Vol 57 No 7 | DJIBOUTIERITREA POW row heals 1st April 2016 President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh has been trying to capitalise on obtaining the release of four Djiboutian soldiers from Eritrean custody after mediation by Qatar. He hopes it will h...
Vol 56 No 23 | ERITREA Issayas looks north 20th November 2015 The President is helping the Saudi and Emirates' military campaign in Yemen in return for desperately needed money for the flagging economy Long isolated in the Horn of Africa, Eritrean President Issayas Afewerki is expanding his alliances and horizons. He has forged a new strategic military relationship with Saudi Ara...
Vol 56 No 19 | ERITREAETHIOPIA Tongue-tied BBC 24th September 2015 After years of cutting services, the BBC World Service made a dramatic U-turn this month when the Director of the BBC World Service Group appointed last year, Francesca Unsworth, a...
Vol 56 No 19 | ERITREA EU in denial 24th September 2015 The European Union is limiting the number of Eritreans whom member countries grant asylum to. Brussels is finalising a 200 million euro development aid package for Asmara which, al...
Vol 56 No 13 | ERITREA Let my people stay 26th June 2015 Eritrean refugees are at the heart of Europe’s migration crisis but a divided European Union is at odds about how to deal with them Once, European countries were happy to gently chide the Asmara government for the oppression of its impoverished people, but the flotillas of its people sailing across the Mediterr...
Vol 56 No 13 | ERITREA The men Issayas depends on 26th June 2015 After a failed coup in January 2013, President Issayas Aferworki moved to secure his regime by cracking down on dissent and radically restructuring the military. He deployed truste...
Vol 56 No 10 | ERITREACHINA Sam Pa's pals in Asmara 15th May 2015 The secretive Chinese business executive Sam Pa (aka Xu Jinghua and other aliases) shares an intriguing past with Eritrea's equally publicity-shy leaders. This emerged from a new r...
Vol 54 No 17 | ERITREA The diaspora strikes back 21st August 2013 Asmara’s diplomatic isolation, rising opposition confidence in the diaspora and a continuing hard line from the UN put the regime under stress Cracks in the revolutionary façade of the ever-secretive People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) may be appearing, after January’s failed coup and concer...
Vol 54 No 17 | ERITREAETHIOPIA Asmara and the Islamists 21st August 2013 Eritrea may be loosening relations with Al Shabaab A July report by the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea claimed that the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice has resumed support to the Somali...
Vol 54 No 4 | ERITREA Issayas staggers a little 15th February 2013 Whoever was responsible, the army rebellion and the seizure of Asmara’s television station expose growing cracks in the totalitarian facade News of mutiny filtered out of Eritrea in late January as it might out of a hermit kingdom. On 21 January, some 200 soldiers with at least two tanks had seized control of the Forto...