ASMARA, Eritrea, Oct. 1 — For a man who many people say has been backed into a corner, Isaias Afewerki, the president of Eritrea, actually looks pretty relaxed.
The Bush administration has threatened to designate his nation a terrorist state. Eritrea is nearing war again with its neighbor, Ethiopia, which is 15 times as populous. And on top of everything else, his country is struggling with thorny development issues, like how to feed itself.
But on Monday, Mr. Isaias sank into a stuffed chair in an old Italian villa in downtown Asmara, the capital, and spoke leisurely for nearly two hours about all the struggles his underdog of a country has overcome, and how Eritrea will do it again.
“It’s not easy fighting against regimes supported by superpowers,” he said in a rare interview. “But we did it.”
He bragged about the harmony among his people, half of whom are Muslim and half Christian.
He lamented America’s role in the region, accusing it of propping up dictatorships in Somalia, Ethiopia and the Middle East and viewing everything through the cross-haired lens of terrorism and counterterrorism.
And his eyes lit up like the fake orange fire in the fireplace next to him when he talked about his hobbies of welding sculptures and carving wood. “It’s good to do something besides work to recharge your batteries,” he said. “Otherwise, you obsess.”
By all accounts, Mr. Isaias has plenty to think about. Eritrea, a sliver of a country along the Red Sea, is teetering on the edge of officially becoming a pariah state after the State Department and the United Nations accused it of funneling weapons to Islamist fighters in Somalia, which Mr. Isaias categorically denies.
“This is like a witch hunt,” he said.
Tens of thousands of his troops are also at a tense standoff with Ethiopia over a rocky strip of borderland that already caused a war between the two nations in the late 1990s. The conflict, which remains unresolved, killed 100,000 people and has been described as pointless as two bald men fighting over a comb.
Beyond that, Mr. Isaias acknowledged the more mundane challenges facing his nation, like entering the global economy and democratizing.
“Democracy is more than just putting your ballot in a box,” he said. “It’s about opportunity.”
But Eritreans have not seen a ballot box for years. State Department officials have criticized Mr. Isaias for continuing to postpone elections; he has been president for 14 years. Human rights groups have assailed him for jailing journalists and opponents.
Mr. Isaias dismissed internal problems as a result of “external threats,” and said that “our political process has been held hostage” by the border issue, which he says is the fault of the small clique ruling Ethiopia.
The Ethiopians laugh at this.
“He is the dictator,” said Zemedkun Tekle, an Ethiopian government spokesman. “While our political system is not perfect, at least we have got started down the road of democracy.”
Democratic or not, there is a certain easygoingness in Asmara, at least on the surface. The streets are spotless, and when Mr. Isaias drives through town, it is not in a motorcade with whirling sirens and sunglassed police officers. Instead, there is just one car, a white BMW, and the president rides shotgun.
Unlike most other African capitals, where pictures of the big man hang from every shop and over every stove, it is difficult to find anything in Asmara — a poster, a piece of money — bearing Mr. Isaias’s mustached face, which has been likened to an African version of Tom Selleck.
The main monument in town is not of him, but a giant pair of sandals, the symbol of what Eritreans call “the struggle.”
To understand this struggle is to understand Mr. Isaias’ defiance. Eritrea, population five million, was colonized by the Italians, occupied by the British and then handed over to the Ethiopians, who ruled it brutally for 30 years, first with the help of the Americans, then with the Soviets.
Mr. Isaias, 61, led a guerrilla movement that built underground cities and trained women to fight in one of the few successful separatist movements on the continent. Eritrea won its independence in 1993, but in some ways, it still seems like it is fighting for it.
Mr. Isaias has shied away from food aid, saying he does not want to be dependent on anyone, and shrugged off the threat of American sanctions, saying that America has already isolated Eritrea economically.
When asked why, over history, powerful countries have continued to line up against Eritrea, he responded, “We are one small voice, and I guess that irritates people.”
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