The al Qaeda-allied Somali terrorists of Al-Shabaab (“The Youth”), and the pirates that comprise their “navy,” have repeatedly gained world attention—and then been forgotten. In July, Al-Shabaab was blamed for homicidal raids in Kenya, as revenge for Kenyan intervention against the Islamist extremists in Somalia beginning late last year. Somali Islamists have also manipulated nearby states, among them the small nation of Eritrea, separated from Somalia by tiny Djibouti, which has a Somali majority.
Eritreans claim a community of about 100,000 in the U.S. They are a familiar presence in Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia, where their largest contingent—estimated at 30,000—is found. Their second biggest concentration is in the San Francisco East Bay region, with some 15-20,000. To most non-Africans, Eritreans are not much different from Ethiopians. Indeed, Eritrea came into existence through a secessionist war against Ethiopia, with which Eritrea, an Italian colony from 1890 to 1941, was federated after World War II, under a British mandate approved by the United Nations. Ethiopia annexed Eritrea outright in 1952.
