Ethiopia’s army chief of staff was shot while trying to thwart an attempted coup on Saturday in a federal state north of the capital Addis Ababa, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said. The head of Ethiopia's Amhara state and his advisor were also killed during a coup attempt in their state, state media reported on Sunday. https://english.alarabiya.net/en/Ne...ief-of-staff-has-been-shot-top-aide-says.html Ethnic bloodshed.. Same as in Arab countries.
Africa should completely redraw its borders. Current borders are the borders of previous European colonies that split many tribes and forced many tribes that were at constant war with each other into 1 country. No wonder the whole continent, or at least sub Saharan portion, is a complete and utter dumpster fire. I think all countries should withdraw any support to all African countries and let them fight to carve out their own new countries. That sounds very bloody, but in a long term doing nothing results in even more suffering and death.
Well I guess that is what 1700 years of Christianity gets you. Of course, the notion that this is all as simple as 'ethnic violence' says a lot more about what people outside looking in think than about what is actually happening. Ethnicity is a big issue in Ethiopia, but the splits within ethnic & language groups there are very bit as deep as the divisions between them. Of course, understanding that requires not only an ability to understand shades of grey, but also to get past a bunch of cliched thinking about Africa. Neither seems likely any time soon.
Ethiopia's borders are not the borders of previous European colonies. They are the borders of an African. Ethiopia is home to dozens of different language & ethnic groups, all of which came under the control of an Amhara/Tigrinya dominated empire over a period of centuries. From the mid-late C19th Europeans had begun to place limits on the expansion of that empire by hoovering up the land on its periphery, but the only 'traditional' part of it that they took was Eritrea. Of course, Eritreans weren't all that excited about being ruled from Gondar or Addis, as they spent 40 odd years proving after WW2. Ethiopia's ethnic problems won't be solved by creating a bunch of smaller nations, but by the Ethiopian state respecting the diversity of its people and certain privileged minorities accepting that they do not rule the nation by birth right. Redrawing borders might well solve some problems in Africa, but only some. As many if not more are caused by other issues. Ethnic/tribal issues can be as much excuse as reason. In any case, there is going to be no grand redrawing, not least because African nations themselves do not want it. So, Africans need to get on with running their nations well. Other multi-ethnic states manage it, they can too.
Are you admitting diversity is a long-term recipe for bloodshed? I know many on the Left criticize the legacy colonial powers left behind and blame continued violence on poorly drawn out borders, but at the same time I find this criticism to be very hypocritcal, since it does inherently assume political societies need to be drawn around nationality and ethnic group to be stable. Or maybe the Left believes things are somehow different in developed countries?
Maybe 'the left' can tell the difference between the issues arising from borders imposed from the outside with no regard for much older tribal, ethnic & national borders and societies whose diversity stems from immigration to an existing nation/state. 'Conservatives' have a long history of supporting the imposition of borders on multi-ethnic regions....and then insisting that the unwilling minorities conform to the majority or face anything from legal inequality to genocide (genocide being quite popular). If your opposition to ethnic diversity means you are ready to dismantle the US & various European nations to accommodate the various ethnic groups who were forcibly incorporated into them over the past few centuries then speak up. If not then any issues with 'diversity' are simply a cover for not being able to tell people who are different to you what to do.
Africans have been fighting in tribal warfare for forever. How long until Africans have to take responsibility for their own dysfunction? Can't blame whitey forever. The following is a great article written by someone who spent 30 years in Africa. http://www.kimdutoit.com/2017/05/05/let-africa-sink/ As a result of all this, death is treated more casually by Africans than by Westerners. I, and I suspect most Africans, am completely inured to reports of African suffering, for whatever cause. Drought causes crops to fail, thousands face starvation? Yup, that happened many times while I was growing up. Inter-tribal rivalry and warfare causes wholesale slaughter? Yep, been happening there for millennia, long before Whitey got there. So here’s my (tongue-in-cheek) solution for the African fiasco: a high wall around the whole continent, all the guns and bombs in the world for everyone inside, and at the end, the last one alive should do us all a favor and kill himself.
