Eritrea sits on the northern part of the Horn of Africa, bordered by the Sudan in the west, Ethiopia and Djibouti in the south and Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea. The country consists of lowland Red Sea coast that backs up to a 9000' mountainous plateau that runs north-south into Ethiopia. On the west side of the mountains a desert-like savannah stretches into the Sudan. Eritrea lies along one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, which affords it great political significance. The country has 4.4 million people, is split evenly between the Islam and Christian religions, and per capita GDP of $740/year.

Nomads settled the area around 2000 B.C. from the deserts of southern Egypt and northern Sudan. The area converted to Islam during that religion's great run across the region around 900 A.D. Muslim mercantilsm tied the area closer to the Arab societies to the north. (As opposed to the Abyssinian empire to the south, which later become modern day Ethiopia.) The Ottoman Turks annexed Eritrea's coast in the 1500's and ruled it for several hundred years.

When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, Italy began to look to Northern Africa as possible colonial territory and by the 1890's had asserted control over most of the country. This lasted until their defeat at the hands of the British during World War II. Along with India and Palestine, the British gave the Eritrea question to the UN to solve and in 1952 it decided to incorporate the region into a federation with Ethiopia. Most Eritreans opposed this, and Ethiopia's strong arm tactics incorporating the area into its empire soon led to the development of Eritrean resistance groups. After a 32 year civil war, the Eritreans managed to break free from Ethiopia and finally established their own country.

A border conflict reignited another war in the late 1990's between the two countries that cost each tens of thousands of lives and worsened an already deteriorating humanitarian and refugee situation. A peace treaty signed in 2000 ceased hostilities. Today, UN forces monitor the contested border region.