Word: massawa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This week, TIME has learned, government forces-including thousands of militiamen redeployed from the Ogaden desert war against Somali insurgents-will try to regain control of a vital highway linking the Red Sea port of Massawa with the provincial capital of Asmara...
While the U.S. found Ethiopia strategic because its port of Massawa bordered on the Red Sea, providing U.S. nuclear submarines with a friendly port, so did the Israelis--for different reasons. Seeing Nasser commit 70,000 men into what is now the Democratic anti-monarchists, fearing the further spread of Arab influence and ever aware of the importance of maintaining an open seaway from the Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean, the Israelis sent police-military advisers to Ethiopia to combat the Moslem independence group in Eritrea. At the same time the rebel Eritreans received support from...
...easy task. In Eritrea, where rebel forces control 90% of the territory, fighting has swirled for weeks in and around the important port of Massawa (pop. 30,000). Rebel positions downtown have been bombed by Ethiopian pilots flying not only MiG's but also U.S. jets left over from the days (before May 1977) when the Addis Ababa regime was a U.S. friend. According to Western eyewitnesses, Soviet warships have been lobbing shells into the city. Most of Massawa's civilians have fled to the nearby hills, where they live in makeshift shelters, in desperate need of food...
...Russians may want to establish a new base at Massawa, though Moscow already has naval and air facilities in both South Yemen and Aden. Ethiopia could prove to be a mini-Viet Nam for the Russians even though, as the second most populous nation in black Africa (pop. 29 million), it offers them a more attractive springboard than Somalia from which to jump into African affairs and establish a strong presence along the Persian Gulf tanker routes...
...hottest wars going on anywhere in the world at present are both taking place within Ethiopia. In the northern province of Eritrea, Addis Ababa's Marxist military government of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam has lost everything but the provincial capital of Asmara and the port cities of Massawa and Assab to the secessionist rebels. If Ethiopia should be defeated in both of its desert wars, it would lose more than 40% of its territory, 6 million of its 28 million people, and its access...