Word: somali
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...declares Abdullah! Abdi, a Somali military commander in the ugly little war that is being fought today in the Ogaden desert region of eastern Ethiopia. After years of sporadic guerrilla activity, the forces of the Western Somali Liberation Front (W.S.L.F.)-backed by their tribal cousins in the Somali Democratic Republic to the east-have been fighting fiercely since July to wrest the Ogaden from Ethiopia, which has controlled it off and on for 400 years...
During their campaign, the Somalis said, the guerrillas had cut the rail line linking the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa with the Red Sea port of Djibouti and had killed or captured 23,000 Ethiopian troops. The Somalis also accused the Ethiopians of burning villages and massacring hundreds of civilians during their retreat. By the end of August, vowed the Somali guerrillas, the entire region would be "liberated" and merged with the Somali Republic...
...Ogaden, the central issue is the integrity of national boundaries, v. self-determination by individual provinces or tribal groups. The Ethiopians are resolved to retain the territory they acquired during a century of expansion. The Eritreans, whose land was an Italian colony until 1941, are fighting for independence; the Somalis are pursuing their dream of uniting the various Somali homelands under one flag. But these conflicts also have international significance. The Horn of Africa, lying beside the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the oil routes between the Persian Gulf and Europe, is of enormous strategic importance...
...about 15 years, the Soviet Union trained and armed the 22,000-man Somali army and helped make it one of the best fighting forces in Africa; it also built a missile and naval base at the Somali port of Berbera, which is strategically located near the approaches to the Red Sea. But three years ago, following the overthrow of Haile Selassie, the Soviets began to concentrate on improving their relations with the new junta in Ethiopia-and thus began to alienate the Somalis. The Cubans, who used to back the Eritreans, followed the Russians to Addis Ababa, and today...
...period, the U.S. has lost out in Ethiopia-the junta expelled the remaining American diplomats and military advisers last April-but has been working hard to improve its relations with Somalia. Along with France, the U.S. has been offering "defensive" arms to Somalia in an effort to wrest the Somalis from the Soviet grip. The French, for their part, are worried about both Somali and Ethiopian designs on Djibouti, which gained independence from France only two months ago. An irony of the current fighting in the Ogaden is that the Somalis are equipped with Soviet-made T-54 tanks...