WOW! I thought I was up on world geography ... never heard of this place. My bad.
Eritrea is the Muslim portion of Ethiopia, at least they were until independence. This is the front lines of the war between Islam and Christianity. Ethiopia was basically cut off from the rest of Christianity for most of 1000 years and Eritrea has now cut them off from the sea.
They are worth a mention because they are the biggest state sponsors of Al Shabaab in Somalia; the group responsible for the Kenya mall massacre.
How about Somaliland?
A few years ago a friend (Reserve SEAL) asked me about it. he wasn’t satisfied with the intell he was getting from the Navy.
I stopped off at our local library and got him water depth charts, Warehouse descriptions, fork lift types and numbers, and pictures of the boats he would be operating with the Eritrean navy. They had an old WWII Higgins boat that they still operated to visit some of the small islands.
A few hours with the ‘CIA Handbook on Ethiopia’ and the import-export shelf was sufficient. We discussed local diseases, and recommended cooking methods and water purification.
Off he went, and the first day they gave as gifts to their counterparts boxes of “O” rings. They spent most of the day going over their counterpart’s scuba gear replacing the seals that had gone bad (dry rot).
There wasn’t an actual war, but he caught a round in his shoulder. The border was very testy. Eritrea had won their independence by rebellion from Ethiopia, and dictated the terms of peace in Addis Abbaba.
And the women there are exotic and beautiful. Don’t look too long, the locals take it personally.