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8 Nov, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Police in Addis Ababa have begun going door to door, searching for Tigrayans who may be sympathetic to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The TPLF dominated the country’s politics for 30 years before Abiy took power, & are resented by non-Tigrayans.

washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/…
the U.N. predicts hundreds of thousands of refugees may try to enter Djibouti, Kenya and Somaliland, an autonomous region of Somalia.

Addis Ababa, home to around 5 million people.
“Everyone is absolutely terrified,” said Lemma, 27, an Addis Ababa resident who recently fled to Kenya. “Most of my family do not have passports, and they are being rounded up as we speak and taken to unknown concentration camps.”
She said that on Tuesday her 75-year-old uncle, who is diabetic, had been picked up by police, two more cousins had been detained after police checked their identification cards, which marked them as Tigrayan, and a friend was detained at the airport. None have been reachable.
Asked about the crackdown, police told Reuters they had made many arrests in recent days of people accused of supporting the rebels

“We are only arresting those directly or indirectly supporting the illegal terrorist group. This includes moral, financial & propaganda support."
US Orders Non-emergency gov employees & families to Leave Ethiopia as War Escalates

Urges other citizens to “depart now.”

“Incidents of civil unrest & ethnic violence are occurring without warning”

Military.com military.com/daily-news/202…

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More from @joshua_landis

Joshua Landis Profile picture
31 Oct
Hunted by the Taliban and lacking income, members of Afghanistan’s disbanded security forces are enlisting in ISIS, the only resistance movement fighting the new rulers - not unlike Iraq’s disbanded security forces when the US put their enemies in charge. wsj.com/articles/left-…
The number of defectors joining the terrorist group is relatively small, but growing, according to people who know these men, to former Afghan security officials & to the Taliban. Importantly, these new recruits bring to ISIS critical expertise in intelligence-gathering & warfare
An Afghan national army officer who commanded the military’s weapons & ammunition depot in Gardez joined the extremist group’s regional affiliate, Islamic State-Khorasan Province, and was killed a week ago in a clash with Taliban fighters

By @yarotrof
Read 8 tweets
Joshua Landis Profile picture
30 Oct
Afghanistan is on the brink of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the un said on October 25th, exceeding even the misery in Syria and Yemen.

A new report from un agencies estimates that some 23m of the country’s 38m people will not have enough food. economist.com/asia/2021/10/3…
The un estimates that half of Afghanistan was living on less than $1.90 a day when Kabul fell. By the middle of 2022, that may rise to 97%. “We’ve not seen this level of near universal poverty in any country in recent history,” said Kanni Wignaraja of the un
The reason for the crisis is the loss of foreign aid. Before the Taliban took over the country received around $8.5bn a year, which was two-fifths of its gdp. Three-quarters of the government’s budget was paid for by foreign donors, including almost all of health and education.
Read 4 tweets
Joshua Landis Profile picture
8 Jun
HUNGER by @AbuJamajem

A record 12.4 mil. Syrians are now “food insecure.”

That's 4.5 million more people than before the Lebanon bankruptcy. Syrians depended on Lebanon's banking system.

Hunger is a regional phenomenon, not just Syrian.

Fixing it requires a regional response
Hunger in Syria seems to be primarily a result of “access” problems—the Syrian public’s destroyed purchasing power, & its immiseration generally.

Yet Syria also has “availability” problems with key imported goods, including wheat & fuel, that reverberated through the economy.
In April, WFP reported that the price of a standard reference food basket sufficient to feed a family of five for a month reached 176,471 Syrian lira.48 The highest-paid Syrian government monthly salary is 80,240 lira;
Read 5 tweets
Joshua Landis Profile picture
2 Jun
The Jihadist, al-Jolani, on PBS TV

Martin Smith does a fine job of outlining America's dilemma in Idlib

A top US policy maker calls al-Jolani the "least bad option" for Idlib.

Oddly, CIA Chief Brennan said the same thing about Assad.

See thread =>

disq.us/t/3xdadyn
in March 2015, months before the Russians stepped in to defend Assad against al-Jolani & Caliph Baghdadi, Brennan explained that the US did not want to see a collapse of the Syrian regime as it could open the way to Islamist extremists taking power.

timesofisrael.com/cia-us-does-no…
The CIA chief said he had reason to worry about who might replace President Assad if his gov. fell, given the rise of the Islamic State group and other jihadists in Syria.

“I think that’s a legitimate concern,” Brennan said when asked if the US feared who might succeed Assad.
Read 6 tweets
Joshua Landis Profile picture
30 May
Turkey's mob boss Peker: Turkey diverted aid and Military Weapons originally meant for Syria's Turkmen to 'Nusra' and allied extremists militias.

By @sfrantzman

jpost.com/middle-east/mo…
Peker confirms that Albayrak managed the illegal oil trade with the terrorist group Al-Nusra. This was already known from Russian sources and should finally be accepted by Western analysts.
Read 4 tweets
Joshua Landis Profile picture
25 May
The Syrian Elections are not about popular sovereignty. Everyone knows the outcome.

They are about Assad declaring victory in the war - his wish that the revolution be seen to be over.

His unstated opponent is the Syrian opp., who argue that the revolution can still succeed. Image
These videos of supporters, like his main election slogan - "Hope is in Work" - are meant to convince people to put their heads down and go back to work - to accept the reality: the uprising is over & Assad remains.

The opposition states the opposite.

The Syrian opposition seeks to convince Syrians that sanctions are a necessary price to rid the country of Assad & that continued Western pressure & isolation of the regime can work.

Assad wants foreign governments to re-engage, to see that more pressure is pointless.
Read 5 tweets

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