Word: somali
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...perennial Somali-Ethiopian tension has a lengthy history, but had yet to culminate until this year. As early as the 1960s, the Somalis professed their wish to unite all the Moslem Somali peoples, despite the fact that these expansionist aims would engulf not only the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, but also Eritrea, Djibouti (once French Somaliland, and otherwise known as Afars and Issas), and Northeastern Kenya. For this reason the United States then rejected the Somalis' request for military support and is not now extending large military support to President Said Barre's regime...
...Somali threat also prompted Haile Selassie's Ethiopian government to tighten its control over the self-proclaimed separatists in Eritrea--the half-Moslem, half-Christian province that is Ethiopia's only outlet to the Red Sea. With the U.S. refusal to supply arms to them in 1963, the Somalis accepted Soviet MIG's, artillery weapons and armed personnel carriers in exchange for Soviet rights to the port of Berbera. This led Kenya and Ethiopia--already friendly to the U.S.--to ask for a step up of arms shipments to them. The U.S. subsequently supplied both with obsolete Pentagon reject weapons...
President Carter hailed the Somali decision and urged the Soviet-Cuban expedition to do exactly the same thing: leave Ethiopia. Said Carter: "As soon as Somali forces have withdrawn completely, and as soon as Ethiopian forces have reestablished control over their territory, withdrawal of the Soviet and Cuban combat presence should begin." By week's end there were reports out of Washington that Moscow has told the Administration it expects a "very substantial reduction" in the number of Cubans in Ethiopia, currently about...
...likely that the Horn of Africa will 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...
...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 MiG-17 and MiG-21 air strikes flown by both Ethiopian and Cuban pilots. Caught between the airlifted forces and ground units moving through the pass behind Soviet T-55 tanks...