(C) ProPublica
This story was originally published by ProPublica and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Foreign Drones Tip the Balance in Ethiopia’s Civil War [1]
['Declan Walsh']
Date: 2021-12-20
An Ethiopian government spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the use of drones.
The demonstration of drone power confirmed that Ethiopia’s year-old conflict, largely a regional affair until now, has been internationalized. And it adds the country to a growing list of conventional conflicts, like those in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, where combat drones have become a significant factor in the fight, or even the dominant one.
“Increasingly, unmanned systems are becoming a game changer,” said Peter W. Singer, an expert on drone warfare at New America, a research group in Washington. “It’s not just about the raw capability of the drones themselves — it’s the multiplying effect they have on nearly every other human and system on the battlefield.”
For Mr. Abiy, the drones arrived just in time.
He launched a military campaign in Tigray in November 2020, a year after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, in coordination with the leader of neighboring Eritrea. But his forces suffered a humiliating defeat last summer when Tigrayan rebels forced them from Tigray, then started to push south. By late November the Tigrayans were approaching the city of Debre Birhan, about 85 miles north of Addis Ababa.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/20/world/africa/drones-ethiopia-war-turkey-emirates.html
Published and (C) by ProPublica
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/propublica/
