This incident could also tank the Afewerki regime's already suffering reputation in the international community. This is a particularly inconvenient time for two high-level officers to make off with the presidential plane. In June, the UN's Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea found that Afewerki's government was violating an arms embargo on Somalia by "maintaining relations with known arms dealers in Somalia," and through "its support for Ethiopian armed opposition groups passing through Somali territory." But the report added that there was no evidence to suggest that his government was still supporting al Shabaab, the primary rationale behind UN sanctions that have been in place since 2009. Even if Afewerki is still facilitating arms flows to groups fighting the Ethiopian government -- the Afewerki regime's bitterest geopolitical enemy -- he is now confident enough in his country's possible rehabilitation to argue that the UN should drop its sanctions regime. (The chances of success are minimal: Over the summer, the U.S. actually tightened its sanctions on Eritrean officials linked to al Shabaab.)

It is entirely possible that two Air Force officers -- pilots who had flown Afewerki on several occasions, according to Saleh Gadi, a dissident journalist and founder of Awate.com -- would know something of the country's continued meddling in Somalia, including the scope of its support for al Shabaab. Somalia, which sits at the mouth of the Red Sea and has been a haven for pirates and militant Islamists, is an area of intense focus and cooperation for the international community. The pilots have dramatically exposed a government that Freedom House included on its 2012 list of the "Worst of the Worst" states in terms of political oppression. And they've created a possible crisis for their now-former bosses.

Even so, the pilots probably didn't defect because they want to rat out Afewerki's regime, but because Eritrea is not an easy place to live, even for people towards the top of the state structure. Gadi is hardly surprised that two high-ranking pilots would take any opportunity to defect -- even if it meant commandeering the presidential airplane. "In general, everybody who gets the chance will escape," he says. "The elite of the regime ... are used to a lavish lifestyle they cannot maintain anymore. Even the officers are suffering." The pilots aren't the year's only high-profile Eritrean defectors: In August, the flag-carrier for the Eritrean team defected during the Summer Olympics in London.

Estefanos echoes Gadi in saying that escape is a popular notion among Eritreans. "Any Eritrean will use any opportunity he gets to flee," she says. It is not hard to see why. According to Human Rights Watch, Afewerki has imprisoned somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 of his opponents and perceived opponents, including "government officials, business leaders [and] journalists." The government heavily fines the families of those who evade military service, which perhaps explains why a badly impoverished country of less than 6 million is able to maintain a standing military of over 201,000, in addition to over 120,000 reservists. Estefanos likened Afewerki's government to the Kim regime in North Korea, which is less of a stretch than it might seem. Both countries made it into Freedom House's Worst of the Worst report in 2012, along with such elite company as Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Equatorial Guinea -- and Saudi Arabia.