Saturday, October 16, 2010
Eritrea: A Puzzlement On Purpose
Eritrea can pretty much be summed up by the fact that even North Korea has more of a free press than they do. If it wasn't so completely dirt poor it would be declared a rogue nation by the State Department and we'd isolate it diplomatically. They are about as closed a society as you can get, without a single foreign journalist in the entire country. Not one. It seems to me that they're so bats**t crazy they're likely to start sponsoring terrorism just for the notoriety. I mean, they fight for independence from Ethiopia for years and years, get their independence, and then instead of working with their now landlocked southern neighbor they get all spiteful and close off all Ethiopia's access to the sea. I'm sure they were sitting back and thinking, "We showed them!" but then a funny thing happened. Little Djibouti raised a hand and said, "We'll be your port of entry." Now Ethiopia and Djibouti are relatively prosperous and Eritrea is poorer and poorer. Smooth move, guys.
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May be you should do a bit of reading what is behind their grievance before ending up with simplistic conclusion.
ReplyDeleteYou might find, Eritrea was instrumental to thwart OBL spreading his terrorism while hiding in Sudan before 9/11.
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=42407
Before they were back-stabbed on the border deal with Ethiopia.
http://www.slate.com/id/2178793/
A little bit of reading is what I do best. Simplistic conclusions are the second best thing I do. Overly harsh sounding posts under the guise of seeming clever are the third best thing I do. Snarky replies to comments are the fourth best thing I do.
ReplyDeleteYou may be entirely right about this. My review of the current state of affairs in East Africa is based on my initial impressions after reading the local press and talking to some experts on Africa at the National Defense University. I'm 100% sure that my opinions will change as this deployment progresses.