Tag: state failure
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Eritrea Celebrates — but Its President Is Somewhere Else
I. A Preface of Reluctance and Recognition For more than two decades, I avoided President Isaias Afwerki’s speeches. They were predictable, monotonous, and devoid of substance — exercises in tedium that tested the limits of my patience. His demeanor, too, has always unsettled me: the way he talks, the way he walks, the way he…
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The Anatomy of State Failure in Eritrea
I. The Origins of Authority States do not fail in a single dramatic moment. They unravel slowly, beginning in the quiet spaces where no one imagines politics is taking place. The earliest fractures appear not in ministries or parliaments but in the daily negotiations of ordinary people. A fisherman trading his morning’s catch for a…