Word: horning
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What has suddenly become the world's 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...
Saudi Arabia and Iran, on the other hand, are determined that the Soviets should not expand their power center in the Horn of Africa and are prepared to help defend Somalia against any invasion. Last month King Khalid and the Shah of Iran met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and agreed on joint action in the Horn, including the sending of French-made tanks to the Somalis...
Some 1,000 Russians and 2,000 Cubans arrived with the hardware, and they may not all be just advisers: both Eritrean and Somalian rebel forces claim to have 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...
...Moscow decided to enter the conflict so strongly and publicly in support of the shaky 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...
...expense of the Soviets. Peking's inability to prevent the fighting between its Indochinese neighbors has been a serious foreign policy failure, and in some ways its struggle to stay friends with two smaller and mutually hostile allies mirrors Moscow's recent history on the Horn of Africa...