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Ethiopia War in the Ogaden and the Turn to the Soviet Union
The year 1977 saw the emergence of the most serious
external challenge to the revolutionary regime that had yet
materialized. The roots of the conflict lay with Somali
irredentism and the desire of the Somali government of
Mahammad Siad Barre to annex the Ogaden area of Ethiopia.
Somalia's instrument in this process was the Western Somali
Liberation Front (WSLF), a Somali guerrilla organization,
which by February 1977 had begun to take advantage of the
Derg's political problems as well as its troubles in Eritrea
to attack government positions throughout the Ogaden (see
The Somali, ch. 5). The Somali government provided supplies
and logistics support to the WSLF. Through the first half of
the year, the WSLF made steady gains, penetrating and
capturing large parts of the Ogaden from the Dire Dawa area
southward to the Kenya border.
The increasingly intense fighting culminated in a series of
actions around Jijiga in September, at which time Ethiopia
claimed that Somalia's regular troops, the Somali National
Army (SNA), were supporting the WSLF. In response, the
Somali government admitted giving "moral, material, and
other support" to the WSLF. Following a mutiny of the
Ethiopian garrison at Jijiga, the town fell to the WSLF. The
Mengistu regime, desperate for help, turned to the Soviet
Union, its ties to its former military supplier, the United
States, having foundered in the spring over the Derg's poor
human rights record. The Soviet Union had been supplying
equipment and some advisers for months. When the Soviet
Union continued to aid Ethiopia as a way of gaining
influence in the country, Somalia, which until then had been
a Soviet client, responded by abrogating its Treaty of
Friendship and Cooperation with Moscow and by expelling all
Soviet advisers.
The Soviet turnaround immediately affected the course of
the war. Starting in late November, massive Soviet military
assistance began to pour into Ethiopia, with Cuban troops
deploying from Angola to assist the Ethiopian units. By the
end of the year, 17,000 Cubans had arrived and, with
Ethiopian army units, halted the WSLF momentum. On February
13, 1978, Mogadishu dispatched the SNA to assist the WSLF,
but the Somali forces were driven back toward the border.
After the Ethiopian army recapture of Jijiga in early March,
the Somali government decided to withdraw its forces from
the Ogaden, leaving the Ethiopian army in control of the
region. However, in the process of eliminating the WSLF
threat, Addis Ababa had become a military client of Moscow
and Havana, a situation that had significant international
repercussions and that resulted in a major realignment of
power in the Horn of Africa.
Data as of 1991
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