveuamap.com/en/2020/22-november-ethiopia-n-forces-have-taken-town-of-idaga-hamus I'm kind of surprised more reliable reports aren't coming out of Tigray; there must be more than a few people there with decent satellite phones.
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Nov 22, 2020 18:02
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Ethiopian military releasing footage showing them in control of Axum -- or, well, its airport anyway -- https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1332285376501866496 Doesn't look like there was that much damage to the airport itself, just a small part of the runway was torn up to prevent landings, and small stones were thrown everywhere on the runway to prevent landings. The glass in the airport is almost entirely (possibly even entirely) intact, so there could not have been much major fighting there. ENDF today also says they're in control of both Wukro (last major city north of Mekele) and in the last few minutes, even Mekele itself. Hard to validate anything though. If true, that was an incredibly quick collapse of the TPLF.
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Nov 28, 2020 18:13
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kustomkarkommando posted:Abiy throwing out an official statement backing up the military announcement they captured the city: Well, if true, thank God to be honest. I can almost guarantee that a brutal urban war with the ENDF will, 100%, be worse for most Tigrayan people than the apparent situation where the TPLF completely collapsed. Whatever puppet Abiy installs, he's not going to start killing civilians with a reign of terror or whatever. If the TPLF collapsed this fast in face of the ENDF, I can't really see them having a protracted guerrilla warfare phase either. Or anyway, for the sake of Tigray I hope I am right. In any case, it's not Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Tigrayans aren't going to get ethnically cleansed from their own lands. Maybe the small border territories that they captured and added to their state after 1991 get added back to Amhara, but even if that happens I wouldn't think that would lead to much population displacement, especially if the current situation was so short and without too much bad blood, except around Humera where it looks more and more likely that the massacre was committed by Tigrayans. https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1ukq3h-fUshA0a0ZDcSI22WHbfC6PnKtX&ll=13.674079168941013%2C38.47308138362329&z=9 That's the best map of the ongoing conflict that I can find. The LiveUAmap for Ethiopia is terrible.
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Nov 28, 2020 19:28
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That tweet posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/Fromagehomme/status/1332800688942964746 Eritrea (or well, Afwerki) hates the TPLF perhaps even more than Abiy does. The Sudanese border is flat and easily controlled by the ENDF, not to mention that that region is not even historically Tigrayan and has only been in Tigray since 1991. The other thing worth mentioning is that although the TPLF waged a successful guerrilla war... this was 27 years ago, so it's not like Afghanistan where the guerrillas had continuous fighting experience from like 1979-2020. I could be wrong, but people are trying to draw a lot of parallels that don't really hold up to scrutiny. I mean, consider Iraq or Libya, neither of which are particularly good analogies, but in Iraq it took a couple years for the insurgencies there to organize, and likewise Libya was relatively stable from 2012-2014. The TPLF just isn't trained or set up to suddenly disappear into the bush and start attacking ENDF outposts. Saladman fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 10:58
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There has been shockingly little coming out of Ethiopia, even a week after the capture of Mekele, but BBC has a probably-reasonably-sourced article about the start of the conflict: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55215431 It looks all but certain that the TPLF did indeed start the current war. It seems like the Ethiopian military indeed is in Mekele but that rather no one has control over it. ENDF does seem to have full control over Axum as there are a lot of people celebrating at the Our Lady of Zion church ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIaBCMPuQ4U ), which is just a couple hundred meters from the center of town — and directly across the street from the ancient obelisks, and is immediately next to where the "original" ark of the covenant is stored. No damage to the Our Lady of Zion stained glass either, just like there was no major damage to the Axum airport despite reports that it was "destroyed" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owXR2dMJn7o ; it'd take 3 glaziers like a week to fix the entirety of that damage and maybe a couple more guys to repave the 1 meter gash ripped into the runway). It doesn't seem like there has, at any point, been particularly heavy fighting except in Humera. Saladman fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 11:17
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Telephone service has been reconnected in much of Tigray, including Mekele. Abiy was there yesterday too, at the airport: The TPLF claims to have retaken Axum also seem to be false, but I guess we'll get more info out of Tigray soon with electricity and phone service restored. It doesn't sound like there has been much fighting lately though, and flights to Gondar airport have been resumed.
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Dec 15, 2020 12:05
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PawParole posted:Ethiopian troops ambushed Sudanese border guards in Al-Fashqa, and killed 4. I'd never heard of that border conflict before, and I had a hell of a time finding a single article that actually showed a map of the disputed region. I see the town of الفشقة next to the border (variously transliterated as Al-Fushqa and Al-Fashqa https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D8%B3%D9%88%D9%82+%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D8%B4%D9%82%D8%A9%E2%80%AD/@14.2679995,36.5328322,16.38z ). That town looks like it was always under Sudanese control and indeed has no access to it from Ethiopia. Eventually I found https://www.marefa.org/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D8%B4%D9%82%D8%A9 which linked to this map:  And apparently because SomethingAwful hasn't been updated in 20 years, it can't be linked here because it uses Arabic letters in the filename, but if you copy & paste it you can see bold lines at the Atbara river (N/S) and the Tekeze (E-W) and a thinner line south which is the Angereb. I traced this in Google Maps and it is 600 km^2, which is in line with media reports of the disputed area (e.g. https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2230021/al-fashqa-returns-sudanese-sovereignty-after-agreement-ethiopia ). With the new dam/lake on the Atbara just upstream of Showak, it's odd that they ever would have been OK ceding nominal control to that area. What's further odd is that large new towns have been built to house the people displaced by the creation of the Atbara dam, finished in 2017, so what I want to know is: who built this brand new town? https://www.google.com/maps/dir/14.1809667,36.0319486/@14.183829,35.9858501,18546m/data=!3m1!1e3 If that territory was under theoretical Ethiopian control until just now? I guess that whole area would have been more or less inaccessible to the Sudanese government for large construction projects there is no road leading to Sudan, while conversely it is connected by land to Ethiopia. It's interesting that the Atbara doesn't form the modern border between Sudan and Ethiopia, instead it's a straight line border that's like 5 km to the east of the Atbara. Samuel Baker wrote a fascinating book about going through that area with his wife in the mid 1860s (The Albert N'Yanza Great Basin Of The Nile; And Exploration Of The Nile Sources). He was later one of the main British colonial administrators of the region, so drawing a random straight line on a map would not have made sense to him. Maybe they wanted a buffer zone so that they could theoretically fortify both sides of the river. At the time when he was there, the area east of the Atbara up until the foothills of Ethiopia was uninhabited due to the constant danger of Turkish slavers, Ethiopian raiders, and it generally being swampy and loaded with malaria, sleeping sickness, yellow fever, and every other tropical lowland disease, so there would not have been any consideration for the locals — not that they would have made any such consideration even if it had been inhabited.
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Dec 17, 2020 14:58
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Reports are coming out of other areas of Tigray now too, like from expat Ethiopians who have since been able to escape. For instance, the account of an Ethiopian-American woman who was in Hawzen visiting her mother and got stuck there. Hawzen is a popular tourist destination in the countryside 3-ish hours away from Mekele and it is famous for its inaccessible churches, particularly Abuna Yematah Guh ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJCy64adY3Y ) Here's her report: https://apnews.com/article/international-news-eritrea-ethiopia-only-on-ap-kenya-2bdd10888f7717690847ad117f09f2d4 quote:She first saw the Eritrean soldiers in mid-December. She had fled with others into the mountains as fighting approached, leaving her mother, too frail for the journey, behind. Twelve days later she returned to the town of Hawzen, needing to know whether her mother had survived. I would have never expected Eritrean soldiers to be as far as Hawzen, several hours' drive from the border. Abiy is hosed. I was hoping that the capture of Mekele would mean a quick end to the worst abuses of war, but I can't even imagine what is going on in his head that would justify getting Eritreans anywhere other than border towns and allowing such slaughter. I messaged everyone I spent significant amounts of time with when I spent a couple weeks in Tigray a year ago, and never heard back from anyone in Tigray, unsurprisingly, where WhatsApps didn't even ever get to "received". I did hear back from the guy who showed us around Lalibela and our guide for Simien, both of which are pretty close to Tigray, but they said everything is fine and normal where they are. It's going to be 10+ years before Tigray is even close to back to normal...
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Jan 25, 2021 12:18
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kustomkarkommando posted:https://twitter.com/BBCAfrica/status/1372289859931545604 COVID certainly has a high crossover with cardiovascular issues. Who knows if the general public will ever find out, just like no one found out what Pierre Nkurunziza died of, although that one is almost certainly COVID since his wife also came down with it and was hospitalized a couple weeks before he died. His death was also officially reported as a heart attack. So does that mean Samia Suluhu is going to become president for like, a full five years? I hope she's less dictatorial and not an anti-science religious nutbag. Or do they do another election in a few months? I didn't find any quick article summary of Tanzanian succession protocols. Saladman fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Mar 17, 2021 |
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Mar 17, 2021 22:19
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Doesn't seem super likely he was executed, unless by a rogue soldier, since now his son is in power. Too bad it is unlikely to lead to anything getting better. Also god drat, that is a lot of African leaders who have died in office this year. Burundi, Tanzania, Ivory Coast*, Eswatini, and now Chad? Plus also the main competitor in DRC's election. *actually wtf, Ivory coat twice, first Coulibaly, and then the person who replaced him as PM died last month. E: And coincidentally, his son is the same age he was when he took power (37). Saladman fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Apr 20, 2021 |
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Apr 20, 2021 14:49
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pantslesswithwolves posted:Anecdotally speaking, I was in Mali and Burkina Faso in early February 2020. They had health screening questionnaires for contact tracing and doctors in masks and face shields taking temperature readings upon arrival in both Ouaga and Bamako. I think there was a considerable cultural hangover/fear of dealing with another pandemic like the 2014 EVD one, and authorities in most countries knew they had no hope of treating COVID outbreaks with their horrific national health infrastructure and put all of their efforts on early screening and prevention. Once COVID is in then it's in, and there's no way those screening efforts are stopping COVID 100% from getting in (or even 99%). Also given that there is no quarantine or any other follow-up once passengers are in. Also those temperature readers are an absolute joke. I've been scanned 3 or 4 times since COVID happened and the output is always something absurd, like 34°C. Those handheld "forehead temperature reader" things are 100% placebo. Some countries like Taiwan or whatever might have good actually-working high tech thermal readers, but the handheld ones you see at restaurants are divining rods. There's also no meaningful COVID restrictions or controls once in the most SS African countries; sure there are some but they're very intermittent. I follow some Ethiopian guys on Instagram and their Christmas and Timkat and wedding videos are 100% packed people and I have never seen a mask. I was in Ethiopia in mid-Feb 2020 and there were no COVID controls at the airport at all. I saw a couple Asian-looking travellers wearing face masks but that was the full extent of it. What we're seeing is a lack of reporting + very young population + possibly luck so far. It's not a coincidence that South Africa had the "worst" epidemic, since it's also the SS African country with the best medical system. Saladman fucked around with this message at 08:40 on May 5, 2021 |
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May 5, 2021 08:35
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Well, I mean it's worked for Belgium for nearly 200 years, and they fabricated the royalty and the nation out of the blue for that one. Maybe Libya can be the Belgium of North Africa -- a terrible mess but somehow kept together. Also it looks more likely that Abubakar Shekau is actually dead re: a few posts back about rumors of it. Except it wasn't the security forces that killed it him -- it was a splinter section of his own people that set up an ISIS franchise. So, probably not good news in the grand scheme of things, but maybe there will be somewhat less psychotic rampaging and murdering of random farmers. Tons of reports on it in the past week or so, e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57378493 E: Wait wait, I just actually read that National Interest article. "Switzerland—that liberal beacon at the heart of Europe." What? Switzerland is and has always been a mix of extremely conservative and quite liberal policies... but it's definitely not a beacon and trendsetter. Saladman fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jun 8, 2021 |
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Jun 8, 2021 06:48
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^^^^ That was the point. Still better than current Libya.CSM posted:Belgium wasn't fabricated 'out of the blue', and the Belgian king nearly broke the country at one point, so uh not sure that's a good example. As far as I can tell, their royal family was fabricated almost out of the blue after they got independence? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Belgium#Origins Some committee just seems to have selected some random noble. I guess Jordan was the same way, and Iraq back when they had a royal family. Probably other countries too. Not that I really know much about it, but I was always under the impression that the Belgian royal family was even more vestigial than your average royal family.
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Jun 8, 2021 13:10
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Toplowtech posted:Some nobody from the house of House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Famously known thanks to Shakespear's The Merry Wives of Windsor and marying those idiots from that "little state of Prussia". Totally random. This thread. Lol, I have no idea who either of those families is. Also from that Wikipedia it sounds like he was their third choice, so even at the time it didn't seem like he was particularly high on their list of wanted national CEOs. Oh, apparently it's one family. I have never even heard of a single one of these people or places ( the castles that belong to the family; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saxe-Coburg_and_Gotha ). And the duchy that they ruled was at the time like half the size of modern Luxembourg with a whopping population of 257k people by 1914. And it looks like they spawned two other short-lived imported monarchies, besides marrying into the British family, all of which happened after they selected some guy to be king of Belgium. After flipping through this Wikipedia article they seem even more irrelevant circa 1831 when they selected him than I would have figured. The first person even mentioned on their family Wikipedia page started his rule in 1826, and even their family tree only stretches back to 1750. I mean all royals are bullshit but this one seems to take the cake. Like seriously look at their family's wikipedia page, not even a single highlighted person on it predating the guy they selected to be the Belgian king. Really though lol at your social circles if you think that is even remotely common knowledge. Maybe some British people and Belgians know. Saladman fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Jun 8, 2021 |
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Jun 8, 2021 17:35
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Pistol_Pete posted:Ah, the last thing I'd heard was that pro-government troops were decisively winning and that the remnants of the Tigray rebel forces were being ruthlessly hunted down. The ENDF and various militia still control large swaths of what used to be Tigray. The TPLF might not be able to take back Welkait (i.e. losing access to Sudan) and potentially also the area further south near Alamata/Korem. Maybe it could all collapse, but if it holds roughly like it is now (but with TPLF taking back major Tigrayan population centers like Axum, Mekelle, Adigrat, Shire) and the TPLF agrees to the ceasefire that would still be a 'win' for Abiy. Also the TPLF still has to get the Eritreans out, who seem to be more entrenched and willing to steal things and murder everyone.
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Jun 29, 2021 08:46
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PawParole posted:map of tigray There's a Google Map that follows the situation closer to real-time and which is a bit different from the one you linked (e.g. Raya is shown as largely TPLF control in the one you linked, but not in the other map): https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1ukq3h-fUshA0a0ZDcSI22WHbfC6PnKtX&ll=13.567908083230872%2C39.13320072913409&z=7 So the TPLF have recovered the entire pre-1990 part of Tigray, but whether they will (can) recover the parts they took after the Ethiopian Civil War is a bigger question. The pre-1990 borders of Tigray are basically the same as the area of TPLF control right now. If Abiy / Amhara militia can control actually maintain that, then I wouldn't really see the pullout of Mekele as a "loss" for them, but a strategic withdrawal.  E: Here's a good basic article about those regions (Raya and Welkait): https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/28/ethiopia-tigray-war-amhara-abiy-ahmed-expansionism/ Saladman fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Jul 2, 2021 |
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Jul 2, 2021 15:45
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:I like the article too but it would be nice to see them be a liiiiittle more critical of the TDF considering they've also, yknow, been accused of atrocities "many [Tigrayans were] distrustful of a governing Tigrayan party [i.e. the TDF / TPLF] seen as tired, authoritarian and corrupt." Also if the TPLF does push into Wolkait, we have certainly not seen the last of the atrocities committed of the war. The TPLF did recapture Raya, but from what I understand (and I could well be wrong), Wolkait was the much more significant tinderbox / source of longstanding animosity. OTOH Tigray would have zero chance of being an independent country without retaking Wolkait, since otherwise it would border only Ethiopia (Afar and Amhara regions) and Eritrea. I was also surprised they recaptured Raya so fast though - just this past week, and only two weeks after they recaptured the main Tigrayan heartland.
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Jul 13, 2021 09:13
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PawParole posted:Tigrayans captured Raya in the south. They are now moving to Western Tigray or what Amharas called Wolkayit. They are not literally at the gates of Gondar ( https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1ukq3h-fUshA0a0ZDcSI22WHbfC6PnKtX&ll=13.320008243990774%2C37.93708413606692&z=9 ), they're 200 extremely difficult km from there. Towards the approach to Gondar that the TPLF controls currently, there is a 2000m tall and 80km wide cliff face just north of Debark that puts the Ice Wall in Game of Thrones to shame - the north face of the Simien mountains. There is one gravel road of mediocre quality and a very small number of very difficult climbs that would be impossible to do with equipment. There is an easier way to Gondar from Tigray via Wolkait, but so far the TPLF doesn't control the approach at all, and there might be more resistance in that region anyway since it's ethnically majority Amhara. The Rayans are majority in Raya too (AFAIK) but they're a far smaller numerically/financially weak ethnic group and Raya is small. I also kind of doubt the TPLF will advance past prior borders of Tigray, except maybe very slightly to get to more defensible positions, but maybe the ENDF really collapsed to such a point that they can push back beyond the previous state borders. If they can cross the Simien range and take Debark (let alone Gondar), then Abiy is beyond incompetent and there's no way he doesn't get couped.
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Jul 14, 2021 09:14
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That tweet is some serious scaremongering. There's no chance that TPLF are going to invade Afar. There's nothing for them to capture and it wouldn't open up any trade routes for them, unless they captured all the way to Djibouti which would be pretty outlandish and would require a complete collapse of the ENDF, considering the lack of defensible terrain and a hostile local population and Afar is huge and would require long-distance resupply routes over terrible non-roads with a complete lack of cover of any kind. Wolkait might be a disaster though as the TPLF might well invade since at this point it seems kind of existential for them to have a border with Sudan. Declaring Tigrayan independence if they're connected to Afar, Ethiopia, and Amhara is almost as impractical as the half-eaten corpse of the "A and B" territory of the West Bank becoming an independent country.
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Jul 16, 2021 11:07
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PawParole posted:there’s rumors that they aim to cut the railroad and that most of the federal army has been destroyed. If they are depending on special forces and militias from other states so heavily, the destruction of entire divisions of the Ethiopian army is indeed true. That sounds kind of outlandish imho; if the TNDF gets anywhere even remotely close to cutting the Addis-Djibouti railway, then the ENDF has been entirely destroyed and the war is over, no need to destroy the railway by that point. The railway only runs through the very, very southern tip of Afar in a short ~20km stretch at Awash town. Right now the TNDF are still like 500 km away from it so they'd have to not only take 100% of Afar, but also significant parts of the Somali and Amhara regions.  Right now the TNDF is still like 50 km north of Weldiya. There are no roads connecting the northern part of Afar (e.g. Berhale, connected by paved road to Mekele) to the southern part (e.g. Semre, connected by road to Weldiya). Yeah you could drive through the rocky desert at 10 kph, but there's no cover, very long and good visibility, and they'd be in an area with a sparsely populated area but with heavily armed and antagonistic locals, so any convoy could be easily disabled by guerrillas or destroyed by drones.
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Jul 16, 2021 13:48
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