After years of unrest, Ethiopia enters new era of openness
It was a radical hug.
On Sunday morning, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed stepped off a plane in the Eritrean capital Asmara, and threw his arms around that country’s president, Isaias Afwerki, as if the two men were old friends.
In fact, Ethiopia and Eritrea have spent the last two decades more like bitter enemies, ever since a border dispute in the late 1990s turned into a brutal war that killed nearly 100,000 people, according to some estimates. Dr. Abiy himself had been an Ethiopian intelligence operative on that conflict’s front lines.
