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Feb 2 • 21 tweets • 9 min read
A background article on #JustifiedAccord (US War Games) referenced here >> africom.mil/what-we-do/exe… {link: army.mil/article/261898}

Is not available, but is in the cache.

webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache…
#JustifiedAccord is a large scale multinational AFRICOM live fire exercise involving countries from serveral nations, mostly in the Horn of Africa.

An interesting thing about this article is that it relates to a meeting in Nairobi in Oct. during the Pretoria Peace Talks.
This seems to be the current live home page for the operation. Which has significantly less information than above. The exercise appears to have grown to 20 nations now.
africom.mil/what-we-do/exe…

It links to >> dvidshub.net/feature/index/… which has materials from Justified Accord '22.
The exercise is controversial as its planning predated a defence appropriation bill passed on 15th December 22 which preceded numerous deaths in Lascaanood in January - a contested part of Somaliland, a region in Nth. Somalia
azernews.az/region/204568.…
Since then the security situation in Somalia has turned from bad to worse. Africom has a media page here >> africom.mil/media-room

The press release (right below: africom.mil/pressrelease/3…) is Jan 30th and appears to relate to an airstrike or drone strike on Jan 25.
They issued it seems 5 press releases about this "strike against terror" including one quoting the Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin. africom.mil/pressrelease/3…

A background briefing for media was also held at the White House. whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
Also during January an article critical of Somalia's newly elected President Hasan Sheikh Mohammed - widely seen as US/Egypt friendly was published then removed by Nairobi Law Monthly, allegedly after "dark forces" approached the publisher.
The article by Prof. @AbdiwahabSheik7 was swiftly republished in several places, initially by the Black Agenda Report with a forward from @AnnGarrison.

Prof. Abdiwahab is somewhat famous for having been kidnapped in broad daylight in downtown Nairobi.

The kidnapping took place in the context of a battle between PM of Somalia (Roble) & then President Farmaajo over security/election issues. Roble was accused by the family of being behind the kidnapping. Sahan Research's Matthew Bryden was working with Roble at the time.
Bryden is an intersting character who seems to have been present during all of Somalia's recent dark period. A Canadian, he arrived in the horn before turning 20 in 1991, two years before black hawk down - and the year that TPLF effectively took control of Somaliland.
Somaliland has been a secessionist region of Somalia since the days of Mengistu Hailimariam - the Russian backed Junta leader of Ethiopia following Emperor Haile Selassie.
US designs on building a new large military base in Somaliland became very clear in the Dec 15th Defence Appropriation Bill which I covered in two threads on Jan 15th.
Part 2 quotes the relevant sections of the Defence Appropriations Bill.
These explicitly state (among other things) that Somaliland is needed to counteract the growing influence of China in the Horn of Africa, and also reference a Somaliland-Taiwan trading relationship.
It seems clear from all the above that the US has not changed its policy materially in relation to the Horn of Africa. Namely that it does not want a stable Horn, from a security perspective.

What is happening now looks a lot like a re-run of the Blackhawk Down fiasco.
At this point it is not clear to me what exactly #JustifiedAccord 2023 has become.

There was a summit of the leaders of Kenya (Ruto), Ethiopia (Abiy), Somalia (HSM) and Djibouti (Ismail) a couple of days ago in Mogadishu which apparently came under mortar attack.
Meanwhile the AU mandated ATMIS peacekeeping mission is due to end next year (2024) after being extended twice - with efforts underway to build a Somali Defence Force to take over by sending 1000s of Somalis to be trained in Eritrea, Egypt and Uganda.
This is necessary because Somalia has neither the capacity nor the funds to provide such training. But it is worth noting that both Egypt and Uganda are believed to have covertly assisted the TPLF in its recent rebel war against Ethiopia.
There are also reports that the President of Ethiopia's Somali Region (Mustafe) is involved in a dispute of some kind with a neighbouring clan, with evidence of possible involvement of elements from Somaliland.
Taken together, one can but wonder whether recent positive developments wrt to an end to the war in Tigray have just resulted in moving the active destabilisation efforts of the United States Eastward into Somalia and Somali Region.
/ends

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There is a nationwide protest underway in France 🇫🇷 over planned changes to Retirement. And they know how to Protest.

I bumped into this one in Vichy.
And they also seem quite angry.

Heaps of unions. Lots of noise, minimal police presence.

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I have two different, good, less selfish reasons to not provide Leopards to Ukraine. Reasons which are not related to commercial motivations.

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It also seems very poorly timed vis a vis the peace efforts underway in neighbouring Ethiopia, the war & peace effort in which all of these countries were either directly or indirectly involved in to different degrees.
Excepting Botswana which seems a to be an outlier.
It would be far better if the US pursued its strategic objectives in the HoA primarily using soft power rather than military exercises.

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I have a lot of questions and concerns about the implications of a renewed US military posture in HOA.
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Near live satellite imagery of Europe and Nth Atlantic.

1. An atmospheric river is dumping lots of rain as this is posted over Ireland, Cornwall, Wales and up the coast to the Hebrides.
2. An atmospheric river coming up from the tropical Atlantic.
3. A Greenland dev. windstorm.
On the RHS there is another atmospheric river coming in over North Africa over Italy and the Balkans.
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Given the poor performance of meteoalarm earlier in the year on forecasting extreme weather at night, I’d be keen to see some evidence that they are closely watching this completely unprecedented event.
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