3ኛው የዓለም ጦርነት በኢትዮጵያ ምክኒያት ሊጀመር ይችላል | If a ‘Third World War’ Were to Break-out it Would Start in the Horn of Africa

ሉሲፈራውያኑ አገራችንን መክበብ ከጀመሩ ቆይተዋል። ታላቂቱን አገራችንን ቀስ በቀስ በመሸንሸን ቆራርጠው ሲወስዱ ለዚህ ለያዝነው ዘመን ዘመቻቸው መዘጋጀታቸው ይሆን?

አሁን በኢትዮጵያ ዙሪያ የሚገኙትን ግዛቶች (ኤርትራ፣ ጂቡቲ፣ ሁለቱ ሲዳኖች፣ ሶማሊያ፣ ኬኒያ እና የመን) በመቆጣጠር ላይና በማተረማመስ ላይ ይገኛሉ። የሉሲፈራውያኑ ዋና ቤዝ በ አረቢያ ይገኛል። በየዘመናቱ በአገራችን ላይ ይደርሱ የነበሩት ጥቃቶች ከአውሮፓ፣ ከቱርክ ወይም ከግብጽ ቢመጡም ከጥቃቶቹ በስተጀርባ ሁሌ የአረቢያ ጂኒ አለበት።

በቅርብ ጊዜ እንኳን ለ ጂቡቲና ኤርትራ፡ ከኢትዮጵያ መገንጠል ከፍተኛ ሚና የተጫወቱት አረቦቹ ናቸው። ፈረንሳይና ጣሊያን፡ ልክ አሁን አሜሪካውያን በኢራኖች ተታለው ኢራቅን እንደወረሩት፤ ማለትም የእስማኤላውያኑ ኢራናውያን መሣሪያዎች ለመሆን እንደበቁት። በኢራቅ፡ አሜሪካ በጣም ከፍተኛ የገንዘብና የደም መስዋዕት ከፍላ አሁን ኢራቅን የሚቆጣጠሯት ኢራናውያን ሺያ ሙስሊሞች ናቸው። ሱኒዎች ወይም ሺያዎች የተለያዩ ተፎካካሪዎች መስለው ቢታዩንም፤ ለእኛ ሁሉም አንድ ናቸው፡ ሁሉም የሉሲፈር ወታደሮች ናቸው፤ እንዲያውም የመጀመሪዎቹ የጆርጅ ሄገል ዲያብሎሳዊ ዲያለክቲክስ (ቲሲስ – አንቲቴሲስ – ሲንቴሲስ) አራማጆች እነሱ ናቸው።

ኤዶማውያን እና እስማኤላውያን ከበውናል – የዓለማችን ሁኔታ እንዲህ ከቀጠለ፡ ልከ እንደ አንደኛው እና ሁለተኛው የዓለም ጦርነቶች፡ ሦስተኛውም በኢትዮጵያ ምክኒያት ነው ሊቀሰቀስ የሚችለው።

እግዚአብሔር ግን አገራችንን ይጠብቃታል!

ቻይናዊ ታዛቢ፦

„I really hope that Ethiopia can stand out as a major power in the world, which can offer strategic support to China in her struggle against West hegemony. We suffered the same fate under west domination so we can understand each other well. I am a Chinese by the way.“

The Horn Of Africa + Sudan Are Replacing The Middle East As The Geo-Political Danger Zone

As the Middle East slowly stabilises, The Horn of Africa is where the next major global conflicts could ignite unless existing partners in the region go on high alert.

For decades, exploitative neo-imperialist geo-political military and economic (mis)adventures have tarnished generations throughout much of the Middle East. From the continued suppression of the Palestinians, to the Petro-politics of the Persian Gulf, to regime change missions throughout historic Mesopotamia, the Levant and Maghreb, the Middle East has been the 20th century’s geo-political/geo-economic prize that the US and its European allies have not allowed a day’s peace since the end of the First World War.

Today, over one-hundred years after the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France, a new Middle East is emerging with a clear northern and southern bloc who are opposed to one another, but that each have good relations with both Russia and China. Additionally, while the northern bloc is comprised of key 20th century Soviet allies including Syria and Iraq, the southern bloc maintains traditionally strong relations with the US, although key members of this region are attempting to both economically and diplomatically diversify their respective portfolios. This is certainly the case with both Saudi Arabia and its de-facto (soon to be formal) ally Israel, as well as Egypt which is pivoting back to a position of trying to make the most from both historically good ties to Moscow and the sustained good ties with Washington dating back to the late 1970s.

The logical conclusion to such a formation is stability, however uncomfortable a stability it might be for some Middle Eastern nations. This is good news for some of the most prominent roads which comprise China’s One Belt–One Road trading, commerce and logistics super-highway.

But just as China’s key roads which link South Asia and East Asia to Europe via Eurasia are showing signs of recovery, the maritime belts along One Belt–One Road, are fast becoming the most worrying points of contention whereby the US and its allies seek to create disquiet for China and its partners.

This is particularly the case in respect of the Horn of Africa and also Sudan, just to the north of the Horn.

Washington is gearing up attempts to exploit the Horn of Africa and nearby states for the following reasons:

1. The Middle East’s Belt

2. Sudan’s President praises Russia

3. China’s base in Djibouti

4. China bringing stability to Somalia

5. Chinese investments in Ethiopia to under-cut soft power

Ever since the late 1980s and early 1990s when Gorbachev’s incompetent leadership soiled Russia’s relations with Ethiopia, the US was quick to fill the void after the fall of Mengistu Haile Mariam.

However, today’s US relations with Ethiopia have been realistically undercut by massive amounts of Chinese direct monetary and infrastructural investment in the country.

As geo-political expert Andrew Korbyko recent wrote,

“Ethiopia, which is the second-most populous country in Africa and the world’s fastest-growing economy, is China’s premier partner in the continent, and Beijing just built the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railway as a de-facto Horn of African Silk Road for efficiently accessing this landlocked but rising African Great Power. Seeing as how Ethiopian-Chinese trade will in all likelihood begin to transit across CPEC en route to the People’s Republic, it makes sense for the Pakistani Navy to begin proactively safeguarding the ASGA SLOC between Gwadar and Djibouti together with the Chinese”.

Here, one sees how China is helping Ethiopia to regain links to the sea, thus circumventing Eritrea which is in the medium-term interest of Ethiopia, but also creating an environment wherein Eritrea and Ethiopia may slowly reconcile their implicitly poor relations through a mutual position as part of One Belt–One Road.

In the even more immediate term, Russia could engage in meaningful relations with Addis Ababa, also using its good relationship with China as a spring-board to develop this. If it is possible for Pakistan to develop a positive presence in the region as a result of its position along One Belt–One Road, Russia could theoretically do something similar. If Russia were to become an ever more important partner of Sudan while using China’s economic prestige in Ethiopia to increase its geo-political prestige in the region, this could only be a helpful diplomatic “win-win” that would be to the economic benefit of all parties.

CONCLUSION:

In all of these matters, the US is overtly the biggest obstacle to progress. If the US could exploit established Middle Eastern powers so easily in order to create deaconess long instability in the Arab world, it is a worrying reality that the instability of the Horn of Africa region and also the internal crises in Sudan and beyond, are even more ripe for exploitation than those in the Middle East.

Without doubt, the next big competition for world-dominance will not be in the Middle East but in the nearby Horn of Africa and into Sudan.

China and Russia seek to open the region to One Belt–One Road while the US seeks to exploit existing and latent tensions to lock existing states and possibly new states and statelets into an alliance with the US which would effectively prohibit full participation in One Belt–One Road.

I personally am not of the belief that a ‘third world war’ will break-out, but if it were to do so, it would not start in the Middle East, South Asia or the Korean peninsula. It would start in the Horn of Africa.

Source

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Russia Needs To Embrace Ethiopia…Now!

Strategic Context

Ethiopia was the world’s second-fastest-growing economy in 2015 at a rate of 8.7% growth, and its top trading partners are China, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Ethiopia primarily exports energy and agricultural products in exchange for importing refined fuel and industrial-electrical machinery, both pairs of which are valuable businesses that Russia is sorely missing out on. As Moscow searches for reliable non-Western economic partners and seeks to enhance the commercial viability of its Crimean merchant vessels, its presence in Syria and affiliated post-Daesh reconstruction plans there, and the Russian industrial zone in the second Suez Canal, it would do well to consider expanding its north-south maritime trading corridor to include the Ethiopian marketplace.

China has already invested billions of dollars in building a railroad between the port of Djibouti and the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa which is expected to open up later this year, and it’s also constructing a similar transport corridor (LAPSSET) through the south beginning at the Kenyan port of Lamu. This East African initiative is also Chinese-built and will be able to accommodate twice as much cargo as the region’s presently busiest port of Mombasa, with the BBC estimating that its capacity will eventually reach the jaw-dropping figure of 20 million containers per year.

These two projects will unlock Ethiopia’s vast economic potential and save Russian companies from excessive start-up costs in accessing the world’s most populous landlocked market. Moreover, China plans to ensure the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railway’s international security through its first-ever overseas military deployment in the former, which will complementarily safeguard both the maritime and mainland components of this pivotal Silk Road node. Russia can thus utilize China’s enormous infrastructure investments in affordably capitalizing off of what otherwise would have been a prohibitively expensive market to access. Therefore, what follows is a listing of the three industries that Russia should endeavor to tap into, including a review of their economic potential, foreign competitors, and strategic opportunities for access.

Oil And Natural Gas

Russian strategic investments in Ethiopia’s promising energy sector could open the door for a more robust partnership between the two historically friendly states and should thus represent the focus of Moscow’s reengagement with Addis Ababa. Most of Ethiopia’s resources are concentrated in the eastern Somali Region’s Ogaden Basin, which includes an estimated 2.7 billion barrels of oil and 133 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

China just recently announced that it will invest over $4 billion in a gas pipeline to Djibouti and a liquefaction plant at the port terminal, while Kenya signed a memorandum of understanding with Ethiopia for exporting its oil through the LAPSSET Corridor. The second initiative is still at the drawing board and nothing legally binding has been agreed to thus far, which excitedly gives Russian companies a competitive opening to involve themselves in the process, whether as it relates to LAPSSET or perhaps to a totally new oil export route alongside the Chinese-built gas pipeline to Djibouti.

Furthermore, it mustn’t be forgotten that Russia has world-class experience in oil and natural gas extraction, pipeline construction, and project management, and that it would be an invaluable partner for Ethiopia as the traditionally agricultural country rapidly modernizes into a manufacturing stronghold. Bringing Russia on board in some capacity could be strategically beneficial for Ethiopia in the long term, and after confidence-building measures have been undertaken in this industry, they could then spread to other ones, too.

Security

While the Chinese military deployment in Djibouti protects the Addis Ababa railway’s maritime terminus and bottleneck location, there’s no such international security guarantee present along the Horn of Africa’s interior locations. This is troublesome because the railroad and any future pipeline routes to Djibouti must pass through the Somali Region, the one part of Ethiopia most intensely beset by ethnic, religious, and separatist conflict potential.

The heavy-handed military presence in this large, sparsely populated corner of the country has largely succeeded in keeping the peace and preventing the neighboring Al Shabaab terrorist group from carrying out the sort of atrocities that it regularly commits in Somalia. Nonetheless, it’s uncertain just how efficient the Ethiopian Armed Forces could be here if they become distracted by peripheral crises with Eritrea, Sudan, and/or South Sudan, to say nothing of the Hybrid War that could break out in the centrally positioned and most populous region of Oromia over expanded Identity Federalism demands.

Russian technical and training expertise could therefore fill a gaping void in Ethiopia’s security needs by equipping the military with state-of-the-art capabilities in defending its borders and promptly responding to asymmetrical internal threats.

Conventional military exports could help thaw the Soviet-era partnership that has remained largely frozen since the end of the Cold War, and the type of aircraft and weaponry that were used to devastating anti-terrorist effect during the Syrian operation could function as an ideal solution for forcibly dealing with a Daesh-like terrorist surge in the Somali Region.

Not to be neglected, Russia’s expert community could also play an irreplaceable role. If Democratic Security experts teamed up with their special forces counterparts in teaching the Ethiopians how to counter the phased transition from Color Revolutions to Unconventional Wars, then the African giant could better insulate itself from Hybrid War threats and react more confidently whenever its many foreign adversaries try to provoke asymmetrical conflict within its borders. The unparalleled trust that this would create between the Russian and Ethiopian “deep states” (the permanent military-intelligence-diplomatic bureaucracies) would go a far way towards accelerating their belatedly renewed partnership.

Agriculture

Over 40% Ethiopia’s GDP, around 73% of its population, and 84% of its exports are tied to the agricultural industry, meaning that the country will still remain largely agrarian in the medium term despite its rapid industrialization drive. Ethiopia’s exports in this sector mostly amount to coffee, livestock products, fruits, and vegetables – all of which are in high demand in Russia after Moscow’s retaliatory actions against the EU sanctions. Even if that spat gets cleared up in the next couple of years, the Russian leadership has evidently made it a point to seek out non-Western replacements as part of its forward-looking strategy in preventing future overdependence on any single supplier.

Ethiopia’s agricultural advantages are that it has plenty of fertile soil and ample water supplies coupled with a hard-working and low-wage labor force. The Gulf Kingdoms have already recognized the promise that Ethiopia provides and have invested heavily in farming out their foodstuffs there. Russia would be wise to follow in their footsteps by capitalizing off of the comparatively low cost of entry and potentially limitless yields in this sphere, as well as working to generate consistent business in the country for its profitable fertilizer exports.

Due to the Gulf Kingdoms’ attention to this field, it can circumstantially be concluded that foreign-supported Salafist terrorists will probably not operate in these domains or interfere with their trade out of fear of inadvertently targeting their most likely patrons’ investments. The most agriculturally productive regions of the country are in the north and west, which are less Muslim-populated than the other half of Ethiopia and thus less at risk from militarized radicalism. Despite this, the danger remains that the ever-present threat of ethnic, political, or refugee violence (like in the agriculturally productive Gambella Region) could pose a latent risk to any Russian investments in this sector.

Concluding Thoughts

In the global context of the New Cold War and the accelerated trend towards multipolarity, Russia urgently needs a reliable anchor in Africa in order to establish a concrete and visible presence on the continent.

Ethiopia satisfies this strategic imperative and is the most logical partner for Russia to reach out to because of its relative closeness to Russia’s Black Sea shore, location just past the Sea Lines of Communication linking Crimea, Syria, and the Russian investment zone in the Suez Canal, and nearly 100-million-person marketplace. On top of all of this, the country is inexpensively accessible due to China’s Horn of Africa Silk Road railway between Djibouti and the capital of Addis Ababa.

Russia stands to gain handsomely in the energy, security, and agricultural sectors if it harnesses the political-economic will to strengthen its full-spectrum engagement with Ethiopia, but the only obstacle standing in the way of this profitable partnership is a lack of awareness about these exciting opportunities.

Source

My Note: While reading this interesting article, I paused for a while to ask myself whether a Russian / Soviet leader has ever made a visit to Ethiopia, a country that gave to Russia the likes of Alexander Pushkin and Peter Ustinov. The answer: NEVER! Amazing!

The great Russian military officer, explorer, writer, and leader of the imiaslavie movement in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Alexander Bulatovich, wrote in the 1896-98 report, ETHIOPIA THROUGH RUSSIAN EYES the following words concerning Ethiopia, Egypt and Russia:

“For the Abyssinians, the Egyptian, Arab, and, finally, European civilization which they have gradually adopted has not been pernicious: borrowing the fruits of these civilizations, and in turn conquering and annexing neighboring tribes and passing on to them her culture, Abyssinia did not obliterate from the face of the earth, did not destroy the uniqueness of any one of the conquered tribes, but rather gave them all the possibility of preserving their individual characteristics.

Thus Christian Abyssinia plays an important role in world progress as a transmission point of European civilization to wild central African peoples.

The high civilizing mission of Abyssinia, its centuries-old, almost uninterrupted struggle for faith and freedom against the surrounding Moslems, the nearness of her people to the Russian people in creed, won for her the favor of the Russian people.

Not just educated Russians know of her and sympathize with her, but also the common folk who saw black Christians, devout and often living in poverty, in Jerusalem.

We see much in common in the cultural problems of Abyssinia with our affairs in the East; and we cannot help but wish that our co-religionist nation would assimilate the best achievements of European civilization, while preserving for itself freedom, independence, and that scrap of land which its ancestors owned and which our greedy white brothers want to take.”

Russian Bell, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Around 1890 to 1900 or just before the Illuminaty-conspired Russian Bolshevik October revolution, there was a great activity between the Russians and the Ethiopians.

This massive bell was a gift from Czar Nicholas II, the last Czar of Russia. It is displayed on the grounds of St. George’s Cathedral.

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The Destabilizations In Djibouti And Ethiopia Are Being Exploited Against China

December 2016: An improvised fake Arab drama:

Saudi plans to open a military base in the tiny Red Sea state of Djibouti have raised concerns among Egyptian officials 

“Cairo is totally against the deal because it considers Djibouti to be under the Egyptian sphere of influence and because its location is important for national security,” an Egyptian diplomatic source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The New Arab.

— Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi Met With Eritrean Leader ‘to Pressure Addis Ababa’

— Somali Refugees Arriving in U.S. at Highest Rate Ever in First Two Months of FY 2017

December 2015: A very good analysis of the gradual encirclement and targeted destabilization of Ethiopia

The northeastern reaches of the African continent have been maligned in the Western imagination as a place of dire suffering, war, and famine, but somewhat surprisingly, the region had remained relatively stable over the past decade, barring of course a few exceptions. All of that now seems ready to be reversed, however, with destabilizing events returning as the regional norm. Whereas the previous ten years of moderate stability and growth can be attributed to China’s positive involvement in the Horn, the forthcoming years of uncertainty are directly linked to the US and Saudi Arabia’s efforts to dislodge China from the region and bring it closer to the unipolar fold. As a result, it can objectively be proclaimed that the New Cold War between the unipolar and multipolar blocs has officially penetrated this part of Africa.

This briefing isn’t structured to be an in-depth report on the region and its historical development and intra-regional relations, but rather a run-down of what’s happening in the Horn of Africa and why. For that reason, it shouldn’t be taken to be absolutely comprehensive in its scope, and forthcoming research might be necessary to shed light on a few of its political-strategic nuances. The purpose is simply to bring attention to the latest developments in this part of the world and explain how they relate to one of the New Cold War’s objectives in ‘containing China’.

Here’s what’s been transpiring lately in each of the Horn of Africa states, with additional analysis about how this relates to the larger proxy struggle that’s presently being waged:

Sudan

This country used to be mostly independent in its foreign policy dealings and has historically been a victim of the US’ covert subterfuge, but in recent years, the government has drifted ever closer to Saudi Arabia, one of the US’ prime Lead From Behind proxies and Sudan’s maritime neighbor across the Red Sea. To condense a few decades of history into a short summary, Sudan has faced numerous CIA-sponsored insurgencies throughout the decades due to its rich natural resource wealth, with the two most notable being the ones fought in South Sudan and Darfur. After the former’s US-overseen succession, the separatist sentiment migrated across the new frontier and has now infected South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, while low-intensify violence continues to occasionally plague Darfur. As a result of Khartoum’s handling of the Darfur Separatist War, President Omar al-Bashir has been accused of war crimes and is subject to ICC arrest, although numerous states continue to flaunt the Western-controlled court’s politically motivated order. The US has also placed the country on the State Department’s “state sponsors of terrorism” list in order to enact sanctions and up the asymmetrical pressure against its legitimate government.

South Sudan’s secession in 2011 deprived Sudan of the oil wealth on which it previously used to rely, giving it power only over the transit routes through which the resource must pass in order to reach its Red Sea export terminals. In a short period of time, the two states predictably emerged at odds with another over this arrangement, thus inflicting mutually disadvantageous economic pain on each of them (and much to the US’ divide-and-rule benefit). Crippled even further by the monumental drop in oil prices over the past year, Sudan has been forced into a precarious pecuniary position that’s compelled its government to backtrack on its formerly multipolar policies and fall under the guiding sway of Saudi Arabia. For example, the New York Times revealed in 2013 that Sudan was actively participating as a covert weapons conduit to Syrian-based terrorists, and in early 2015 it joined the Saudis’ War on Yemen in exchange for $2.2 billion. In mid-December, it also jumped on the bandwagon and became party to Riyadh’s “anti-terrorist” coalition.

Being so chummy with the unipolar world’s most notorious Mideast proxy, it’s little wonder then that Sudan’s director of the National Intelligence and Security Services has oddly taken to bragging about his organization’s positive relationship with the CIA. Sudan has been geopolitically, economically, and ‘judiciously’ (in terms of the US-influenced ICC warrant) abused to such an extent by the US that its leadership has developed a form of Stockholm Syndrome and is now groveling at the feet of its oppressors. It believes that blindly currying favor with Saudi Arabia, it’s new patron (and in such a role only because the US’ economic war against it has placed it in a situation so desperate so as to make it receptive to Riyadh’s outreaches [note: this is an explanation not an excuse]), will somehow translate into a lessening of the US’ asymmetrical war against it and reprieve it of the unwarranted punishment that it’s been undergoing. Little does Sudan realize, however, that the chief reason for its latest woes has been because the US wants to pressure it to renege on its strategic cooperation with China and submit wholly to the Saudis’ Wahhabist authority instead. The US won’t stop until Chinese influence is totally ejected from the country and replaced by its Saudi counterparts, and even then, there’s no guarantee that it’ll abstain from supporting future separatist wars if it believes the geostrategic dividends to be worth it.

Eritrea

The author published a long-running analysis on this country’s unexpected relationship with the GCC and the consequences that it could have for Ethiopia, and it’s kindly requested that the reader reference this for full details. As an abridged summary, Eritrea’s economic desolation and international ‘isolation’ (it’s sanctioned by the UNSC for its supposed support of Al Shabaab terrorists in Somalia) have put it in an unenviable position that’s made its leadership eager to clinch partnerships wherever possible, even with the Saudis and their GCC ilk. For this reason, Eritrea is hosting a UAE naval facility and allowing its airspace (and some reports even say, 400 of its own troops as well) to be used in the War on Yemen, completely reversing whatever accolades it was previously given for taking a strong stand against ‘imperialism’. Of extraordinarily relevant note, Eritrea is also engaged in a heated rivalry with its former ruler Ethiopia, and this tense dynamic continually holds out the threat of spilling over into armed violence in the future. With Eritrea now under the GCC’s protective wing, Asmara might feel emboldened to provoke Ethiopia in the context of the unresolved Badme village dispute (the cause of the bloody 1998-2000 war).

Djibouti

This tiny former French colony is one of the most strategic naval outposts in the world, playing host to American, French, and Japanese bases, with a Chinese facility slated to join it in the near future. It’s also the only reliable access point for interacting with the burgeoning Ethiopian market, predicted to be one of the world’s fastest growing economies in the future. To facilitate Ethiopia’s development, China, one of the country’s most prized strategic partners, is building a railroad from Djibouti to the capital of Addis Ababa. This transnational connective infrastructure project could rightly be termed the “Horn of Africa Silk Road” for the prosperity that it’s envisioned to bring to all of those who participate in it. Just as much as the Horn needs China’s regional Silk Road, so too does China need the Horn’s marketplace, since outbound investment is the main reason why the One Belt One Road global project was initiated in the first place. This corner of Africa (Ethiopia to be specific) is supposed to function as an integral destination for Chinese investment projects and real-sector economic interaction and will play a key role in China’s balanced growth in the future years to come. This strategic imperative makes Djibouti even more important to China than initially meets the eye, and considering this factor as well as China’s forthcoming base in the country, it’s somewhat expected that the US would try to destabilize the government there as a form of asymmetrical punishment.

Lo and behold, that’s exactly what’s been happening in Djibouti over the past week. A “religious celebration” (curiously with no other details about this event described) turned into an all-out anti-government riot during which over a dozen people were killed and a handful of “opposition” leaders arrested shortly thereafter. The US has made an effort to vocally condemn the government’s response to the crisis and urge it to release the jailed “opposition” leaders and “exercise restraint” ahead of a presidential election in April. For its part, the government blames the violence on people “who act from abroad” and want to “destabilize [the] nation and sow divisions”. Analyzing the coverage over what’s happened and taking into account the US’ history of regime change provocations, it seems very probable that a Wahhabist or Muslim Brotherhood gathering in the capital was to blame for the unrest, as no unipolar outlet dared to mention any other details about the “religious celebration” that sparked the whole conflagration (a tactic that’s usually employed when their own radical terrorist proxies are to blame). Also, Djibouti has earned the consternation of Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies for resisting their appeals to open a base there for use in the War on Yemen, ergo why they had to seek out Eritrea’s assistance instead. Qatar is also “monitoring” the Eritrean-Djiboutian border since 2010 as part of its UN responsibilities in mediating the 2008 crisis between the two, so it’s already within easy operational range of managing a Muslim Brotherhood uprising if it so chooses.

To make matters even more gripping, Djibouti for some reason decided to join the Saudis’ “anti-terrorist” coalition, but in hindsight, this might prove to be its leadership’s ultimate misstep. With the country at mercy of Riyadh’s definition of “terrorism”, any justifiable statements it makes about the “religious celebrators” being Wahhabi or Muslim Brotherhood terrorists will fall on deaf ears and be discredited by Djibouti’s own “anti-terrorist” coalition members. At the same time, the anti-government provocation that just took place might even form an eventual pretext for a unilateral Saudi-led “anti-terrorist” ‘intervention’ there in order to capture the country’s strategic infrastructure and misappropriate it from China (in accordance with the US’ wishes). Additionally, the upcoming April presidential election is a ‘trigger’ event for ‘justifying’ a Color Revolution and all of the resultant tangential destabilization that comes with it. The objective, naturally, is to overthrow long-serving President Ismail Omar Guelleh (in office sine 1999) and replace him with a pro-US/GCC puppet (a Djiboutian version of Yemen’s Hadi) or subserviate him into complying with the unipolar world’s anti-Chinese wishes.

Ethiopia

This millennia-old country’s strategic significance vis-à-vis China was already touched upon in the above subsection and is explored thoroughly in the earlier cited article about the GCC’s new relationship with Eritrea, but expanding on this a bit, it looks probable that Ethiopia could become a continental leader if it continues along its state-driven development trajectory. Addis Ababa has very close ties with Beijing, but at the same time, it’s also warming up to Washington, having hosted President Obama during his summer visit to the country earlier this year, the first-ever for a sitting US President. Ethiopia also invaded Somalia in 2006 to remove the Islamic Courts Union from power, thereby demonstrating that it had an overlap of military-strategic interest with the US, which also wanted the group overthrown, and didn’t shy away from doing its bidding. Nearly a decade later, China visibly has more influence over Ethiopia and it appears that this will remain a constant so long as the present government is able to maintain power, but therein lays the supreme structural vulnerability.

Simmering domestic discontent fueled by ethnic tension, NGOs, and foreign patrons is threatening to violently return the formerly war-torn country back to its fratricidal past. The Oromo ethnicity, the largest plurality in the country at around 35% of the population, has been fiercely protesting against the government’s plans to take and develop some of their land around the capital. Nearly 100 people have since been killed, with the government accusing the protesters of attacking police during their uncontrollable rioting around this contentious issue. The Oromo have vowed to continue their protests and the crisis is primed for rapid escalation in the coming weeks.

The Huffington Post, generally known as the mouth piece for part of the US establishment’s hyper liberal-progressive ‘values-based’ policies, even ran an attack piece against Ethiopia earlier this week, thereby demonstrating that a strong level of social and psychological conditioning is underway in order to prepare the American public and others for a possibly prolonged destabilization. Foreign Policy also jumped in the mix and wrote its own anti-government piece about the protests, obviously motivated by the implicitly anti-Chinese consequences that this developing crisis could engender. It’s even conceivable that the ongoing revolt could evolve into an all-out anti-government insurgency that links up with other ethnic groups (most likely the Ogaden-based Somalis), tactically mirroring the Ethiopian Civil War that preceded it. The difference between then and now, however, would be that the insurgency wouldn’t be based in the northern part of the country, but the central-eastern portions of it, and might even involve Al Shabaab. Speaking of the latter, there’s also the chance that the jihadist factor could play a large role, too, and the bombing of an Addis Ababa mosque earlier this month might not be ‘coincidental’ when seen in the larger scope of events that have since been unleashed.

To revert back to the focus on the Oromo protests, the reason that they could be a trigger for a large-scale nationwide destabilization is because Ethiopia’s capital is completely surrounded by their ethnic-based state, and thus, any municipal expansion in one of Africa’s fastest-growing metropolises must inevitably encroach on their territory. By and large, this plausibly sounds like a legitimate enough reason to protest, but the finer details raise questions about the movement’s legality. The Ethiopian Constitution, agreed to after the civil war and which granted the main ethnic groups their constituent identity-based states, stipulates that private individuals don’t have any land rights and that it is the state’s responsibility to allocate territory as is seen fit. As controversial as this may sound to outsiders, one would do well to remember that this is the official law of the land and was agreed to by all of the victorious parties that emerged from the civil war. It wasn’t a problem at all until Western-sponsored NGOs came into the country and started politicizing the issue among the Oromo ethnicity, knowing full well that sooner or later the Constitution’s stipulation would have to be applied to their territory as the capital inevitably grew past its rigidly defined municipal boundaries.

Somalia

The last piece of the Horn of Africa puzzle to be involved in the latest bout of regional destabilization is Somalia. The UN has recognized that the country is no longer a failed state but a “recovering, fragile country”, though this has no impact whatsoever on the socio-political vulnerabilities that make the country susceptible to external destabilization. Al Shabaab continues to use the nation’s territory as a base for attacking Kenyan interests, and this has the potential to draw the East African state deeper into the “recovering, fragile country’s” domestic affairs under an anti-terrorist aegis. For example, Kenya responded to the latest failed terror attack against a busload of people by bombing targets in southern Somalia, which is sure to draw the ire of Al Shabaab and circuitously inspire more attacks.

The author doesn’t mean at all to condemn or criticize the Kenyan authorities for their action, but simply to draw attention to the fact that Al Shabaab is the perfect “Reverse Brzezinski” vehicle for tricking neighboring states into preplanned quagmires. Al Shabaab is closely linked with Qatar, and this fact has even been reported on by Western media outlets like the Washington Post. The author spoke at length about the connection between Qatar, Eritrea, and Al Shabaab in his earlier piece for Katehon about the GCC’s involvement in Eritrea, but the main idea was that Doha wants to use its terrorist proxies as a weapon against Ethiopia, and the group’s Somali ethnicity might be used to attract adherents of the “Greater Somalia” idea to engage in guerrilla warfare in the Somali-populated Ogaden region of Ethiopia.

To address the Kenyan connection, this country is being targeted by Al Shabaab and its US and Gulf sponsors because of its close infrastructure cooperation with China. Beijing is building a railroad (the “East African Silk Road”) that will connect the port of Mombasa with Nairobi and Uganda, thereby helping to tap into the resources (both natural and in terms of labor) that are present in Africa’s Great Lakes region. Along the northern coast of Kenya and closer to the Somali-populated formerly titled North Eastern Province (Kenya now has a plethora of counties in place of its previous provinces), China is investing almost half a billion dollars in Lamu Port as part of its strategy of engagement with the country. Somalia, therefore, occupies a very strategy position in destabilizing both of China’s regional Silk Road ambitions, and it shouldn’t be seen as a random event that the country signed on to the Saudis’ “anti-terrorist” coalition.

The Somali government is obviously against its territory being used by any sort of terrorist group and for whatever destabilizing ends they or their patrons may have in mind, but it’s so weak and near-powerless that it’s not in any realistic position to prevent this from happening regardless. The new federalization of the country, which is still being progressively institutionalized, doesn’t substantially cover the separatist and largely independent Puntland and Somaliland regions, and from the vantage point of the federal government in Mogadishu, the priority is in restoring the country’s territorial integrity first (now that an internationally recognized, albeit symbolic, ‘national’ government has been installed) and only then going against the terrorist groups active on its territory. Until that time arrives, and realistically speaking it will likely be a long way’s off in the future, then Somalia will continue to be the springboard for terrorist groups like Al Shabaab to continue carrying out their patrons’ orders in destabilizing Ethiopia and Kenya, all with the larger (if formally unstated) intent of fulfilling the US’ goal to ‘contain China’ and evict it from the region.

The Saudis’ “Anti-Terrorist” Coalition As Part Of The Encirclement Of Ethiopia

Everything that’s been described thus far has been a verifiable chronicle of the GCC using regional springboards (Eritrea and Somalia) and provocations (like in Djibouti) to further their implicit anti-Ethiopian goals. Even if that isn’t the immediate intent of their actions (though it convincingly does look to have played a guiding role), given these states’ junior status to the US unipolar hegemon, sooner or later they’ll be called to act on the geostrategic advantages that they’ve obtained in order to carry out Washington’s regime change agenda in destabilizing Ethiopia. As was argued throughout this piece, the whole reason for that is because the over 100 million people living in this Horn of Africa state are a critical marketplace that China absolutely must tap into in order to sustain its balanced growth in the coming decades and bring substance to its One Belt One Road strategy on the continent. Considering this, then the strategic situation looks increasingly dire for the China-Ethiopia Partnership, with the Gulf States having encircled most of the country through their official engagements with Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia in some capacity or another (be it the War on Yemen like with Eritrea, the “anti-terrorist” coalition like Somalia, or a hybrid of both such as in Sudan).

The geopolitics of the Horn of Africa are dramatically shifting, having always been a subject of out-of-regional rivalry for some time, but never to the degree that they presently are nowadays. The end of the Cold War brought about an end to the US-Soviet competition in the region and mostly gave the US the advantageous momentum needed to carry out its hegemonic designs there. The “War on Terror” concentrated America’s focus in the heart of the Mideast (Iraq), though with time and the Pentagon’s heel-dragging conventional retreat, this focus was progressively widened once more to include the “Greater Mideast”, which geographically includes a large part of the Horn of Africa, and taking aside the religious-‘civilizational’ inferences, unquestionably incorporates Ethiopia as well. The period between 2001 and 2015 was the strategic window of opportunity through which China entered the Horn of Africa and began swaying Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti (to an extent) away from the unipolar umbrella and towards the multipolar vision, although it eventually proved to be ideologically (although not pragmatically) unsuccessful in the case of Sudan, which has now quite literally sold out to the Saudis. Be that as it is, China is clearly the chief economic actor in the region, although Saudi Arabia is now rushing to play catch-up by using its oil largesse (despite the presently low price and its steadily dwindling financial reserves) to buy new friends in this geostrategic region. Both Riyadh and Beijing understand quite rightly how important the Horn of Africa is, as this region of the world abuts the only maritime gateway between the EU and the Indian Ocean, and henceforth to Southeast and East Asia.

The Saudi-Chinese Cold War In The Horn Of Africa

Saudi Inroads:

Understood in the manner that it’s been argued to this point, the Horn of Africa is the newest battleground in the New Cold War, with a subsect competition, the Saudi-Chinese Cold War, being the driving factor behind the region’s forthcoming destabilization. The US is incapable of dedicating the required about of its time and resources towards carrying out the mission of blocking China in this geo-critical area, ergo why it has subcontracted these responsibilities to its Lead From Behind partners in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar Each of these has their own motivations for positioning themselves in such a way as to pressure Ethiopia at a future time, and this is being done despite the Saudis’ strategic agricultural cooperation with the country. In fact, it can even be argued that the Saudis are engaging in a ‘good cop, bad cop’ type of routine vis-à-vis Ethiopia with Qatar, since Doha has had rocky relations with Addis Ababa before, but Riyadh is officially in its good graces and was even invited by the Prime Minister to invest more in the country back in October. This is a clear sign that Ethiopia doesn’t quite recognize the danger that is developing around it or that it is trying to be diplomatically ‘polite’ to the point of publicly avoiding any antagonizing and unconstructive statements about the nearby hegemon (though it did warn the GCC against using their Eritrean port for anti-Ethiopian ends). As a matter of fact, Ethiopia needs capital investment from all sources, not just China, so in a pecuniary sense, it’s open to Gulf money so long as it’s depoliticized, and especially if this helps to mitigate any disruptive scenarios that might be planned against it by intertwining it and the investor state in a relationship of complex interdependence.

Normative Differences:

Before continuing, it’s insightful to describe a curious element of the identity dichotomy between the two rivals, Saudi Arabia and China. Saudi Arabia is a Wahhabist state driven by violent evangelizing principles, whereas China is officially an atheist state that pragmatically accommodates for the plurality of beliefs within it and has no atheistically proselytizing designs on its partners. Most of the countries in the Horn of Africa are Muslim, and even majority-Christian Ethiopia has a substantial Muslim minority, yet this religious factor seems not to play a determining role whatsoever in why Sudan and Djibouti started enhancing their cooperation with China. If anything, it proves that Samuel Huntington’s thesis about a “Clash of Civilizations” is a cursory surface assessment about demographic similarities between select partners but not an actual ‘law’ of international relations that can withstand the type of scrutiny currently being applied against it. Nothing in his writings explains why atheist China was the premier partner of Sharia-adhering Sudan for most of the 2000s, for example, but his thoughts do play a role in the current radicalization of religious elements in these majority-Muslim countries. Partly because of this, Ethiopia is predicted to feel even closer with China in the future (aside from all of the other reasons it has for this [strategic, economic, political, etc.]) because Beijing is ardently opposed to any form of religious extremism, especially those that eventually take the form of terrorism.

Hybrid War Threat:

That being said, as seen through a geopolitical-strategic prism, Saudi Arabia is obviously angling to position itself in as advantageous of a place as possible for pressuring Ethiopia in the future, and this is why Addis Ababa needs Beijing so much. Bridging the two partners is Djibouti, which to remind the reader, is about to play host to China’s first-ever foreign military base and is the terminal point for the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railroad that China is financing. It’s also no coincidence that “religious celebrations” (which can only be Muslim in this context since Djibouti is overwhelmingly a Muslim state) suddenly turned into violent anti-government riots just a few months prior to a presidential election that the US may be trying to sabotage. Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia are peripheral partners in the US/GCC plan for containing Ethiopia, and it looks like attention is now being placed on the geostrategic chokepoint of Djibouti, the narrow bottleneck connecting the Ethiopian economy with its Chinese counterparts.

It can’t be ruled out that the destabilization in Djibouti will find a way to become transnational, most likely through the exploitation of the Afar ethnicity (35% of the Djibouti population) and their neighboring communities in Eritrea and Ethiopia. The former has a small proportion of this demographic while the latter has an entire state dedicated to them, but altogether, they form a geographically wide ‘stateless nation’ that could potentially be riled up into action by radical imams and/or Western NGOs. The broadening of Djibouti’s destabilization to Afar minority groups in Eritrea and Ethiopia might prove to be the spark that’s needed to return the two rivals to the brink of a mutually disastrous war, whereby anti-Ethiopian Oromo and Somali elements could be called upon to assist in the struggle and open up a debilitating second front.

Concluding Thoughts

The Horn of Africa has returned to capturing global headlines with domestic disturbances in Djibouti and Ethiopia seemingly popping out of nowhere. The truth, however, is much more complicated and nefarious, as preexisting and legitimate internal grievances stand to be exploited by foreign actors with their own self-interested geopolitical agendas. Sadly, as is typically the case in these situations, this state of affairs has already proven itself capable of leading to bloodshed and claiming people’s lives, unnecessarily and purposefully escalating what otherwise could have been low-intensify political engagements.

Everything that’s happening in these two countries can’t be separated from the international context in which they occurred, which is the US’ larger New Cold War against multipolar Great Powers like China, in the specific context of which it seeks to use Saudi Arabia and the GCC as the Lead From Behind designee for evicting Beijing from the Horn of Africa. It goes without saying that AFRICOM is playing a coordinating role in managing the GCC and NGO actions in this broad theater and most likely in these two specific instances, with Saudi Arabia being subcontracted responsibility for bringing Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia into the militant fold.

The Horn of Africa has historically laid at the crossroads of Africa and the Mideast, but as the world enters 2016, it has also found itself as the crossroads of unipolarity and multipolarity, destabilization and development, and the path that it takes is dependent on the course that the New Cold War’s latest proxy rivalry runs in the coming future.

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“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil…

Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes..”

[Isaiah 5:20-21]

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Flight 17 & The Panorama of Peril

“We must consider the downing of Flight 17 as part of the larger “panorama of peril” and not fall into the trap set before us”

 

The downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur yesterday, killing nearly 300 men, women and children, currently dominates today’s headline-rich environment. Accusations about who is behind this wholesale slaughter of innocents are serving as the drumbeats for war, and they are increasing in volume and tempo.

 

Unfortunately, most Americans and those in the West will fall victim to thinly veiled propaganda pushed by the major news agencies and their captive pundits that is deliberately designed to sway public opinion to a specific agenda—an agenda of war. We are being played, and if we don’t exercise our own intellectual discernment to understand how this incident fits into the larger picture, it will be not just be to our own peril, but to the peril of our children and generations to come.

 

Setting the global stage

 

To understand the significance of the downing of Flight 17, we must look at the bigger picture and think outside of the box created for us by those in power and their facilitators in the media. We must understand a bit of history, and realize that we are not seeing anything new in terms of tactics or orchestration.

 

 

To anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention, it is obvious that the global power structure is being reordered to meet a specific and predetermined design. We are witnessing orchestrated global chaos that transcends partisan politics and has been long in the making. We need to view the current geopolitical events in a panoramic setting, and understand how each of these events are related like cogs in the gear of the globalists. Each geopolitical event of significance is being done by design, but by whose design, when did this restructuring begin, and what is the end-game objective? The answers will not be found coming from the mouths of our leaders or the captured fourth estate. You must look deeper than the sound bites that are creating the drumbeats of war.

 

As I have previously written, it is important to understand that the Arab Spring was planned far in advance and was not spontaneous. It was never about establishing “democracy” or freeing the oppressed. So too was the planned overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, and the use of Libya as the marketplace and transit point for weapons of war by a rogue, out-of-control cabal of globalists within the U.S. government and other Western countries.

 

It was and continues to be war by proxy, where the globalists embedded inside our government have become the captured operatives of a Saudi and pan-Islamic agenda hell-bent on changing the balance of power in the Middle East and all across the northern hemisphere to create a “New World Order.” The problem is that we seem to have lost the capacity to see the bigger picture, willingly turned a blind eye to the machinations of the globalist agenda, or worse, refuse to release our death grip on the false political paradigm. Accordingly and with minimal objections, the restructuring of power is continuing largely unfettered.

 

This is why and how we find ourselves at this point in world history, where chaos is increasing exponentially. Left unchecked, it will soon make its appearance personal to each of us. Failure to expose the lies and lawlessness of the leadership on both sides of the political spectrum, from the Renegade-in-Chief, his band of in-house outlaws as well as those facilitators holding positions of leadership within each branch of the U.S. federal government, and in addition to the media mouthpieces of disinformation, will most assuredly lead us to global war.

 

Flight 17: The 21st Century Lusitania?

 

What, you might ask, does this seemingly redundant recap of recent history have to do with a single passenger plane that was shot down over a war zone? Was it merely a tragic, isolated and unforeseeable event? Based on careful analysis and information into the larger agenda given to me by inside intelligence and financial sources, I say “no.” The reason, I contend, behind the downing of Flight 17 is much more nefarious than I’ve seen discussed elsewhere. Simply stated, it is my belief that we are witnessing the run-up to World War III. We must look through the prism of history to see how Flight 17 can easily become the spark that ignites the dry tinder carefully positioned by the global powers, the financial elite, and those vying for a seat at the table of global power.

 

As a result of the attack at Benghazi, the plans of the globalists were exposed and temporarily sidelined. The Renegade-in-Chief, Barack Hussein Obama, and his co-conspirators within the U.S. State Department and other Western and Middle Eastern countries were exposed as operating the largest criminal weapons running operation in history. The intent was (and remains) to further change the balance of power by ousting Bashir Assad, replacing Assad with a puppet regime to further advance the Saudi-Wahabbi agenda. Syria of is critical military importance to Russia and economic importance to China, so such a plan would cross Putin’s red line.

 

Despite the obvious, most Americans remain oblivious to the global plans, mostly due to lies that are large enough, repeated often enough, and left unchallenged or reinforced by the media. The “failure” of the initial plans to overthrow Assad were merely a speed bump in the road to the global restructuring. Instead, plan “B” was implemented, which involved the creation and backing of ISIS to open a new front against Syria. ISIS, equipped by U.S. and Western powers, is indeed on a “Death Race to Damascus” as I previously described.

 

The criminal cabal that exists within the U.S. government continues to poke at the proverbial Russian bear. The Cold War never ended, it merely took on different forms. The Islamic agenda not only plays an important role in this strategy, but they too are being played by the globalists. Regional conflicts and various civil wars have been and continue to be seeded by Western intelligence agencies to change the balance of power. It’s much like merging the Bay of Pigs with the real-life version of the movie Groundhog Day. Given such proxy and asymmetrical wars where the Western alliance is creating chaos against Russia and by proxy, China, isn’t it reasonable to expect some tit-for-tat response? And when that response arrives, what might we expect to happen?

 

In this most recent campaign of global power restructuring to benefit the global political and financial interests, one element has been notably missing. It’s an element we saw immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Decades before that, it was an element missing from the American populace in the run-up to World War I: the tide of public opinion.

 

Students of history will recall that it was not until the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, that killed nearly 1200 people that the tide of public opinion turned in America. Until then, the American people had no desire to enter the war. With that single incident, where the Lusitania was traveling though an area known for its danger from German U-Boats, and traveling against many warnings, that public sentiment was manipulated. The sinking of the Lusitania turned public opinion in the U.S., and many other countries against Germany. It resulted in the U.S. entering World War I. That single incident became an iconic symbol in military recruiting campaigns of why the war was being fought.

 

While the leaders and pundits point the fingers of blame to who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, wouldn’t it be pertinent to question why this particular flight was flying over a designated war zone contrary to standard operational procedures? This flight was in the same area as other military transport planes that were shot down in the days and weeks before. Like the Lusitania, however, warnings were apparently discarded… or perhaps the risk downplayed. Many will dismiss this claim out of hand, asserting that the flight was traveling at too high an altitude and too fast to be victimized by the wrath of regional conflict. Perhaps those making such assertions should make their case to the families of the victims rather than on the media talk shows.

 

As the photos of the dead are used as tools of propaganda, emotion and demonization, however warranted, overshadows rational analysis and pertinent inquiries. The globalists and their pundit cheerleaders will continue to beat the drums of war, making the case for U.S. involvement, reminiscent of 1915. Those who fail to learn from history, we are told, are doomed to repeat it.

 

Why Ukraine?

 

The ultimate control of Ukraine, or who controls Ukraine, is hanging in the balance. The fight for control exists between the West and Russia, or more precisely, a Western multinational interest that includes Saudi Arabia and others, integrated with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a Russia-China alliance. According to “V, The Guerrilla Economist” whom I have interviewed on numerous occasions, at issue is the “New Silk Road.” That is a physical road—a corridor, that connects China and Russia to Europe for the benefit of the Eurasian trade zone. And most importantly, there can be no EurAsian Trade Zone without Ukraine, which has an economic output second only to Russia.

 

Lest we forget, it was the IMF that was first entity on the ground in Ukraine as the “conflict” began. It is the goal of the globalists to collapse not just the U.S. dollar and our economy, but take the entire global economy down in order to establish a single global currency. We must not only understand the enormity of the lies being forced upon us, but the magnitude of the agenda. At a time when we cannot get truthful answers to topics ranging from Benghazi, missing IRS e-mails and every other subject of import, and as lawlessness has overtaken our leadership, it is incumbent upon us to question everything.

 

We are witnessing a very dangerous game being played out by the powers above those we recognize as leaders. This process of global restructuring is deadly serious, and as we’ve seen, quite deadly. As long as we are silent about the evil machinations of the globalist powers, they will continue to advance their agenda.

 

We must consider the downing of Flight 17 as part of the larger “panorama of peril” and not fall into the trap set before us, for if we do, we will subjugate ourselves and our future generations to the oppression and bondage of a New World Order.

 

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