Tag: Assab

  • Ethiopia’s Double Standard: Talking Peace on the Nile, Hinting Force on the Red Sea

    Ethiopia’s Double Standard: Talking Peace on the Nile, Hinting Force on the Red Sea

    Assab is not just a port—it’s where Eritrea’s national story began. Calls for Eritrea to cede it ignore history, sovereignty, and the hard-won price of independence. Ethiopia champions international law on the Nile but risks undermining its credibility with threats over the Red Sea. True leadership requires consistency. Eritrea’s sovereignty over Assab is non-negotiable. Ethiopia…

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  • Gaza Asab: A Peace to Start More Wars

    Gaza Asab: A Peace to Start More Wars

    “Ports are traditionally built to host ships that encourage trade. But Abiy envisions a port to launch his navy and battleships. Abiy Ahmed’s maneuvers in the Horn mirror the tragic ambitions of old empires… poised to repeat history.”

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  • A Corporal Warned Eritrea!

    A Corporal Warned Eritrea!

    In 2021, Negarit 147, I raised the issue of SFO Safer, an oil tanker that was stranded across the Hodeida, a Yemeni port on the Red Sea since 2015. At the time, it carried over a million barrels of oil. SFO Safer used as a storage tank for Yemeni oil that was piped from the

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  • Abiy Threatens Eritrean Sovereignty

    Abiy Threatens Eritrean Sovereignty

    Last month the Ethiopian Federal Forces transported low-bed trucks loaded with tens of tanks heading towards the direction of Djibouti. The tanks were finally offloaded in Bure, a town on the Eritrean-Ethiopian border. Some sources claimed the tanks were transported from Djibouti to Assab by sea and from there, overland through Eritrean territories to Bure,

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  • Awate.com’s Saleh Johar interviews Meles Zenawi (2008)

    Awate.com’s Saleh Johar interviews Meles Zenawi (2008)

    The following was first published in May 26, 2008. It’s the first ever interview with the late PM Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia by an Eritreans entity since 1997.  The file was lost around 2012 due to some server mishap. Thereafter, several people have asked us about it but we couldn’t find it until recently. This republishing is dedicated

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  • A Miserable Country Goes to War with Itself

    A Miserable Country Goes to War with Itself

    Say what you will about outgoing president Trump, and despite the messenger, there are many countries in the word that fit this description, and the country in question is one of them. An epitome of the description. It is a country that recently decided to go to war with itself. I will not name this

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  • Ethnic Profiling of Tigrayans in Ethiopia

    Ethnic Profiling of Tigrayans in Ethiopia

    Ethiopian security forces are carrying out an extensive ethnic profiling and arresting Tigrayans, particularly in Addis Ababa and other major cities. The arrested also include Eritreans. Tigrayans and Eritreans are known as Tigre, a term that means those who hail from Semen, the Northern part from central Ethiopia. Eritreans are caught in the ethnic battles because of the compass

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  • UAE-Eritrea: Strained Relationship

    UAE-Eritrea: Strained Relationship

    Last June,  a small ship arrived from the UAE carrying relief aid for Eritreans in Dankalia. However, the Assab port authorities denied the ship entry to the port and it couldn’t berth at the Assab docks. Its captain decided to stay offshore where the ship threw its anchor and waited for few days until the UAE

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  • Book Review: Eritrea-Inception and Consolidation of Dictatorship

    Book Review: Eritrea-Inception and Consolidation of Dictatorship

    Published 2020, Uppsala Sweden. Text in Tigrinya. ISBN: 978-91-519-5571-1 Pp. 365 plus list of references.  Reviewed by Tekeste Negash Emeritus Professor July 24, 2020 This book, Rezene Tesfazion,( RT) explains in the introduction, is about life in exile. It explores the political reason (underground political activities in Asmara before 1974) as the main reason for

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  • Pandemic and Government Induced Oppression in Dankalia

    Pandemic and Government Induced Oppression in Dankalia

    The home of Eritrean Afar people, in the southern tip of Eritrea bordering the Red sea, Djibouti and Ethiopia, is going through calamities where the basic food has become scarce. The region is historically known as Dankalia though almost two-decades ago it was renamed the Southern Red Sea region by the ruling party of Eritrea.

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  • Horn of Africa: Port-Politics Taken to New Levels

    Horn of Africa: Port-Politics Taken to New Levels

    Yesterday, the Djiboutian President Ismael Guelleh concluded a two-day visit to Mogadishu where he met the Somali president Abdullahi Formaggio and gave a speech at the parliament. During his stay, Guelleh reopened the old Djiboutian embassy in Mogadishu and discussed several bilateral agreements with his counterpart. As Guelleh concluded his visit to Somalia, Osman Saleh,

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  • Assab: The Eritrean Nose

    Assab: The Eritrean Nose

    Was he right? Paulo Neruda! In his verses (as re-recounted in the movie Il Postino) in respect to an aquatic-terrestrial symbiotic relationship? At least, one (I, for example) would subscribe to the imaginative bliss it engenders in the mind. According to Neruda, with each “Wefari Bahri“, with each washing of the waters to the shore,

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  • Ethiopian Election 2020 and the Implementation of the Algiers’ Agreement

    Ethiopian Election 2020 and the Implementation of the Algiers’ Agreement

    So far, no agreement has been reached between the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments regarding the demarcation of the supposedly vital borders which were the cause of the devasting two-year war of 1998-2000. The undemarcated border was the excuse by the Eritrean ruling party for the two-decades of economic stagnation and the abuse of human rights

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  • Eritrean Economy: Transportation Crisis And Turf War

    Eritrean Economy: Transportation Crisis And Turf War

    A turf war has surfaced and it involves the Eritrean ministry of transportation and the economic arm of the ruling party. The squabble is expected to escalate further. Informants indicated that “a few other ministries are also awakening to the unfettered monopoly of the national economy by the ruling party.” The ruling People’s Front for

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  • A Stalemate Breaks Down in The Arabian Gulf

    A Stalemate Breaks Down in The Arabian Gulf

    Generally, when there is a national conflict, the people follow. Their salvation can only come from wise friends—but only if the antagonists are willing to listen, and only if their friends are not inflaming their passions. Sadly, the confrontation in the Arabian Gulf is happening in the worst time when a friend both sides would

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  • Cold War Ended, Hot War Continues

    Cold War Ended, Hot War Continues

    The 20th century is very much defined by the cold war that continued from 1947 to 1991. For Eritreans however, that period was not cold at all, it was a never-ending cycle of violence, bloodshed and social displacement. In 1991 the general mood was optimistic as the end of the cold war introduced alluring terms like

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