Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016 01:04:49 +0200
Armed assailants kill two soldiers in northern Ethiopia
ESAT News (October 21, 2016)
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ESAT DC Morning News Fri 21 Oct 2016Two Agazi soldiers were killed on Thursday following an attack by unidentified armed group on a makeshift military camp in Tis Abay, Bahir Dar.
Sources who spoke to ESAT on the phone said additional troops have been sent to to the area following the attack by a self organized armed group against the Agazi soldiers, special forces of the regime, deployed to the Amhara region to quell the protest in the Amhara region.
The sources said about 30 soldiers were at the camp at the time of the attack on Thursday night. One of the assailants was injured in the shootout, it was leant.
Authorities have reportedly sent reinforcement to Tis Abay following the hour long shootout.
The state of emergency declared a week ago prohibits possession of firearms.
There have been several reports of armed groups carrying out surprise attacks against regime forces in the last several months in the Amhara region where deadly protests flared up again this summer against a tyrannical rule by minority Tigrayans.
Ethio telecom charging Internet fees despite service shutdowns
ESAT News (October 21, 2016)
Foreign companies and NGOs say they have been charged Internet fees by the Ethiopian Telecom even when the service has been shut down following the states of emergency declared a week ago.
Ethiopian authorities shut down Internet and telephone services in most part of the country in an attempt to quell the growing protest in the country. But the state owned Ethiopian Telecom was still charging monthly Internet fees for services it has not provided, representatives of foreign companies and NGOs told ESAT.
Ethiopian regime officials have said in the past weeks that the service will remain shut down but will resume once protests subside. The anti-regime protests have, however, shown no sign of dying down.
A recent Brookings Institution report showed that a total 30-day disruption of the internet between July 1, 2015, and June 30, 2016, cost Ethiopia’s economy over $8.5 million.
Ethiopia ranked the 4th unstable country in the world
ESAT News (October 21, 2016)
Ethiopia is ranked the 4th unstable country next to The Maldives, Mauritania and Algeria, ranking first to third in that order, Newsweek said on Thursday.
Michael Rubin said in an opinion, which is also published on the American Enterprise Institute website, that repressive regime and poverty are only two of the factors making the regime fragile. “Two and a half times the size of California, Ethiopia is one of the world’s oldest countries but, despite an increasingly autocratic and repressive leadership projecting an aura of stability, it looks like it could be among the world’s most fragile states. While the economy has grown rapidly, poverty remains the rule as the population also booms,” Rubin writes.
Drought and Tigrayan domination were also cited as factors of instability in the country. “The agricultural basis of the economy makes Ethiopia susceptible to drought. State-dominated industries mean it competes poorly with the outside world. The country is incredibly diverse. In 1991, Eritrea successfully seceded after a decades-long civil war. While Eritrea had its own colonial heritage, many other ethnic groups are as resentful of Addis Ababa’s control and, specifically, ethnic Tigrean domination,” Robin continues to write.
The writer was also concerned about possible eruption of sectarian violence. “Of greater concern, however, is Ethiopia’s sectarian division. Muslims already represent a third of the population and are growing at a faster rate than the Ethiopian Christian population. Should ethnic and sectarian divisions erupt into open conflict, the resulting insecurity could make Somalia look like Club Med.”
The article put Ethiopia as one of ten countries that have the potential to explode into crises and which should certainly be on the next US administration’s radar screen.
Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He instructs senior military officers deploying to the Middle East and Afghanistan on regional politics, and teaches classes regarding Iran, terrorism and Arab politics on board deploying U.S. aircraft carriers. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen and both pre- and post-war Iraq, and he spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. His book Dancing With the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes examines a half-century of U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes and extremist groups, according to his bio on published on Newsweek.