Word: ababa
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...hottest war is raging in he Horn of Africa between the Ethiopian army and Somali guerrillas who are backed by their ethnic cousins in the Somali Democratic Republic, and the tide of battle changed dramatically last week. Five months ago, the Somali guerrillas had all but driven Addis Ababa's forces out of the Ogaden desert (see map), an Ethiopian region inhabited largely by Somali nomads. Now Ethiopia has launched a spirited counterattack to regain the Ogaden-and perhaps drastically upset a complex balance of forces throughout the entire region...
...that the Soviet Union has assembled anywhere outside the Communist world: $900 million worth of tanks, field guns, rockets, radar, artillery, mortars and missiles. To help with the hardware, and otherwise shore up the sagging Marxist military regime of Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, Moscow has also provided Addis Ababa with a polyglot army of soldiers and technicians. According to Western intelligence reports, the roll includes 1,000 Russians, 3,000 Cubans (of whom 2,000 are believed to have been involved in last week's fighting), 1,000 or so troops from the radical Arab state of South...
...captured Cuban combat troops. Underscoring Moscow's new urgency about the battle of the Horn, Raul Castro, Fidel's brother and Cuba's Defense Minister, arrived in mid-January, apparently to help Mengistu run his dual war against the rebels and his political opponents in Addis Ababa...
...territory, fighting has swirled for weeks in and around the important port of Massawa (pop. 30,000). Rebel positions downtown have been bombed by Ethiopian pilots flying not only MiG's but also U.S. jets left over from the days (before May 1977) when the Addis Ababa regime was a U.S. friend. According to Western eyewitnesses, Soviet warships have been lobbing shells into the city. Most of Massawa's civilians have fled to the nearby hills, where they live in makeshift shelters, in desperate need of food and medical supplies...
...Ethiopian regime is not clear. The Soviets have a history of miscalculation on the Horn: following the overthrow of Haile Selassie in 1974, Moscow saw a chance to weaken U.S. influence in the area and for some reason thought it could curry favor with its new friends in Addis Ababa without antagonizing Somalia's President, Mohamed Siad Barre, who had been the Kremlin's closest ally in northeast Africa. But angered by Moscow's growing involvement with Ethiopia, a traditional Somali enemy, Barre kicked the Russians out of his country last November and closed down...