The New York Times' increasingly questionable Michael R. Gordon has yet another report Feb. 23 (with Mark Mazzetti) based largely on anonymous sources. But this one, "U.S. Used Bases in Ethiopia to Hunt Al Qaeda in Africa," is just telling us what an astute reading-between-the-lines could have gleaned from previous reportage from the Horn of Africa. It does, however, have some vindicating tidbits for those of us who were prematurely correct in warning of a US proxy war in the Horn. Here are the relevant parts, emphasis and interjections added:

We noted that the current (Feb. 22) issue of The Economist has an uncharacteristically favorable article on Eritrea, saying it can "help or hinder progress in the Horn." The same issue has an equally uncharacteristic slap at the rival Ethiopian regime, asking "Should the West go on helping a repressive Ethiopia?" It starts out with an outline of aid projects in Ethiopia, as if "the West's" only interest in Africa was fighting poverty. Only at the very end does it mention the strategic struggle in Somalia which is driving the West's alliance with Addis Ababa. This is pretty indicting, but we smell empty hand-wringing—or, at best, a warning that Meles Zenawi may not prove to be a stable proxy in the long run... An excerpt from The Economist:

Hmmm, Eritrea got a flurry of headlines when Somalia was heating up a couple of months ago—then disappeared. What happened? This telling Feb. 22 story from The Economist, "Eritrea: Still in the Regional Game?," is reprinted in New Jersey's Eritrea Daily:

When Ethiopia invaded Somalia at the same time as Somalia's Islamists were getting arms from (among others) Eritrea, there were fears that the war in the Horn of Africa might spread. Eritrea has long been at daggers drawn with Ethiopia, and fought a bitter war with it between 1998 and 2000 over a disputed border. But so far the latest war in the region has been contained. This week the UN Security Council authorised the African Union to send peacekeepers to Somalia for at least six months. Ethiopia, meanwhile, has emerged as the Horn's top dog.

As we noted in a related post on Egypt, Compass Direct News, which monitors global persecution of Christians, likely has its own evangelical axes to grind. But this still doesn't smell very good. From a Feb. 22 report:

An Eritrean Christian died in prison last week, four and a half years after the Eritrean regime jailed him for worshipping in a banned Protestant church.

From Compass Direct News, Feb. 22. Compass Direct monitors global persecution of Christians, and likely has its own evangelical axes to grind. But nobody else is covering this.

Police detained Christian families in Upper Egypt and forced them to deny arson attacks on their homes during a spate of anti-Christian violence last week, the families said.

AlJazeera includes the following interesting passage in its Feb. 22 coverage of the conviction of Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman. Now, did "rendition" victim Abu Omar show up to support Soliman, despite his taunts of reactionary Islam on his blog? Does he support him as a fellow victim of state oppression? Or does he view him as an apostate kafir? Or perhaps both?

Freedom's on the march in Washington's top Arab client state, and the world's second-largest US aid recipient after Israel. From the BBC News, Feb. 22:

An Egyptian court has sentenced a blogger to four years' prison for insulting Islam and the president. Abdel Kareem Soliman's trial was the first time that a blogger had been prosecuted in Egypt.

Wow, like, nostalgia for the '80s, dude. This should be read to the strains of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Except that now the Russkies are threatening to nuke former Warsaw Pact members—which just indicates how desperate their post-imperial position is, and (contrary to the conventional wisdom) makes them more likely to use their nukes. We can only hope the decrepit things will fail to fire... From RFE/RL, Feb. 20: