Yes, that’s me on an old Soviet made Ethiopian tank. It is only fitting that any narrative about Eritrea begins here at junkyard for military hardware on the outskirts of Asmara. This is a country forged in the crucible of war. It is a short 27 ears since the country final achieved independence after a long and bloody civil war with Ethiopia that stretches back to the late 1970s when Ethiopia’s last emperor Haille Sailassie was still in power. Most of the conflict was conducted on the Ethiopian side by the repressive Communist regime known as the Derg that ousted Sailassie and ruled with an iron fist, with Soviet support throughout the 1980s.
It was a bloody war with the larger, numerically stronger Russian backed Ethiopians conducting waves of assaults within Eritrea. Over more than a decade of war the Eritrean rebels were on the back foot, constantly yielding territory until the Ethiopians controlled the capitol Asmara and most of the inland territory of Eritrea. In the early 1990s the rebels pushed back at a time when domestic pressures and the collapse of their main backer the USSR resulted in the Ethiopian dictator Mengistu fleeing to the safe haven of that “paragon” of human rights and democracy, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. The Eritreans won their land back and, for the first time independence. Sadly that has not resulted in a democratic state and as, so often happens in Africa, another dictator steps in and this place has been ruled by the one man in a one party state without election to this day.
This place has been described as the North Korea of Africa. It is neither socialist nor communist. The prevailing politics is more there to keep the dictator in power. Part of this process is isolation from the outside world and not much information leaks into or out of this place. Visas are difficult to obtain. Flights in and out are sparse and travel anywhere outside the capitol Asmara is restricted and permits are required and travel must be with a guide. I am looking forward to seeing as much as I can of this “closed” country.
