Inside Eritrea, Africa’s gulag state

of a quiet bar in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, Mulugeta (not his real name) hatches a plan to escape. He has made contact with the people-smugglers who say they will arrange the crossing to Sudan. His older siblings in America have paid the fee. From Sudan, he will travel to Libya—and then to Europe. But his voice is hushed: in Eritrea a young man needs permission from the army to move freely. Mulugeta fears being conscripted and sent to fight in Ethiopia. He does not want to die in another country’s civil war. Four years ago, young Eritreans caught a glimpse of a more hopeful future. Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s new prime minister, came to Asmara and embraced Issaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s dictator. The two signed a peace deal ending one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts, a bloody border war that had cost some 80,000 lives. It was fought most intensely about two decades ago for control of a few barren hillsides along the border with Ethiopia’s Tigray region.