Word: ethiopia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Thus the Ogaden, a wasteland traditionally forsaken by all but a few thousand nomads, has become the center of an international crisis. The Soviet Union, having lost out in Egypt and Somalia in recent years, is making a high-stakes play for Ethiopia. With its Communist help, the Addis Ababa junta (known as the "Dergue") has a strong chance not only of defeating the Somalis in the Ogaden, but also of strengthening its position against the Eritrean secessionists, whose guerrilla forces control most of that province. The Soviet press has attacked Somalia as a bastion of reactionary forces, even though...
...Moscow's associates in the Ethiopian adventure is Israel, whose friendship with Addis Ababa dates from the 1950s (if not, as some Israelis note, from the days of King Solomon's celebrated dalliance with the Queen of Sheba). The friendship is maintained today because predominantly Christian Ethiopia remains the only non-Arab power in the area, and the Israelis are hoping to retain a foothold there...
Moscow's gamble is that Ethiopia, with its 29 million people, will prove to be a more valuable base than little Somalia (pop. 3 million...
That may well be true, but Ethiopia remains dangerously unstable; without the Soviet and Cuban iron grip, the Mengistu regime could fall at any time. In Addis Ababa, as many as 1,000 people have been killed since November in an officially sanctioned campaign of violence that government officials describe as "justifiable terror." Every night members of a counterrevolutionary group of so-called white terrorists are slain in the streets. One day last week a young man lay dead on a sidewalk near the city's busy marketplace; to his chest was pinned a note warning citizens...
Doing the Kremlin's dirty work" is the way one Western intelligence official refers to them. Another labels them "Moscow's cat's-paws." These derisive descriptions refer to Communist countries that are busily reinforcing Soviet support for Ethiopia with sorely needed arms as well as military and political expertise...