Eritrea: catch all

[JJackson]

Sudan clashes prompt UN pull-out

The UN has withdrawn non-essential staff from Sudan's town of Abyei after a day of clashes between government forces and southern former rebels.

Abyei is the key to Sudanese Oil and to the north south problem. The interim constitution affords it a special status at the time of the constitutionally promised 2011 referendum. (links and more details in posts #18 & 20)

[JJackson]

Navies to tackle Somali pirates

The vote means nations will be able to send warships to tackle pirates
The UN Security Council has unanimously voted to allow countries to send warships into Somalia's territorial waters to tackle pirates.

The resolution permits countries that have the agreement of Somalia's interim government to use any means to repress acts of piracy for the next six months.

Twenty-six ships have been attacked by pirates in the waters in the past year.

The vote came as the UN launched separate peace talks with factions involved in Somalia's conflict.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7432612.stm

The article also covers the UN backed Djibouti talks. The problem is the parties attending - but not talking directly to each other - are the interim government (who have no support or power beyond that of their Ethiopian military backers & US political backers) and the ARS (the same mob that formed as the ALS in Asmara last Sept.). The ARS are mainly old UIC members but don't including the Al-Shabab wing which seems to be becoming the pre-eminent force on the ground. So it is unclear who - if anyone - the parties not talking represent.

From the Jamestown Foundation last Oct.
Splits Developing in Somali Insurgency By Sydney Irving

This rather strange piece on Afewerki stealing $10million of the ARS's money.
http://www.mareeg.com/fidsan.php?sid=5986&tirsan=3

As always when dealing with this area it is tricky to know what to believe.

(LOL I just ran the spell check and was a little hasty with the 'change all' button - I think I have replaced all the arse's back to ARS's)

[Beelzebubalicious]

See, Afwerki is a friend of the US in the GWOT....Afwerki may be a lot of things, but I seriously doubt he's a thief.

[davidbfpo]

An ICG report, 28 pgs. on this forgotten country, partly as it appears to rebuff all external interest and is a dictatorship:http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/F...mpaign=mremail

[davidbfpo]

A year since the last post this forgotten country gains an advocate in a retired DoS diplomat:http://africanarguments.org/2013/12/...by-hank-cohen/

[davidbfpo]

A series of articles in The Guardian on this forgotten country, where 3% of the population have fled, even though there is no war today, just a strict dictatorship.

Amongst the thousands of migrants / refugees trying to reach Western Europe are plenty from Eritrea; which may explain these articles and I have only linked two.

One ends:

But migrants tell a different story. Welde Giorgis left Eritrea in 2006 because he no longer believed internal reform was possible. The average Eritrean is now “a helpless victim”, he says. “And that’s why you see these large numbers of Eritreans leaving the country at great risk to their lives. Many die from dehydration in the Sahara. Many have drowned in the Mediterranean. Many have become victim to organ harvesters in the Sinai. But nobody cares. Eritrea has become an earthly hell, an earthly inferno for its people – and that’s why they are taking such huge risks to their personal lives to escape the situation. It’s become unliveable.”

Link:http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...-what-is-going

I did find this bizarre (from the same article):

Eritrea’s own government blames human trafficking networks for the exodus, and this week even asked the UN Security Council to help combat the smugglers who are “dispersing and debilitating our human resources”.

Why we left:http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...-state-two-men

[davidbfpo]

Once again The Guardian report on Eritrea, this time from within:http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ass-emigration

A taster:

The prosaic truth is that this is just another of the nasty regimes that persist in parts of the world. Eritrea is a one-party state with no elections, has had no functioning civil society since 2001 and, with at least 16 journalists currently behind bars, is ranked bottom of 180 countries assessed in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index. The regime sows paranoia and uncertainty, leading to divergent views over how far the limits of free speech can be tested.

A recent UN inquiry on human rights described extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, indefinite military conscription and forced labour. Its report found “a pervasive control system used in absolute arbitrariness to keep the population in a state of permanent anxiety”.