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PawParole posted:The Ethiopian Army is engaged in a war in Tigray and Oromia, and Tigray elections are indefinitely cancelled. The question is does Abiy need Eritrean troops to suppress Oromia rebels Because the Ethiopians aren't doing too well. https://twitter.com/SeifGebre/status/1409564994170069002
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Jun 28, 2021 18:40
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Grouchio posted:Why does the Ethiopian military suck at putting down insurrections? The struggle of creating a western style military in a society that doesn't support it is you end up with a bunch of people who have little attachment to national institutions. That's part of why the regional militias are doing the most of the fighting: they actually care about the people they're fighting alongside and the people they're fighting for.
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Aug 6, 2021 01:25
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I can take a terrible crack at it from a friend who works for USAID: The fighting is between the formal Sudanese Army, who're running a military dictatorship since they overthrew previous Sudanese dictator Al-Bashir back in 2019, and the Rapid Support Forces, who grew out of the janjaweed militia famous for the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Sudan has been in transition since 2019 and it's increasingly clear that the military doesn't plan on giving up power to a democratic government. The military is also heavily involved in the economy and corruption in general. They have international backers in countries like Saudi Arabia, where Sudanese mercenaries are doing a lot of fighting as part of their war with Yemen, and Russia, who haven't met an anti-American authoritarian they didn't want to support. The Rapid Support Forces, as mentioned, grew out of the janjaweed militia, who're basically a subset of Arabic-speaking nomadic camel herders in the Darfur region that clashed with the sedentary population and had government backing. They're responsible for, in addition to the Darfur Genocide, other war crimes in Yemen and Libya and the occasional massacre of protesters since 2019. They're a distinct power bloc from the Khartoum-based Sudanese and come from a group generally looked down upon by the central government (but has been militarized and armed to help in internal power struggles). The crux of the conflict was a military plan to integrate the RSF into the armed forces proper, which would take away a lot of the personal control and autonomy that they have. Their leader, Hemedti, runs it as a personal militia and also owns all the gold mines in Darfur. All of that power is going to start to go away. They wanted a much longer timeline for integration (i.e. never) and when the central government didn't budge they coincidentally had a bunch of troops in Khartoum and across the country already engaged in suppressing protesters that they appear to have used to launch an attempted coup. This has shut down travel and aid, which is bad because Sudan is a net food importer and basically already on the verge of being a failed state.
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Apr 19, 2023 18:20
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To put some numbers here, Niger has a GDP of ~$13 billion and 24 million people. Their national budget is $5.5 billion, of which ~250 million is military spending, and 40% of that budget comes from external aid and financing. Losing out on Western security and financial aid is going to mean big compromises.
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Aug 3, 2023 15:17
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Mining only makes up 3% of the economy (albeit 40% of exports) so they're unlikely to make up the difference. Fundamentally Niger is just a big (geographically) country that doesn't have a lot of wealth with which to fund state building or security. Absent western aid it'll probably follow the same route as neighboring Mali. https://africacenter.org/spotlight/mali-catastrophe-accelerating-under-junta-rule/
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Aug 3, 2023 15:40
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Oh yeah, there's really no good ending here from the moment that enough of the military decided to overthrow the government rather than cooperate with them to fight Islamists. We see that in Mali: the military dictatorship is far less capable and the security situation rapidly degrades. Nigeria may be hoping they can round up enough local forces that they can quickly take the capital and have someone else stabilize the country but uh no.
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Aug 6, 2023 19:42
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It may just be a matter of things in the Sahel being very dire: take a peek at the article I linked above about how the military government in Mali has been far less successful at restraining the Islamist insurgency. Niger falling to a military coup probably means a similar trajectory, which means you have Islamist groups operating with free reign through a whole stretch of the region, including Burkina Faso.
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Aug 11, 2023 20:23
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khwarezm posted:I've read that Gabon (along with the cooler Congo next door) is one of the most stable and prosperous countries in Africa. I guess that probably wasn't true, or am I overestimating how much this coup will change things? Gabon is "stable" in the sense there's been a long running dictatorship controlling the political scene and "prosperous" in that it's always had some oil wealth to pad government finances. But Baby Bongo has faced coup attempts before: he was hospitalized a few years back and hasn't really recovered. So his personal control of the government has broken down.
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Aug 30, 2023 15:02
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