Word: somali
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Outside Harar, a major town in the Ogaden, Somali tanks and artillery fought for two months against Ethiopian defenders dug into the hillsides. Along the winding dirt road from Harar to the front, small huts of clay bricks and thatched grass roofs were burned by occupying Somali forces, then hit by rockets and bombs from Ethiopian warplanes. Now the rubble lies mixed with brass shell casings, shattered steel helmets and bodies left to rot when the war passed through...
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...
...province, where the Ethiopians are fighting a civil war against three liberation fronts. The Russian flotilla is presumably there to protect a Soviet sea lift to the Ethiopian-held port of Assab. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian air force, probably assisted by Cuban pilots, has been conducting bombing raids on the Somali city of Hargeisa and the port of Berbera, where the Soviets had a missile and naval base until the Somalis ousted them last year. The offensive began last week when Ethiopian armored columns, spearheaded by Soviet T-54 tanks, poured from the strongholds of Harar and Dire Dawa. Air cover...
...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...