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Sidama Referendum Passes
Last week, we reported on a status referendum in southern Ethiopia, where the
Sidama Zone was voting on whether to secede from the country's Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (SNNPR).
Over the weekend, the Ethiopian government announced that the referendum had passed by a very large margin: According to preliminary results, an enormous
98.5% of voters chose increased self-rule. (Voter turnout was also reported to be extremely high, at 99.8%.)
Ethiopia's government has signaled that it plans to respect the result, making the Sidama Zone into the country's tenth self-governing "
regional state". This comes despite warnings that Sidama's promotion will supercharge campaigns for statehood in other regions, which could lead to a cascade of mini-secessions that would shake up Ethiopia's administrative structure and politics.
But the Sidama Zone won't become a state immediately - there will likely be a
long, contentious process, which requires an amendment to Ethiopia's constitution. One major issue is that the SNNPR's capital city,
Hawassa, is located inside the Sidama Zone. If it's going to become the capital of the Sidama Region instead, then the SNNPR will have to find a new capital and move all its government institutions there.
Sidama will become the second-smallest of the Ethiopia's regional states, after the
Harari People's National Regional State (the cities of Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa aren't considered regional states, even though they stand separately from the other regions). Its promotion will also create a new state-level exclave - a part of a state that's not connected to the rest of the state - by cutting off the
Gedeo Zone to its south from the rest of the SNNPR.
Want to know when these changes actually happen? You'll hear about it here on PolGeoNow!
In the past month, Turkey and its allies have further consolidated their chunk of territory in northern Syria, while the Assad-loyal Syrian military has deployed along most of the rest of the border, in line with the Russia-brokered agreement for a "safe zone" free of Kurdish militia fighters.
Amid a US withdrawal, Turkey and its rebel allies have begun their long-threatened intervention against Kurdish-led fighters in northeastern Syria, who now have struck a deal with the Assad government to share their territory and jointly fight back against Turkey.
Since July,
fighting for control of capital city Tripoli has largely remained at a
stalemate, with each of the country's rival governments losing and the
recapturing territory, though there have been some small net changes in control. 
Over the past month and a half, fighting between rebels and government forces in the northwest has dominated events in Syria. Meanwhile, the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS/ISIL) remains confined to uninhabited desert areas of central Syria. 
