Thread by @althecat

Great so we now know who is responsible for this report. .

@AvvZaki @OmarSMahmood @mutiga, why is the abduction of @AbdiwahabSheik7 missing from the report?

It's clear this abduction is part of the story after he was abducted off the streets of Nairobi on Sept. 9th.

https://twitter.com/alanboswell/status/1438045560263647233

And why are PM Roble's numerous - on their face overtly destructive - actions in relation to the coming election [including his visit to Kenya] brushed over in a narrative which focuses almost exclusively on a unproven allegation about the death of Ikran Tahlil?

Furthermore @CrisisGroup @alanboswell

& authors of this report: @AvvZaki, @OmarSMahmood,
@mutiga

What is the role of the former UN observer @Dibjir and his shadowy Sahan Research intelligence group - staffed by former @CrisisGroup personnel - in all of this?

@CrisisGroup @alanboswell @AvvZaki @OmarSMahmood @Mutiga @Dibjir Roble as you know, but left out of your report, has been accused by @AbdiwahabSheik7's wife of ordering the arrest of her husband, a Kenyan national.

@AbdiwahabSheik7 is on record as saying he was being targeted by SAHAN.

SAHAN's communications outputs clearly back Roble.

What is your understanding of the role of SAHAN's @Dibjir in the horn of Africa?

It is open knowledge that Farmaajo expelled him from Somalia and that he is bitter about it.

And what is your understanding of SAHAN's relationship with the TPLF?

The Eritrean connection which you highlight in your report as the possible reason for Ikran Tahlil's murder clearly links what is happening in Somalia to events in neighbouring Ethiopia. What are the implications of this for both Kenya and Ethiopia?

This - "riveting tale of escalating scandal in #Somalia, the mysterious death of a possible whistleblower" - appears to be being sold here by @alanboswell as a scoop news report might be by a tabloid newspaper. But as you very well know @CrisisGroup is not a newspaper.

Which begs the question about what @CrisisGroup actually is? And what role is it now trying to play in the #HornOfAfrica?

The perception of many in Ethiopia, rightly or wrongly, is that your Ethiopian lead @wdavison10 has, like SAHAN taken the side of TPLF.

Content output by the @CrisisGroup on the Tigray Conflict does not seem to be scaled in relation to the importance of the rapidly escalating hot war, which you declared to be the 2nd most significant crisis facing the UN just yesterday.

https://twitter.com/CrisisGroup/status/1437738338618912768

The last two publications on Ethiopia [page here >> crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-af…] were both on 30th July.
1. An interview with Declan Walsh from the @nytimes
2. A report on escalation in the crisis (which actually started on 15th July) from Davison

@nytimes You have a 1-page summary graphic here >> d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/sep-21-ethiopi… which is not too bad for a one page summary of a war engulfing a nation of 115 million people. But....

The "What To Watch" segment of this happens to exactly coincide with the views of SAHAN's @Dibjir as expressed in an interview with with @theelephantinfo on 24th July. theelephant.info/videos/2021/07…

He was right wrt to the TPLF's military objectives. But he went much further in the IV.

We can also see former @CrisisGroup HoA lead @Dibjir's views about Eritrea here - which is relevant to the current Somalia affair as Somalia's military relationship with Eritrea is what Ikram Tahlil was apparently a whistleblower about. theelephant.info/videos/2021/07…

@CrisisGroup @Dibjir This interview was published on July 23rd, the day before his interview about the TPLF.

So @CrisisGroup the question for you is, are your views on Ethiopia's ally against the TPLF Eritrea, aligned with those of @Dibjir?

Matt Bryden seen here with a picture used, presumably without permission obtained it seems from @stesfa, a member of the Eritrean diaspora.

@Dibjir in the interview describes Eritrea as a closed military state and compares it to North Korea.

This segment of the interview discusses the so called Cushitic Alliance. A subject which also comes up a lot in relation to Kenyan conspiracy theories about what is happening in Ethiopia.

This segment deals with the period 2011-2012 when Matt Bryden was leading the UN's monitoring mission for UNSC sanctions against Eritrea, which according to Bryden had made a "pariah state" by the sanctions.

According to Bryden, sanctions were maintained against Eritrea till 2019 because both Ethiopia and Djibouti insisted that they remain in place. Bryden says that Ethiopia said it would have to take unilateral action (presumably war) against Eritrea if sanctions were lifted.

And then we get to the fall of the TPLF in 2018 and @AbiyAhmedAli.

In this bit we get to the guts of what appears to be currently spun by SAHAN to whomever is listening.

Bryden mentions the "Cushitic Alliance" and says,
Eritrea's Aferworki became a mentor to Ethiopia's Abiy and Somalia' Farmaajo, advising them not to bother with democracy.

He fails to mention that at this point Ethiopia had in fact had it's election, on June 21st. An election that the EU precipitately withdrew its observer mission from.

Again the question for @CrisisGroup is simple. What is the Crisis Group's assessment of its former HoA analyst Matt Bryden's narrative?

@CrisisGroup Again this is important, because the relationship between @SahanResearch and EU and US diplomatic institutions is opaque.

Sahan is clearly still pushing these conspiracy narratives in the Horn of Africa, seemingly with some degree of success in both Somalia and Kenya.

@CrisisGroup @SahanResearch And if these theories also have currency in Brussels and Washington - i.e. that Abiy and Farmaajo are puppets of Eritrea's anti-democratic "North Korean like" Isaias Afwerki - that this would explain a lot about what we have seen in the Tigray Conflict.

@CrisisGroup @SahanResearch In particular the extraordinary high level of tolerance that the US and EU appear to have shown to naked TPLF aggression, attacks on civilians and refugees, looting, and belligerent rhetoric since the offensive into Afar and Amhara began in mid-July.

@CrisisGroup @SahanResearch Now to be fair to @CrisisGroup there is an antidote of sorts to this content in their The Horn podcasts about Somalia and Eritrea.

Which makes this latest incomplete report on the rising crisis in Somalia all the more peculiar.

To complete this contrary view. There is one more data point. A @Dibjir column also published via @theelephantinfo on July 9th about Somalia's upcoming elections where he calls for Farmaajo's removal.
theelephant.info/op-eds/2021/07…

The Somali electoral system is inordinately complicated and I do not pretend to understand it. But anyone read between the lines of this part of Bryden's expose, which involves two of the central figures in the current Somalia election crisis.

Based on @Dibjir's collected thoughts, on twitter, via his misinformation operation led by @RAbiAnalyst, and his IVs it's clear Bryden considers himself the legitimate “puppet-master” not only for Somalia, but also in relation to who ought to be governing Ethiopia.

Whatever this is, it is definitely not consistent with the concept of "African solutions to African problems."

Add in Bryden's terrible reputation not only in the Horn of Africa but also in international circles.

And then the icing on the cake is Bryden's feud with Farmaajo over his expulsion from Somalia.

It seems very odd to me that @CrisisGroup would be happy about being associated with all or indeed any of this.

@EthThinker ^^ this is the sequel thread.

This is my initial thread on the Crisis Group Report about the rapidly blowing up Somalia election row.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1437863677454082056?s=20

And this is the first followup. Looking more closely at the report and what is missing from it.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1438020698245640195?s=20

The full saga begins here five days ago when @RationalXi responds oddly to my first thread about @AbdiwahabSheik7’s abduction.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1436252922925527056

That fairly loose thread turned into this more fully formed initial overview, which includes the Kenyan Citizen TV report on the abduction.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1436280787133943813?s=21

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1436280787133943813