Thread by @ryanmofarrell

These kinds of calls-to-arms after a failed “final offensive” demonstrate some incredible desperation on the part of Abiy’s government.

Policy makers *really* need to be thinking about the collapse of the PP, how it might happen and how to pick up the pieces afterwards.

https://twitter.com/addisstandard/status/1454881141626966018

A few key dynamics (plus a million others that I can’t possibly understand or explain): TPLF isn’t going to reestablish the EPRDF system in Addis. Too much has happened, they don’t want it, and they can’t impose it. Whatever emerges will be some PP rump or something new entirely.

OLA is ascendant and OPP is seemingly unsure or incapable of retaining control in the absence of a faltering federal government. OLA’s goals are explicitly centered on seizing the capital and (probably) outright seceding, which redraws the conceptual map of Ethiopia in…

…ways that Tigrayan secession does not. If OLA manages this, it all but guarantees an intensification of the massacres and ethnic cleansing that has already occurred across much of Oromia.

Amhara region is at a fever pitch, bearing the brunt of the TDF offensive and the humanitarian crisis it has imposed. How long before Amhara begin truly discarding/ignoring the ENDF and organizing as their own ethnically-defined army rather than as auxiliaries…

…for an ENDF that has all but collapsed? What does it mean for the idea of Ethiopia when Amhara politics (in very broad terms) shifts from defending the concept of Ethiopia to a more pure focus on ethnic self-defense, given pressures and adversaries on pretty much every side?

This is to say nothing of the dozens of other groups, conflicts and crises throughout the rest of the country.

Policy makers absolutely must be looking at Ethiopia through a worst-case lens and preparing accordingly. The current trajectory is certainly heading that direction.

Addis Standard Tweet is now rather tellingly deleted. Link to Abiy’s statement:

https://twitter.com/MapEthiopia/status/1454895503796228103