Eritrea is a key player in the West Asian/North African strategic theater, controlling a long swathe of the southwestern Red Sea. It staunchly refuses to collaborate with US/EU/NATO security architectures, leading Western propagandists to denounce it as “the North Korea of Africa.” As if that weren’t enough to make it a regime-change target, Eritrea eschews IMF and World Bank debt peonage and claims its natural resources for its people.
While the nation has achieved high rates of vaccination against many diseases, its national Covid task force chose not to mass vaccinate because they saw no
signs that the pandemic had spread there. Despite weathering the viral outbreak with relatively few deaths, Eritrea’s policy predictably stirred the ire of Western
media.
Since Israel launched its genocidal assault on the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has stood out among world leaders for his withering condemnation of Western support for the onslaught. “Are these Western leaders still human beings? Do they have any morality?” he asked.
Propaganda campaigns like that targeting Eritrea in the space of two months aren’t launched for no reason. Nayirah told Congress that Iraqi soldiers were throwing babies on the floor to steal their incubators before the First Gulf War. Susan Rice claimed that Gaddafi was giving Viagra to his soldiers to help them rape women before NATO bombed Libya. The West and the OPCW alleged that Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons on his own people before the US/NATO began bombing Syria, and of course the Bush Administration accused Iraq of possessing “weapons of mass destruction.” [Now Trump and Iranian ‘nukes’]
So, are the US/EU/NATO plotting regime change in Eritrea, whether by sanctions, proxy war, color revolution, or outright military intervention? The sanctions and proxy wars have been going on for decades, and a color revolution is brewing. All options are no doubt under consideration, given the new scramble for the Red Sea.