Thread by @althecat

The @CrisisGroup has three new podcasts on The Horn podcast about the unfolding crisis in Ethiopia.

The latest one is pretty terrible. Another elderly British colonial era academic Christopher Clapham, attempts to reframe Ethiopian history, and fails. podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6L…

Unfortunately like many other elderly Western Academic commentators with a historic perspective, he lacks any understanding or insight about the current situation in Ethiopia, especially wrt the period since the Qeroo revolution.

The Clapham IV was dated Nov. 17th Next up we have @wdavison10 talking on Nov 9th. podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6L…

@wdavison10 A consistent theme with @CrisisGroup commentary is its absence of wider context, as if the Ethiopian conflict is happening in a hermetically sealed container, rather than being constantly impacted by international, US, EU and UN statements.

@wdavison10 @CrisisGroup For the likes of Clapham @wdavison10, @martinplaut and @WorldPeaceFdtn's Alex de Waal, the conflict in Ethiopia is portrayed as a military matter, albeit one in which they consistently express a great deal of admiration for the TPLF's military success. For them this is the story.

@wdavison10 @CrisisGroup @martinplaut @WorldPeaceFdtn The Clapham interview does try to look a little deeper, but even that in the end devolves back into a commentary on the remarkable military successes of the TPLF.

. @wdavison10’s November 9th edition of “Hold your Fire” is no exception to this pattern. During this period - which coincided with TPLF reclaiming Dessie and Kombulcha - Davison was busy in international media sharing his reckons.

Missing in most international coverage at that time - and also from this @CrisisGroup report - is the primary reason for these gains (from my understanding), I.E. internal uprisings in the cities by Tigrayan forces making use of existing arms caches in the cities.

It was this dynamic which led to the State of Emergency declaration in Addis, searching of Tigrayan houses and a large number arrests. In Dessie and Kombulcha the situation was much worse as they are hosting 100s of 1000s if IDPs.

The movement of these IDPs created an opportunity for large scale infiltration of the city by TPLF insurgents and this may have also played a part.

Davison does talk of a renewed offensive by the TPLF on the Djibouti-Addis transport corridor being the focus of the TPLF.

Cutting off this corridor to force the Ethiopian Govt to the negotiating table has been the military objective of the TPLF since the beginning of their offensive back in July.

Completely absent in both of these podcasts is any discussion of the humanitarian crisis in Amhara and Afar, and the credible and constant reports of attrocities committed by TPLF forces. The humanitarian situation in Tigray does get a mention mind.

So why is @CrisisGroup’s reporting so shallow on all this? Why no discussion ever of the international dimension? Why no discussion of the wider pan African dimension encapsulated by #NoMore or the frantic backpedaling which is now underway at the State Dept?

Davison is an inherently shallow analyst, and this is certainly part of the reason for this. He has run with the TPLF mob for some time, and probably still smarts from his expulsion from Ethiopia. But that is only part of the story.

The @CrisisGroup is an NGO which has EU Govt and UN clients as it’s funders along with the Soros Foundation. On its board is former EPRDF Ethiopian PM Hailemariam Desalegn, whose tenure in that role received a fairly rosy interpretation from Clapham in the most recent podcast.

This is of course a problem more generally within the field of international relations commentary as more broadly there are tangled webs of funding for our corps of foreign policy commentators and academics which involve all manner of unsavory participants in intl intrigue.

And unfortunately these networks also tend to be the go to sources for most international media, whom these days are seldom resourced or experienced enough to do their own first source reporting.

With Ethiopia and @CrisisGroup though, the issues with their analysis run much deeper. In part because of the ongoing role of two former HiA @CrisisGroup analysts, @dibjir and @RAbdiAnalyst as active information warfare participants in the region.

The final new ICG HOA podcast is fron Nov. 3 addressing the Sudan Coup of October 25th on the eve of the #COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow. This resulted in PM Hamdock not attending COP, not that I expect this to be mentioned in their analysis. podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/the…

An interesting podcast which moves into the territory of the broader East Africa/Horn of Africa @CrisisGroup team, which is (oddly) better resourced and significantly more nuanced than the team covering Ethiopia, which seems to be fairly exclusively the domain of Davison.

Being less familiar with the situation in Sudan I will confine myself to two comments on this analysis from Magdi el-Gizouli, a fellow at the Rift Valley Institute.

1. He says the coup in Sudan was backed by Egypt (significantly) and supported by Saudi , UAE & Israel….

… but fails to mention at all the US’s attempts to stop the coup. Though this may be covered in a separate “Hold your Fire” podcast which I am reviewing next.

In listing these coup supporters in passing he notes that they are part of the U.S. regional security apparatus….

… which is interesting for as the US tried very hard to stop this coup and failed, which begs questions about the level of US influence.

Also notable its absence from the discussion is any mention at all of neighboring Ethiopia & the GERD dam.

These startling omissions from the discussion reinforce the overall critique of @crisisgroup’s output in relation to mentioning their funders.

There is another podcast on the Sudan Coup on the @crisisgroup’s “Hold your Fire” podcast. podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/s2-…

This, emergency podcast recorded shortly after the coup, and originating from the @CrisisGroup’s HOA dept, is definitely better but it’s not until the closing remarks that concerted US from Envoy Feltman to prevent the coup are mentioned.

The two speakers in this podcast are Jonas Horner (@jonas_horner) and Murithi Mutiga (@mutigam).

Jonas had an interesting explanation for the role of the Egyptians in the coup, claiming they brokered a settlement between the RSF and Gen. Burhan, which allowed the coup to go ahead. There was however no critique directed at Egypt for its involvement.

And @mutigam had some interesting observations about threats to security in the wider region, but there was no mention of General “Sesame” Burhan’s personal financial stake in Al Fashaga nor any substantive analysis of the roles of foreign actors in the coup.

The explanation given for Saudi and UAE support for coup was not explained simply as being due to general opposition to successful popular uprisings. An explanation which is a little too generic to hold water for me.

As for the longer term prognosis @mutigam was broadly in agreement with the analyst in the later The Horn podcast that the brief period of something akin to democracy in Sudan was due to special circumstances.

On the substantial inquiry in this thread: I.E “is @CrisisGroup really probative in its analysis output?” The answer remains no as massive questions around foreign actor involvement in the events in Sudan, particularly by Egypt, remain substantively unaddressed.

As a bookend to this @CrisisGroup analysis we have a, frankly rather depressing, interview with L. Muthoni Wanyeki, the Open Society Foundation’s Africa Director posted on October 20th, around the time of the first Sudan Coup attempt. podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/the…

The broad ranging interview covers a lot of ground, and comes as the Soros Foundation which funds Open Society is undergoing a massive reorganization which is expected to hit @CrisisGroup quite hard. nytimes.com/2021/09/12/bus…

In the early part of the discussion Lynn Muthoni Wanyeki talks optimistically about Sudan, albeit less than a week before the coup. She also talks about the challenges of defining and investing in supporting civil society in an era of youth innovation and activism.

Discussion continues to address Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania and her own home base Kenya. She is pretty bleak about democracy in all four nations - but reserves her most critical remarks for the socio-economic tragedy of South Sudan, a point I would agree with her on.

But in discussion of all of this as in all of the podcasts looked at in this thread, the subject of western nation contributing towards the dysfunction in East Africa remains completely absent.

I get that the both the Rich West’s narrative about Africa, and that of Africa itself is that for Africa to find the solutions to its own problems, but South Sudan is perhaps one of the best possible examples of that failing, and remaining out of sight and out of mind….

… all whilst Western consultants and banks and corporations have made billions from exploiting South Sudan’s oil reserves.

None of this is @CrisisGroup’s responsibility of course. And unfortunately whilst ICG’s analysts probably know full well why all this dysfunctionality exists, it can’t directly attribute the actual causes because they are its funders.

Que sera sera. /ends

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