Eritrea: I Didn’t Do It For You

Eritrea is a tiny, poor country, ranked 222 out of 229 on GDP per capita. History has not served it well. It was an Italian colony, a British colony, and the site of a U.S. military communications station; it was a UN administered region, annexed by Ethiopia, and winner of a civil war to establish its independence.

But the people have been screwed. The country has become a military dictatorship, with conscription and border defense replacing education and development.

Michela Wrong covered Africa as a correspondent for the BBC and Reuters. As such, she spent a great deal of time covering Eritrea’s war with Ethiopia. I Didn’t Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation is her 2005 book about the country’s history. Her research is detailed and her writing is beautiful.

And the story is tragic. What was most striking was the Cold War policy of giving nations aid in the form of weapons. That’s not what Eritrea needed. It needed support for its borders, funding for infrastructure, and development for its economy. It needed investment, and received none.

Wrong described the betrayal that the people of Eritrea felt as its civil war became some strange skirmish between the Russians and the Americans. No one really cared what was going on – and neither nation could afford the war. The result is a heartbreaking corner of history – and a nation that will not be ready for investors any time soon.