Word: eritrea
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...faceless, unpopular military junta in Addis Ababa known as "the Dergue" (literally, the shadow) last week launched an all-out campaign to end the 14-year-old civil war in Ethiopia 's breakaway northern province of Eritrea. Following an appeal by Ethiopia's strongman, Brigadier General Teferi Benti, to "crush the reactionary forces," government sources claimed that tens of thousands of peasant volunteers were marching toward the Eritrean border, reportedly armed with such crude weapons as spears and ancient muzzle-loaders. But it seemed doubtful whether the government would be any more successful in putting down the rebellion...
Since the coup against the late, disgraced Emperor Haile Selassie nearly two years ago, Ethiopia's revolutionary experiment in "scientific socialism " has proved to be as eccentric and quixotic as anything decreed by the old kingdom. In addition to the unresolved civil war in Eritrea and successive years of the ruinous drought that led to thousands of deaths by starvation, the Dergue has had to cope with a staggering array of other problems, including widespread internal discontent, armed rebellion in the countryside, and bitter antagonisms with neighboring countries. After visiting Ethiopia, TIME Correspondent William McWhirter reported...
...given lip-service approval to the Arab cause. They also worry that all then" oil would henceforth have to come by tanker through the strait of Bab al-Mandab along the Red Sea-a route that could easily be blockaded by Somalia, Southern Yemen or the Moslem rebels in Eritrea...
...fighting in Eritrea were not crisis enough, the military government in Addis Ababa-whose front man is Brigadier General Teferi Benti-also had to contend with a series of royalist revolts that stemmed from its overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie last September...
General Negategegne, formerly on the side of the ruling military council, has defected and joined forces with Ras Mengesha Seyoum, the deposed governor of Tigre province, which adjoins Eritrea. Mengesha, a distant relative of Haile Selassie, has an armed band of more than 4,000 peasants. Near Menz, some 85 miles north of the capital, two other aristocratic revolutionaries, Merid and Mesfin Biru, recently wiped out a government battalion...