I don’t question what you say but I note their president stated in the article story here has the first name Isaias , I was always under the impression, Eritrea was sort of split religiously speaking.
“The registered, census-based religions are the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church (a miaphysite Oriental Orthodox denomination), the Roman Catholic Church, Eritrean Lutheran Church, and Sunnite Islam. All other religions are persecuted, including other denominations of Islam, such as Shi’ism, and other denominations of Christianity, such as any of the myriad Protestant denominations.”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea
The Eritreans I think in spite of religion, are just ancient foes of the Ethiopians, Eritreans enjoyed being an Italian Colony. Eritreans helped Italy invade Ethiopia. Eritrea also whipped Ethiopia and put in new rulers by defeating them in that war in the ‘90s I believe. Let’s not all forget Ethiopia was a client of the Soviet Union.
See pictures of Italian Military Cemeteries on this webpage: http://www.asmera.nl/eritrea2011/eritrea31052011.htm Interesting how they are kept up immaculately. That website has images of Italian architecture too.
In fact, when Eritrea defeated Ethiopia, the Ethiopians had the old Soviet tanks.
You may well be right. Even the CIA world fact book doesn’t give a religious breakdown. The President is supposedly Eastern Orthodox. I guess I made a false assumption based on their support for Al Shabaab. Thanks for the correction.