Word: jijiga
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Officers of the W.S.L.F. boast that they control 80% of the Ogaden; they also concede that they have no hope of driving the Soviet-commanded force of 60,000 Ethiopian militiamen, supported by 6,000 Cuban soldiers, from their strongholds in Jijiga, Harar and Dire Dawa. "It is a stalemate," says Hussein Mohamed Nur, the slender commander of the liberation army in the region near Karraro. "They control the big towns, and we control everything else. They never come out unless it is in a big convoy with tanks and armored cars. Then we attack them and destroy many vehides...
...remain among the several problem areas Washington has on that continent. And, as the President well knew, Barre's battalions were not conducting an orderly withdrawal; they were being badly beaten. Several thousand Somali soldiers are estimated to have died last week around the strategic Ogaden town of Jijiga...
Militarily, the speedy windup of the fighting was a Soviet tactical triumph. For centuries, Jijiga has been protected against attacks from the west by the Ahmar Mountains and the Karamarda Pass. Instead of trying to fight through the pass, a combined combat force, estimated at 68,000 Ethiopians and 7,000 Cubans, simply went over the mountains. Light armor -tanks or armored personnel carriers -was airlifted behind the lines of the surprised Somalis by Soviet heavy Mi-6 or Mi-8 helicopters based at Dire Dawa. The Somalis had been pinned down by repeated...
...first pivotal point," reported TIME Nairobi Bureau Chief David Wood from Addis Ababa, "will come if the Ethiopian thrust breaks through the barren Karamarda Mountains, which lie across the line of advance some six miles west of Jijiga. For thousands of years, armies on both sides have stood off invasions here. And it is here that the Ethiopians fled in the face of the Somali advance...
...From Jijiga, the Ethiopians could easily sweep another 95 miles to the Somali border. The big question is: What will they do when they reach that frontier? One member of the Ethiopian junta told Wood: "I can assure you that Ethiopia is not going to invade Somalia." Nonetheless, the Somalis are fearful that the Ethiopians if they reconquer the Ogaden will not be able to resist the impulse to slice through northern Somalia...