Comment by Maxamillion96 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Maxamillion96 | Hacker News Reader

This is an extremely ignorant article.

1. They should call it Arat Kilos quest for the sea, not Ethiopia. Abiys megalomania isn’t popular in Ethiopia, and even FANO has come out against this “deal”

2. If you read the fine print, the deal is for a commission to examine recognizing Somaliland. Ethiopia will never actually go through with it, because Ethiopia has multiple secessionist and rebel movements.

3. This ignores the unionist factor in Northern Somalia, the area that is supposed to be ceded to Ethiopia is a heavily unionist area, and given that half of “Somaliland” rejoined Somalia this year ^1, I don’t think that will happen.

Also like all of the anylysts cited are pro-somaliland, like Peter Pham is literally a lobbyist, and this does the typical Reddit mistake of assuming the Somali government is nonexistent or weak (this isn’t 2011).

This is a horribly written article with no research to back it up

1 wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Anod_conflict_(2023-present)

I'm not a specialist in the region, and maybe you are. I also don't like WP that much. But there's no talk about territories to be ceded in the article at all. It mentions leasing of 12 miles. It also doesn't seem to take sides, or make any far-fetching claims, it doesn't claim also that the agreement is destined to be successful. So I find it hard to understand what exactly makes it "horribly written". On a side note: personally I have no idea what changed with Somalian gov't since 2011, but virtually all sources say it still controls lesser part of internationally recognized territory, and its existence is impossible without external forces on the ground. The definition of weak is pretty stretchy, but certainly it doesn't look strong.

> But there's no talk about territories to be ceded in the article at all. It mentions leasing of 12 miles.

This doesn’t particularly matter since all of the potential ports are in unionist territory, but most Somali and Amharic sources say that it is Lughaye.

> It also doesn't seem to take sides, or make any far-fetching claims

It does both, first by the people it cites,and then by claiming that Ethiopia would both delegitimize itself and tear up the charter of the African Union by recognizing a Somaliland, a claim that Ethiopia has walked back already.

> On a side note: personally I have no idea what changed with Somalian gov't since 2011, but virtually all sources say it still controls lesser part of internationally recognized territory, and its existence is impossible without external forces on the ground.

2011 was 12 years ago. The Somali government and more importantly the Federal States control the majority of the territory of the Somali republic. Given that the majority of the “external forces” withdrew last year and the Somali government hasn’t fallen yet, I would urge you to read something more up-to-date.

How much of an impact does the UAE and Turkiye seem to have within Ethiopia's leadership?

I find it interesting that wherever UAE and Turkey's interests collide (Egypt, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Serbia, Yemen, Qatar, etc) there's always some mutual jockeying.

I'm told this video is really well done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-hABbIseGk

TFA recognizes Abiy's personal ambition with regards to this issue in the final section.

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