From 2010, Selam Kidane writing in Open Democracy:
It is a rare form of success for a small country to engage in perennial disputes with often larger and more powerful neighbours yet to survive intact. Even more so for the leadership of this country to reinforce its own power in the process. This is a rough but workable description of the experience of Eritrea under President Isaias Afewerki since the country's independence from Ethiopia in 1991, and especially in the decade after 2001. This experience is also a unique case-study in African - and perhaps world - politics; a painful reality to those many Eritreans who have endured repression and exile under Afewerki’s rule; and a challenge to the international community to understand the kind of leader ↑ and state it is dealing with...[continue reading]