Great thread btw.

The story reminds me of another American girl, Nawar (Nora) Al-Alwaki, killed in the US raid on Yakla in Yemen. She was 8 years old. This happened during tRump’s first week as President in 2017, and as far as I can tell no one in the Administration and very few in US society really cared. It’s very sad.

This article is from Feb. 2017, when the tRump Admin was still lying about every aspect of the deadly and useless raid.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/yemen-strike-eight-year-old-american-girl-killed-al-awlaki

recommended thread

She is the founder of One Day Seyoum & managed to collect over 440,000 signatures for a petition submitted to the US gov, demanding action on Ciham. This is her when she submitted it, in late 2025.

She's a former Amnesty International researcher, &now journalist at Al Jazeera. She also won the Magnitsky prize in 2025.

Her uncle Seyoum Tsehaye is a journo held incommunicado in Eritrea since 2001.

May the demands of 440k be heard.

But the bare minimum is closure about the fate of an American, a child political prisoner who has spent nearly half her life incommunicado.

I wonder if it's too much to expect the US press circle to bring this up as the US prepares for this foreign policy switch up.

We'll need the scrutiny then.

LA native Ciham Ali Abdu has now been disappeared for 13 years, 5 months, one day and counting. She'd be 29 years old today.

The Eritrean human rights advocacy group One Day Seyoum have been campaigning for her release for years. Their website:
https://onedayseyoum.org/ciham

Is she even on the agenda?

HRW article on the 10th anniversary of her arrest in 2022.

Eritrea: 10 Years Behind Bars for Ex-Minister’s Daughter

The Eritrean government should immediately release Ciham Ali Abdu, held incommunicado since she was arrested a decade ago, when she was only 15, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org)

This despite no one in the Trump admin publicly admitting it. The good thing from this is it appears that the US is looking for alternatives from war with Iran.

Three years later, legal scholars would deem these atrocities and others to have been genocide.

“They Started Burning the Homes”: Ethiopians Say Their Towns Are Being Razed in Ethnic Cleansing Campaign

Survivor testimony and satellite imagery in Ethiopia’s Tigray region provide evidence of wide-ranging destruction by Eritrean soldiers.

VICE (www.vice.com)

The US is clearly getting in on the strait craze, and has identified proximity to the Bab El Mandeb as being of critical importance.

reuters.com

(www.reuters.com)

If the Washington Post's report about the KSA lobbying for the US to attack Iran is accurate, then the KSA's primary motivation was probably finding a conduit for its oil in the Hormuz with no risk of rockets firing at them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/28/trump-iran-decision-saudi-arabia-israel/

As you all know, that hasn't exactly panned out.

Some 4 million barrels of crude per day pass through the Bab El Mandeb. It has always been a strategic oil corridor but even more so now. And now there is a geopolitical race for this strait, with the realization that the reliability of the Hormuz is going to be compromised for a while.

Global powers are falling over themselves to establish ties with Eritrea's leader who for decades they dismissed as an eccentric, pro-Moscow dictator. This despite him standing accused of overseeing a genocide.

Eritrea lies south of Saudi Arabia, & the Bab El Mandeb strait lies off its coastline. Key word, strait. You see where I'm going with this.

The value of Eritrea's position has suddenly skyrocketed, with the Hormuz uncertainty.

The West is courting favour with Eritrea, putting aside human-rights concerns

Main reason for surge of flattering rhetoric and meetings is Eritrea’s control of almost 1,200 kilometres of Red Sea coastline, analysts say

The Globe and Mail (www.theglobeandmail.com)

Eritrea is also home to Dawit Isaak, the longest detained journalist in the world today (held since 2001)

Eritrea: Dawit Isaak arbitrarily detained for 24 years without trial — and information on his whereabouts

The Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak and three Eritrean journalists  — Temesgen Ghebreyesus, Seyoum Tsehaye and Amanuel Asrat —are entering their 24th year of detention without trial. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the unacceptable silence of the Eritrean authorities regarding the fate of these media professionals, who are the world’s longest-detained journalists without trial. The NGO urges Sweden and the international community to do everything possible to end this grave violation of their rights.

(rsf.org)