Word: ababa
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Curfew in Addis Ababa starts at midnight, but the shooting in Ethiopia's frightened capital (pop. 1 million) begins long before that. Shortly after sunset, armed members of the city's 291 kebeles (neighborhood associations) take to nearly deserted streets seeking "class enemies of the broad masses" -meaning opponents of the brutal Marxist regime of Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and his military administrative council, known as the Dergue. Scouring slum areas of the capital, kebele patrols kick open doors of mud huts in search of objects that would prove subversive intent. Among them: typewriters and field glasses...
Exploding Grenades. TIME Nairobi Bureau Chief Lee Griggs, who was in Addis Ababa last week, reports: "Shooting broke out all over the capital late on Sunday afternoon and continued sporadically for twelve hours. Automatic weapons chattered incessantly, and the crump of exploding grenades punctuated the firing. Cars were banned from the streets, and roadblocks set up to restrict movement by foot. Next day the government-controlled papers announced that 'one anarchist' had been killed-although hundreds of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition had been confiscated. Local hospitals had been forbidden to give out body counts...
While trying to cope with rebellion in Addis Ababa, Mengistu has had to deploy nearly half his 50,000-man army in a losing struggle against three different forces in Eritrea. The 20,000-man Eritrean Liberation Front (E.L.F.) controls much of the land near the Red Sea coast, while the 15,000-man Eritrean People's Liberation Front (E.P.L.F.) rampages through western Eritrea. Five thousand guerrillas of the Eritrean Liberation Front-Popular Liberation Forces (E.L.F.-P.L.F.) are fighting in the province's north central region. Variously supported by such Arab states as Syria, Sudan and Saudi Arabia...
...also faces the possibility of war with Somalia for control of the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas, whose 215,000 citizens last week voted for independence.* Mengistu fears that Somalia will encourage the territory's Somali-speaking Issa majority to cut the railroad linking Addis Ababa with the port of Djibouti, through which moves more than half of Ethiopia's foreign trade. Unless he can work out a deal with Somalia's President, Muhamed Siad Barre, Ethiopia may have yet another combat zone on its frontiers when the territory becomes the Republic of Djibouti...
...which has been pushing aid to Somalia in hopes of wooing it away from Moscow, is urging the U.S. to provide arms. The Saudis made the same pitch two years ago, but the U.S. demurred. The grounds: such a move would offend Washington's good friends in Addis Ababa...