I'm John Bachelors who with Gregory Coppley, my colleague.

He is in Melbourne, Australia, summertime, but we're reflecting on events on either shore of the

Red Sea.

Now we go to Ethiopia, led by Prime Minister Abbe, who has been honored over these years, but

is now a man under siege by a coalition called

Fano.

At the same time, Mr. Abbey has made promises and remarks these last weeks to link himself and his what is left of his

command with Somaliland which is the north of Somalia.

Somalia itself is a brittle governance probably tumbling into

fragmentation. Al Qaeda's al-Shabaab is president. ISIS is present. The

African Union is withdrawing, the U.S. has been present and has made strikes

against al-Shabaab that may not continue once the African Union leaves.

At the same time, there's anecdotes that Iran or Iran's agents, smugglers, have

used Somalia itself, Mogadishu itself, to smuggle rocket parts across the Red Sea into Yemen.

That's the route that the Iranians take in order to re-arm the

huthies. However, I'm focusing on Ethiopia here, because Ethiopia, the last time we talked

Gregor is crumbling. Is there an update on Prime Minister Abbe against Fano?

Yes, the Fano movements when there are five separate commands, their military commands,

have been bolstered enormously and continually by the defection of Ethiopian National Defense Force members with their

equipment going over to the Pharno side and they gain 40-50,000 new combatants as a result. Now the reality is that the Fano groups are more or less surrounding

and containing Addis Ababa, the capital, so the government doesn't control a wide range of options,

but it still has some enormous force.

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