Category: Opinion
Assessing Somalia’s 2021 Presidential Election P1
Hargeisa (HAN) October 19, 2020. Regional Security and Election Initiatives – Part 1 (join Forum DOORASHADA-20/21). Somalia’s current electoral system structures Somali political and regional tribal competition, shapes selection outcomes, and exists in relation to the processes of competition between organized interest groups in Somalia and its regional Federal member states. Somalia’s 2017 election was…
Somalia: Intelligence Chief May be Green Lighting Terrorism Against Americans
Djibouti (HAN) Regional Security Watch. Opinion By. Michael Rubin (Resident Scholar -American Enterprise Institute). Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute paid a courtesy visit to the President of the Republic of Somaliland, His Excellency Musa Bihi Abdi, last year. M. Rubin said “The US needs to recognize Somaliland before Russia does.” Another terror threat…
Ethiopia: Future of Escalating Federal-Tigray Tension
The dispute between the federal government and the Tigray Regional Government seems to have reached a tipping point. The small bubbles that have been building up for more than two years since the last General Assembly of the defunct four-party coalition of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in Hawassa, look to have gathered…
Djibouti: Taming the dragon, India challenging Beijing’s military influence
DJIBOUTI (HAN) October 16. 2020. Public Diplomacy and Regional Stability Initiatives News. Monitoring Regional Issues. BY: Lokesh Kumar. By joining the Djibouti Code of Conduct as an observer, India gains strategic heft in the Indian Ocean Region and can challenge Beijing’s military influence. Recently, India decided to join the Djibouti Code of Conduct/Jeddah Amendment …
Ethiopia: Promoting Peaceful and Credible Election in Ethiopia
The Sixth National Election to be conducted in Ethiopia in line with the recommendation of the Ministry of Health and the resolution passed by the HPR is on the horizon. The National Electoral Board has recently reported that 90 percent of purchases required for the election have already been done. The postponement of the election…
South Sudan: Advice to Sant’Egidio-mediated peace process
According to media reports, peace talks between the government of South Sudan and the holdout opposition group, the South Sudan Opposition Movements Alliance (SSOMA) resumed today 9th October, in Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Community of Sant’Egidio. While every peace effort is something positive, there are already crises that threaten the Rome Process…
Ethiopia: Tigray-federal tit-for-tat threatens trouble
The House of Federation (HoF) in its latest letter addressed to the Tigray Regional State Council demanded the latter to halt what the upper house of parliament called an “unconstitutional process” to hold a regional election. The request came amid preparation by Tigray’s government to run polls for the regional state council before the end of its existing…
Eritrea: Power to the Youth
Paris (HAN) October 2. 2020. Public Diplomacy and Regional Stability Initiatives News. Opinion by Matthew Norman. Eritrea: In New York in 1899 a newsboy named Kid Blink gave a galvanizing speech to his fellow “newsies”: “Friens and feller workers. Dis is a time which tries de hearts of men. Dis is de time when we’se…
Why electoral reform matters: Lessons for the US, from Kenya
In an article entitled The Election That Could Break America meant for The Atlantic magazine’s November edition but published early online because of its “urgency”, Barton Gellman lays out the potentially scary scenario that could unfold in the United States in the likely event President Donald Trump loses the upcoming election and refuses to concede.…
Ethiopia: The Republic of Tigray?
For decades, the specter of secession has hung over Ethiopian politics. From the early 1960s, Eritrean insurgents fought for independence, until they finally achieved their goal in a 1993 referendum. At times over the past half century, Somali, Oromo, and Tigrayan liberation fronts all also toyed with cleaving from the Ethiopian state. Those dynamics were…
