Notices by Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)

This week, I appeared on German state TV Deutsche Welle to discuss possible war in the Horn of Africa.

Among the points I make: Iran🇮🇷 bombing the UAE🇦🇪 could drain Emirati coffers a bit, impacting Emirati East African war operations.

This could lead to a postponing of war plans by Emirati client state Ethiopia🇪🇹 , while significantly hampering operations by its other proxy, the genocidal RSF in Sudan🇸🇩.

My interview begins at 12:24 at the link below.

https://youtu.be/v6chlOqON8g

All in all, it shows just how increasingly interconnected war is, especially wars in Africa and the Middle East. Also interconnected, are the suffering and resulting humanitarian catastrophes.

Stop war, avert war, all wars.

My interview in the clip is preceded by that of Tsedale Lemma, my first editor and journalism mentor back in the day when I was a reporter for the Ethiopian news magazine Addis Standard.

THREAD:

Selam fediverse friends,

A first in my career: I've co-produced an episode of the Al Jazeera TV show...The Listening Post and it will air tomorrow!

As you all know well, outrage over genocide in Gaza means Israel has lost the streets and the campuses of the western world.

So, Israel appears to have decided to focus its efforts on selling its narrative to....African audiences.

Also...tomorrow's episode will also feature the queen herself...Dr @timnitGebru

https://www.aljazeera.com/video/the-listening-post

Since 2024, Israel has been quietly flying out delegations of journalists, influencers, politicians, even religious figures from different African states. The carefully curated trips take African visitors to tourist and religious sites, the Knesset, and Oct 7 attack sites.

Nothing that shines a light on the suffering of pesky Palestinians of course!

There have been trips with delegations from Morocco, Cameroon, Senegal, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa and more going so far.

The trips have led to mixed results: in some African countries, strong backlash has occurred, as was the case with Morocco and Kenya. So, Israeli authorities have been selective: it is now selecting journalists from countries run by dictatorships, where there are no press freedoms. i.e Ethiopia.

For Kenya, where there is a strong media culture, there were no journalists willing to go, so Israel recruited influencers and gospel music singers.

Israel appears to be studying the results, country by country. For instance, following intense backlash from Moroccan journalists against colleagues who traveled to Israel, this year, Israel could not find journalists from Morocco. It sent a cultural troupe to instead.

All in all, our weakness as Africans? Too many dictatorships. A robust press culture would have us better resist efforts by not only Israel, but China and Russia as well, to sell us questionable narratives that violate humanity.

I'm ashamed to say this, but Ethiopian journalists have proven the most "effective" of all the Africans to be flown out to Israel. The Ethiopian airwaves and newspapers have been flooded with content that dehumanizes Palestinians, depicts Israel's genocide as a self defense move, or polishes Israel's reputation by highlighting advances in technology, agriculture or various religious heritage sites at a time when media focus should be on mass slaughter in Gaza.

Hello fediverse friends.

For The Globe and Mail newspaper, I've spent the last four months hearing from survivors of Myanmar's infamous scam compounds. Run by Chinese criminal syndicates with the collaboration of at least one Burmese pro-junta militia, the camps are staffed by trafficking victims, including a growing number of Africans who are beaten, electrocuted and raped if they don't meet scamming targets. They aren't paid for their efforts.

My story is published.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-africans-scam-camps-myanmar-scamming-rings-asia/

On Thursday, intense fighting between Ethiopian government forces & Tigrayan rebels broke out.

A brutal civil war between these factions killed hundreds of thousands from 2020 to 2022. Implementing a ceasefire agreed to in November 2022 has been complex. It has led to a breakdown in relations and now outright clashes.

The issue this time...the war could coalesce with the one in Sudan, with Tigrayan forces allied with the Sudanese government, and Ethiopia with the RSF.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/29/clashes-between-government-troops-and-tigrayan-forces-erupt-in-ethiopia

None of the factions have officially commented, and no open declaration of war has been made as of yet. A big change from the war of 2020-2022, Eritrean forces, who were allied with the Ethiopian army and committed numerous war crimes across Tigray, are now allied with Tigrayan forces against the Ethiopian army. Eritrea is suspected of providing support for Ethiopian rebels.

Yesterday, the African Union issued a statement calling for restraint.

https://au.int/en/pressreleases/20260130/auc-chairperson-calls-maximum-restraint-tigray-region-ethiopia

If you missed it, the African Union's communiqué in response to the invasion of Venezuela by US forces.

For all the many shortcomings of the AU, on the 🇻🇪 issue, it has certainly proven to be a far more robust defender of the rules based order and even international law than many EU states.

Some start to 2026!

Selam!

Wanted to hear opinions from (but not limited to) our American friends here:

So Semafor reported that both the Washington Post and NY Times were leaked info about the Caracas raid and planned Maduro abduction prior to it happening, but chose not to publish it. Apparently, it's a US media tradition meant to avoid compromising the safety of US troops.

Qs: is withholding such info consistent with journo practice? And beyond journalism, how do you feel about the decision?

@asllop right? Was wondering how journalism could be consistent with patriotism.

There has been genocide in each year of the 2020ies so far, what a cursed decade. A decade we kicked off with a global pandemic, lest we forget.

Here's to bucking the trend in 26.

Wishing you a happy new year fediverse fam.

"Genocide resumes," reads this weekend's cover of @thecontinent newspaper, as El Fasher finally falls after a 500+ day siege by the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.

The RSF, long implicated in genocidal violence in Darfur dating back to the days of its predecessor the Janjaweed back in 2004, have been on a deadly rampage killing thousands in recent days. Sudanese activists had been warning for over a year of what could happen if they were to overrun El Fasher. The disaster is now unfolding.

THREAD: This investigation took up most of my 2025 to produce, and it was published in this weekend's edition of @thecontinent newspaper.

On January 30 2025, a Djiboutian drone strike was carried out. Djibouti's government claimed it had attacked armed rebels in its own territory.

7 months of work reveals that it was actually a civilian massacre in neighbouring Ethiopia. The bloodshed and coverup implicating Djibouti, Ethiopia, France and Turkey & how international media got it all wrong.

The Continent, Africa's digital weekly pan-African newspaper, joins over 200 newsrooms in 70 countries across the world, blacking out their cover/home pages, in joint condemnation of Israel's continuing mass slaughter of Palestinian journalists, targeted for documenting genocide in their homeland. Get this weekend's edition, which also features a dispatch from Al Jazeera journalist Ansam Al-Kitaa.

@thecontinent https://www.thecontinent.org/

Wrote in @globalvoices about the Ethiopian doctors' labour movement. Their month long labour strike paralyzed Ethiopia's health sector. Ethiopian doctors are among the lowest paid doctors in Africa, with salaries on average ~70$ monthly. Strikers demanded better pay & fair working conditions among other things.

In response, authorities arrested 149 striking doctors.

Undeterred, the MDs are planning a new strike if reform isn't inplemented by Sept 15.
https://globalvoices.org/2025/07/15/whats-behind-the-mass-arrests-of-ethiopian-doctors/

Research and work travel has me busy, and I've killed my posting activity. We're back though, take #2190381. Fediverse was missed!

Bio in 2025.

https://ecfr.eu/profile/zecharias-zelalem/

Re: ICJ genocide case

Not that one. Sudan has filed a case against the UAE for complicity in genocide, citing the its support for the Rapid Support Forces, whose atrocities against non Arabs in Darfur have been described as genocide by the likes of HRW & the US State Dep.

It's unclear if the ICJ has jurisdiction, but oral arguments have been heard for yet another genocide accusation.

Was busy with work, will post regularly again, as we all ought to keep eyes on this.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/sudan-tells-icj-uae-complicit-and-driving-force-behind-genocide