The patrician wonks at the Council on Foreign Relations raise the alarm in a January report that Africa will be increasingly strategic to global energy security in the coming century—and that China is beating the US to the punch in securing access to the continent's fossil fuel resources. From Reuters, Dec. 7:

THE US faces stiff competition from China for oil supplies from Africa and Washington must take a more strategic view of the continent by investing more resources there, US experts say.

From Amnesty International, Dec. 7:

Eritrea: Government must end religious persecution

"You will receive no visitors and you will rot here until you sign this paper."

The reported words of an Eritrean military commander to Helen Berhane, a well known gospel singer of the Rema Church who has been detained incommunicado in Mai Serwa military camp since 13 May 2004. She is currently held in a metal shipping container.

Helen Berhane is just one of many people in Eritrea who are locked up because they do not belong to an officially recognised faith. In the last 3 years, at least 26 pastors and priests, some 1750 evangelical church members, and dozens of Muslims have been detained by the government. Many have been tortured and churches have been shut down.

Nice sentiments. Now we wonder if the good king will abolish public flogging, as demanded by Amnesty International. Dec. 7:

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah appealed to Muslim leaders on Wednesday to unite and tackle extremists who he said have hijacked their religion.

At a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) -- the world's biggest Muslim body -- in the holy city of Mecca, Abdullah said the world's 1 billion Muslims were weak and divided, a description echoed by other leaders.

We wrote in our last post on the Egyptian elections:

The first-round results cast a dubious light on the apparent assumption of the neocons that a wave of democratic revolutions in the Arab and Islamic worlds will bring pro-West "moderates" and technocrats to power. They may be dramatically underestimating the degree to which radical Islam has cornered the market on popular unrest in this part of the planet. Their model seems to be Czechoslovakia 1989. A more appropriate one might be Algeria 1992.

Alas, this analysis has been further vindicated by subsequent events. Dec. 7:

DAMIETTA, Egypt (Reuters) - Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and two men were killed in the last stage of Egypt's parliamentary elections on Wednesday in which Islamists said security forces blocked voters to limit their gains.

Perhaps some of our Eritrean readers could explain the logic of this decision:

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) - Eritrea has ordered the expulsion of U.S., Canadian and European staff of the U.N. peacekeeping mission that monitors the tense border with neighboring Ethiopia, United Nations officials said Wednesday.

Concern has been growing that war could again erupt between the two countries. Both have been increasing troops along the border and two weeks ago the United Nations threatened to impose sanctions if Eritrea fails to ease restrictions imposed on peacekeepers.

Here's the exact quote, as reported in the New York Times Dec. 7:

"I am Saddam Hussein!" the former ruler said repeatedly, shaking his fist. "Like the path of Mussolini, to resist occupation to the end, that is Saddam Hussein," he said.

All sides continue to exhibit the utmost cynicism in the increasingly confused Iraq war. The anti-terrorist SITE Institute notes that the self-declared al-Qaeda in Iraq has issued a communique on the Nov. 28 assassination of Sheikh Ayad al-Izzi, a prominent Sunni parliamentary candidate with the Iraqi Islamic Party. According to SITE:

Commenting on who killed al-Izzi, the message implicates the US, saying: “The Americans have an interest to kill Ayad al-Azzi and those like him so as to instigate civil wars between the followers of the Sunna and their protégés.

The December issue of The Broken Rifle, newsletter of the War Resisters International, which supports conscientious objectors from military service around the world, offers this report from a strategically-placed country not often in the news: Eritrea. We noted in our last post on Eritrea that military tensions with Ethiopia are once again growing. The secession of Eritrea in 1993 left Ethiopia landlocked. Ethiopia is much closer to the US, which has an interest in securing the Horn's access to the Red Sea (just north of the Strait of Djibouti chokepoint, already threatened by Somali pirates) against Islamic militants. Therefore Eritrea's strongman Isaias Afwerki is playing up supposed Islamist subversion of his regime—both as an excuse to suppress opposition and to win Washington's good graces. If war comes, it is Eritrean and Ethiopian conscripts who will be the first to pay with their lives in this power game. This report, which starts with a background primer on the country, notes thousands of Eritrean conscientious objectors who have been imprisoned or forced into exile. It seems that many have also been tortured and even executed.