Trains Eritrean guerillas
Larsson spends time in Africa where he trains female Eritran guerillas, according to his friend John Henri Holmberg:
1977 was a dramatic year. Stieg spent part of it in Eritrea, where he had contacts in the Marxist EPLF liberation movement and helped to train a company of women guerrillas in the use of grenade launchers. But he also contracted a kidney inflammation and was forced to leave the country.
Graeme Atkinson, the European editor of Searchlight magazine, says Larsson intended to help the Eritrean independence movement:
Stieg was a revolutionary socialist and he believed in a better life, and equality for all. The fact there was crushing poverty in Africa appalled him.
This includes risking his life in combat:
He went there to aid the struggle. That meant in the end being involved in fighting and he faced live bullets. He was an amazingly courageous man. He told me a lot about it, but never boasting. A lot of what he saw left me deeply shocked.