Eritrea’s President Issaias Afwerki bids for regional greatness

SHY ANDTPLFTPLF awkward, the teenage Issaias Afwerki did not stand out. As a student in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, the future president was known less for his bookish brilliance than for sudden flashes of temper. One day in the early 1960s his physics teacher, an American, handed him a particularly shoddy mark. Issaias walked calmly to the front of the class and slapped him in the face. An act of vindictiveness as well as self-confidence, it was characteristic of the man for the rest of his life.It is 30 years this month since Issaias, as leader of the secessionist Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, at last succeeded in overthrowing Ethiopia’s military dictatorship. In alliance with the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (), a rebel movement to Eritrea’s south, Issaias, now 75, assumed power in Asmara, while his friends took up the reins in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. Two years later Eritreans voted in a referendum to break away from Ethiopia. Issaias became the nation’s first and only president. There has never been an election.