Jason Mosley Profile picture
Migrant. @JEASjournal|@AfricaOxfordUni|@SIPRIorg Northeast Africa & Red Sea. Frontiers & state visions, regional political economy & security. Views my own.
Nov 16, 2020 8 tweets 2 min read
Hoping policymakers in DC will consider this, if they've read the Atlantic Council's unhelpful, 'give war a chance' briefing on Ethiopia's conflict in Tigray. THREAD

1) TPLF's (often brutal) grip on power - under Meles & after - was varied, not uncontested or monolithic.

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This point helps to make sense the slow unravelling of the TPLF's position between 2012 and 2018, when several years of protests and other challenges were leveraged by elements within the EPRDF to shift the internal balance against TPLF, allowing Abiy to emerge as leader.

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Nov 19, 2019 5 tweets 2 min read
Glad the NYT is reporting from #Ethiopia, but there are some glaring errors in this piece. In particular, it is necessary to connect statements like these from Jawar to at least a basic understanding of the electoral system, and push back. 1/ Ethiopia's electoral system is a first-past-the-post constituency based model at federal level. For Jawar to 'defeat' Abiy, he would need to either 1) challenge him directly in his constituency, or 2) build a bigger party & get a majority in parliament. 1st seems unlikely. 2/