ERITREA MEDIA WATCH

 ERITREA MEDIA WATCH -Assassination attempt on President Isayas -US threats against Isayas over Samalia

As the Obama Administration threatens to punish Eritrea for its involvement in strife stricken Somalia, there are reports of an assassination attempt on the life of President Isayas Afewerki. Quoting sources from inside the ocuntry, two Eritrean Diaspora websites, Assenna and Asmarino, said the attack on the president’s vehicle occurred on August 13 on the road between Asmara and the Red Sea port of Massawa. The president was said to be unharmed. The sources describe the attacker as 43 year-old member of the national army, First Lieutenant Daniel Habte Yihdego. He was killed on the spot by presidential guards. The alleged attempt would come as no surprise to Eritreans and foreign observers given the government’s brutal and repressive policies. The Eritrean government has denied the report.

ERITREA’S DANGEROUS ‘IRAN AND AL-SHABAAB CONNECTIONS’

ERITREA remains chokingly gripped with the misfortunes of tyranny, hunger and despair. It was no wonder, therefore, that President Isayas Afewerki has been noticeably busy trying to divert attention away from the hot issues of human rights, democracy and famine. Nothing could be more diversionary than Isayas’s perceived actions in the service of Iranian and Al-Shabaab’s designs to undermine President Obama’s policies toward the Horn of Africa.

In a statement, the interim Somali government last week accused the Eritrean authorities of sending two plane-loads of weapons to Somalia in violation of UN arms embargo on that war-ravaged country. The Somali government alleged that two planes from Eritrea landed at an Al-Shababa controlled airstrip in Lower Shebelle Region in Southern Somalia on April 28 and May 1. Voice of America says the accusation is a repeat of events in 2007, when the United Nations said Eritrea was secretly sending arms and missiles to Al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab.  

Eritrea Media Watch

The Eritrean government has lashed out at the Daily Telegraph for its sensational report of a possible US “military action” against the Asmara government for “its support for a Somalian terrorist group linked to a plot to attack President Barack Obama” during his inauguration in January.

Writing from Asmara last week for the conservative British daily, Damien McElroy said Eritrea was backing al-Shabaab, a radical Somali group which the US describes as al-Qaeda-linked terrorist movement. US intelligence believes Al Shabaab has trained a dozen of Somalis to carry out attacks in the US, according to the Daily Telegraph.

The Meeting of Lepers, Piracy in the Sea and Arms Smuggling

What did it take for Isaias to invite Beshir to visit Asmara and for the latter to accept the invitation instantly? Beshir has to be rendered a leper first by the international community for him to visit a leper colony at such a short notice. It took the ICC to scare him to death to seek out his look-alike in Asmara. Poor Eritrea! What else could we expect from a nation led by a Grand Leper, shunned by everybody in the world except for the likes of Gaddafi and Mugabe, themselves old-time lepers.

Triangulating Bin Laden, Isaias and Sheikh Ahmed

Yesterday (March 19), Osama Bin Laden bombarded the world with one more of his web incendiary messages, but this time around it was entirely focused on Somalia, which tells us the extent to which he seems to have invested his hopes on that region to carry out his Islamic revolution. An analyst makes a similar point:

“‘I think people who were skeptical that al-Qaida has ambition in Somalia will now have to think twice’, Rashid Abdi, an analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank in Nairobi told The Associated Press.” (“Bin Laden exhorts militants on web message”, AP, march 19)