THREAD: This investigation took up most of my 2025 to produce, and it was published in this weekend's edition of @thecontinent newspaper.
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Now HERE is where things get particularly dicey for this thread...and our investigation:
France may have been attempting to renew its agreement with Djibouti. But that doesn't mean it didn't already have one. Since 1991, France has had an agreement giving it responsibility for the safety and surveillance of Djiboutian airspace and waters, as is indicated on the website of France's Assemble Nationale.
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This is why France's role deserves to come under scrutiny.
French military presence in Djibouti overseeing airspace surveillance suggests that it's highly unlikely that France had absolutely no knowledge of a deadly Bayraktar TB2 drone crossing international frontiers, possibly multiple times over the course of hours...on its watch on 30/1/25
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Questions that need to be asked:
Did French forces play a role, either monitoring or assisting in some capacity, the Djiboutian air force as it piloted Turkish Bayrakar TB2 drones into what we now know is Ethiopian territory to carry out a civilian massacre?
Is there possible complicity & to what extent if so?
Were French authorities/forces in Djibouti notified in advance about Djibouti's planned mission on 30/1/25 and if so, what were they told about it?
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I don't have the answers to these questions and Djiboutian officials refused to provide me with them when I reached out.
A French Foreign Ministry official told me on Friday that he would try his "best to respond as quickly as possible" to my queries.
We'll just have to wait and see.
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Whatever the case...it is crystal clear to anyone observing, why all three countries were perfectly content with the way international media casually brushed the story aside, depicting the slaughter of women and children on Ethiopian soil as a strike targeting FRUD militants in Djibouti.
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For what it's worth, I also reached out to the FRUD rebels. Their chief, Mohamed Kadamy explained to me that his forces "were nowhere near the site when [the strike] happened." He added that FRUD rebels, largely recruited from the Afar population, do operate across the Ethiopian-Djiboutian border areas...but that none of the 3 reported Djiboutian strikes ever hit his forces.
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Now I promise you...I am not the conspiracy theory type.
But you have to admit, it looks pretty funny and peculiar in hindsight, how major French state backed media were very prompt to produce headlines placing the strike zone a full 8km away from where it actually happened, and depict the dead as FRUD rebels.
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But people from across the region are unanimous in their disappointment over the silence of this woman, Aisha Mohammed Mussa. Not only does she hail from the Afar ethnicity, she's actually the Ethiopian federal government's Minister of Defense.
Double whammy.
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I reached out to the CEOs of both Turkish state companies whose weapons caused the Siyaru massacre... Haluk Bayraktar of Baykar, and the CEO of Roketsan, Murat Ikinci...about whether they discouraged clients from indiscriminately firing upon civilians, and whether they had any comment about the involvement of their company's weapons in the Siyaru massacre. Silence.
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On June 23 2025, despite the best efforts of Djiboutian activists, the renewal of the French-Djiboutian military pact was ratified. During pre-vote debate, Jean-Paul Lecoq, a communist MP, accused "corrupt" Djiboutian officials of carrying out airstrikes against its people & those of neighbouring Ethiopia.
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But the vote passed with a comfortable majority. The Ethiopian government's silence, the biased media coverage by prominent international and especially French news agencies, and frankly...Lecoq being a communist...meant that his words, however truthful they were, would always be viewed as the ramblings of a radical.
https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/dossiers/DLR5L17N51789
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Mariam Mohammed Abdullah was severely injured in the strike. Due to no fault of their own, the massacre of her people, innocent Afar pastoralists, led to the alignment of the geopolitical interests of regional & international powers & a joint effort to depict this mother of eight as a terrorist.
She's a survivor and a brave woman.
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That's it. For a greater understanding of the devastating impact of cheaply manufactured drones in Africa, distributed by the likes of Turkiye...I produced this policy brief for the European Council on Foreign Relations earlier this year, which highlights the increasingly alarming trend that is ravaging communities like Mariam's across the continent.
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You can catch the full story in this weekend's edition of @thecontinent.org newspaper. My investigation is from page 15-19.
Sorry for the length. As always, I'm especially grateful for the kind feedback from the fediverse family. Thank you for your time and for caring about stories from my corner of the world.
Cheers,
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@ZekuZelalem any idea what the motive for targeting civilians was?
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I'm also curious about this....
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@futureisfoss @thomasjwebb thank you both! I have some theories...driving will get back shortly
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G gustavinobevilacqua@mastodon.cisti.org shared this topic on
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@bbacc @futureisfoss @thomasjwebb
I have theories, although I didnt dwell on them in the story because its mostly speculation, but the Afar-Somali conflict is one that plagues both Ethiopia and Djibouti. And Djibouti, where the Afar are largely on the periphery of power, is believed to back Somali forces in Ethiopia as well. In the context of that broader conflict, this may have been a revenge strike for battlefield losses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afar–Somali_clashes -
@ZekuZelalem @bbacc @futureisfoss @thomasjwebb
Maybe some readers, seeing Djibouti just as a small speck on the map of Africa, will be surprised to know that its area is 2000 km² larger than that of the state of Israel (more or less that of Lombardy, for our Italian friends).
