Word: eritrea
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Among outside powers, who supports whom in the conflict? To keep track of this, you need patience, a scorecard-and a map. Eritrea is backed by neighboring Sudan, which has long been at odds with Ethiopia and which provides most of the Eritreans' supplies via truck convoys. Radio Ethiopia regularly beams anti-Sudanese broadcasts to Khartoum, threatening to behead Sudanese President Jaafar Numeiry if and when the Ethiopian peasant army manages to roll into Sudan. In response, Khartoum-based Radio Eritrea advises Ethiopians: "We surround your troops in every city they illegally occupy. The war is doomed...
...Eritreans today are also supported by most of the other Arab states-Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and Kuwait. The Arabs have always tended to favor the Eritreans over the Ethiopians because they wanted the region to be Arab-oriented. Today the Arab states support Eritrea for an additional reason: the Soviets support Eritrea's enemy, Ethiopia. The Arabs are anxious that the Horn of Africa should not become a Russian zone of influence...
...have given the Ethiopians $100 million in military aid, while Libya's Strongman Muammar Gaddafi-ever the Arab world's odd man out-has done the same. Moreover, an estimated 3,000 Cubans are now in Ethiopia helping to prepare the peasant army for its assault on Eritrea...
Once inside Eritrea, we traveled cross-country, mostly by Land Rover, often at night. It was necessary for two people to drive-one at the wheel, the other calling out the terrain ahead or shouting out the depths of a river in the manner of Mark Twain...
Nowhere have I seen so many mirages as I saw in Eritrea. To reach out one's hand for what is clearly a shimmering pool of water nestled among rocks, to see reflections in the water, and then to touch sand and feel insects biting: this happened several times, as if one could never learn the lesson. It got to the point where to save precious water, I dry-washed my hands with dirt, only later to find my fingers and palms itching from infinitesimal slivers of thorns hidden in the dirt...