Word: berbera
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...with Washington. India, in a stunning demonstration of the democratic process two years ago, defeated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, thereby bringing an end to both her authoritarian rule and her Soviet-leaning foreign policy. The Russians lost their special relationship with Somalia, as well as their excellent port at Berbera, because they got too greedy and tried at the same time to reach an accommodation with Somalia's neighbor and ancient enemy, Ethiopia...
...ascendancy of the fanatic Marxist Ismail, who has boasted of defeating all "enemies of the revolution" with his People's Militia, strengthens Moscow's hand in the Arab world's only avowedly Marxist state. Aden has replaced the Somali port of Berbera as the chief Russian naval base in the area. Soviet air force planes use the former British airstrips at Ras Karma and Muri. Large underground arms depots have been constructed to store weapons that can be rushed to pro-Communist movements in black Africa...
...Eritrea--the half-Moslem, half-Christian province that is Ethiopia's only outlet to the Red Sea. With the U.S. refusal to supply arms to them in 1963, the Somalis accepted Soviet MIG's, artillery weapons and armed personnel carriers in exchange for Soviet rights to the port of Berbera. This led Kenya and Ethiopia--already friendly to the U.S.--to ask for a step up of arms shipments to them. The U.S. subsequently supplied both with obsolete Pentagon reject weapons...
While Carter ignored the Horn, the Soviets moved to support Ethiopia economically as well as militarily: they poured $850 million into the country. The Somalis, fearing Soviet support of Ethiopia and seeing the possibility of expansion in the future checked, expelled the Soviets, forcing them to withdraw from Berbera. But the Soviets, anticipating the Somali move, had already established themselves at Aden, the port at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula of South Yemen, long considered by the British as the most strategic point on the Red Sea. The base is close to the Red Sea island of Yanbu, where...
...against three liberation fronts. The Russian flotilla is presumably there to protect a Soviet sea lift to the Ethiopian-held port of Assab. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian air force, probably assisted by Cuban pilots, has been conducting bombing raids on the Somali city of Hargeisa and the port of Berbera, where the Soviets had a missile and naval base until the Somalis ousted them last year. The offensive began last week when Ethiopian armored columns, spearheaded by Soviet T-54 tanks, poured from the strongholds of Harar and Dire Dawa. Air cover was provided by MiG-21s and American-made...