Ethiopia's Descent Into Civil War and Conflict in the Horn Of Africa

[mongers]

A thread within which to discuss the worrying collapse of Ethiopia's post famine success story.

And also the other conflicts in the region, be that Somalia and at a stretch the possible conflict with Sudan and Egypt over the Nile waters.

[mongers]

And now probably no one will post in this thread. 

[DGuller]

At some point the topic just gets discussed to death, and you can't muster up any more energy for it.

[Agelastus]

Drive-by no content post just to post in thread.

[Tamas]

Supportive post in appreciation of dropping the totally inappropriate Egypt thread.

[Tamas]

I know how to get this room moving:

Can you come up with any country with a worse recent counter-insurgency record than Ethiopia? Other than the US, of course.

[Agelastus]

Afghanistan-as-was.

[Tamas]

Afghanistan-as-was.

Could be, but is it fair to consider Afghanistan-without-foreign-occupation an actual country in the European understanding of such entities? It strikes me more as a "here we are letting the tribes be doing their thing" area designated by the rest of the world.

i.e. a fake country, created because no better alternative could be found. Like Belgium. Or Romania.

[Josquius]

If we go down that path then the same is true of much of the world really. A lot of people have the idea that because our world is built on westphalian nation states this is the only way things have ever and can ever be. It wasn't that long ago even in European history that nations in the modern sense didn't mean too much.

If we are going down that path then I don't think Afghanistan is the main "victim". That would be more places where nomadic ways of life dominated pre colonialism. Afghanistan has a long history of being a pretty settled place, even if not a united one.

[Tamas]

If we go down that path then the same is true of much of the world really. A lot of people have the idea that because our world is built on westphalian nation states this is the only way things have ever and can ever be. It wasn't that long ago even in European history that nations in the modern sense didn't mean too much.

If we are going down that path then I don't think Afghanistan is the main "victim". That would be more places where nomadic ways of life dominated pre colonialism. Afghanistan has a long history of being a pretty settled place, even if not a united one.

Lets limit it to countries still existing then. That leaves us with Afghanistan. And Belgium.

[The Brain]

Not very fair. Belgium has waffles, beer, and pedophiles. Not necessarily in that order.

[Duque de Bragança]

Not very fair. Belgium has waffles, beer, and pedophiles. Not necessarily in that order.

No mention of the FN ? For shame

[The Brain]

Not very fair. Belgium has waffles, beer, and pedophiles. Not necessarily in that order.

No mention of the FN ? For shame

Or "the sepulchral city".

[Duque de Bragança]

Not very fair. Belgium has waffles, beer, and pedophiles. Not necessarily in that order.

No mention of the FN ? For shame

Or "the sepulchral city".

Leave Debussy alone.

[The Minsky Moment]

Afghanistan-as-was.

Not comparable.  Ethiopia's GDP doubled in the last 6 years (to 2020) with GDP per capital reaching almost double that of Afghanistan.  it's true that the country suffers from a lot of intra-regional and ethnic tensions but the current conflict was really a "war of choice" by the central government; it was avoidable and should have been avoided.