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Between 1962 and 1993, Eritrea faced relentless war, famine and poverty. The northeast African region was engaged in a bitter struggle for independence from Ethiopia, which had chimed it as part of the Ethiopian Empire in 1962. A historic region which for centuries determined its own destiny, Eritrea, whose name is derived from the Latin for the Red Sea, which it borders, refused to be ruled by its larger neighbor. Guerrilla soldiers of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) carried the war into Ethiopia until the Ethiopian army collapsed from famine and bankruptcy in 1991. Two years later, Eritreans voted overwhelmingly for independence.

As fighting intensified during the 1980s, thousands of refugees fled southwest into Sudan, where camps swelled as they waited hopefully for international relief agencies to help them. Many Eritreans wished to become U.S. citizens, but this was far from easy. Not only did U.S....