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Somalia The Ogaden War: Performance and Implications of Defeat
The SNA never recovered from its defeat in the Ogaden War.
The battles to retake and then defend the Ogaden stripped the
Somali armed forces of many troops, much of their equipment, and
their Soviet patron. For the next decade, the SNA sought
unsuccessfully to improve its capability by relying on a variety
of foreign sources, including the United States. The Ogaden War
therefore remains the best example of the SNA's ability to mount
and sustain conventional military operations.
Before the Ogaden War, the most striking feature of the
23,000-man SNA had been its large armored force, which was
equipped with about 250 T-34 and T-54/T-55 Soviet-built medium
tanks and more than 300 armored personnel carriers. This
equipment gave the SNA a tank force more than three times as
large as Ethiopia's. The prewar SAF also was larger than
Ethiopia's air force. In 1976 the SAF had fifty-two combat
aircraft, twenty-four of which were Soviet-built supersonic MiG21s . Facing them was an Ethiopian Air Force (EAF) of thirty-five
to forty aircraft. Ethiopia also was in the process of acquiring
several United States-built Northrop F-5 fighters from Iran. At
the outbreak of fighting, Ethiopia had approximately sixteen F5A /Es.
As chaos spread throughout Ethiopia after Haile Selassie's
downfall, Mogadishu increased its support to several pro-Somali
liberation groups in the Ogaden, the strongest of which was the
WSLF. By late 1975, the WSLF had attacked many Ethiopian outposts
in the Ogaden. In June 1977, Addis Ababa accused Mogadishu of
committing SNA units to the fighting. Despite considerable
evidence to the contrary, Somalia denied this charge and insisted
that only "volunteers" had been given leave from the SNA to fight
with the WSLF. By late 1977, the combined WSLF-SNA strength in
the Ogaden probably approached 50,000, of which 15,000 appeared
to be irregulars.
After the Somali government committed the SNA to the Ogaden,
the conflict ceased to be a guerrilla action and assumed the form
of a conventional war in which armor, mechanized infantry, and
air power played decisive roles. The SNA quickly adapted its
organization to battlefield realities. The centralized Somali
logistics system controlled supplies at battalion level (600- to
1,000-man units) from Mogadishu, an unwieldy arrangement given
Somalia's limited transportation and communications network
(see Transportation;
Communications
, ch. 3). To facilitate operations,
the logistics center and headquarters for forces fighting in the
northern Ogaden moved to Hargeysa, the SNA's northern sector
headquarters. Before the war, all Somali ground forces had been
organized into battalions. After the conflict started, however,
the standard infantry and mechanized infantry unit became the
brigade, composed of two to four battalions and having a total
strength of 1,200 to 2,000 personnel.
During the summer of 1977, the SNA-WSLF force achieved
several victories but also endured some significant defeats. In
July 1977, it captured Gode, on the Shabeelle River about 550
kilometers inside Ethiopia, and won control of 60 percent of the
Ogaden. By mid-September 1977, Ethiopia conceded that 90 percent
of the Ogaden was in Somali hands. The SNA suffered two setbacks
in August when it tried to capture Dire Dawa and Jijiga. The
Ethiopian army inflicted heavy losses on the SNA at Dire Dawa
after a Somali attack by one tank battalion and a mechanized
infantry brigade supported by artillery units. At Jijiga the
Somalis lost more than half of their attacking force of three
tank battalions, each of which included more than thirty tanks.
Somalia's greatest victory occurred in mid-September 1977 in
the second attempt to take Jijiga, when three tank battalions
overwhelmed the Ethiopian garrison. After inflicting some heavy
losses on Somali armor, Ethiopian troops mutinied and withdrew
from the town, leaving its defense to the militia, which was
incapable of slowing the Somali advance. The Ethiopians retreated
beyond the strategic Marda Pass, the strongest defensive position
between Jijiga and Harer, leaving the SNA in a commanding
position within the region. Despite this success, several factors
prevented a Somali victory. Somali tank losses had been heavy in
the battles around Dire Dawa and Jijiga. Moreover, because the
EAF had established air superiority over the SAF, it could harass
overextended Somali supply lines with impunity. The onset of the
rainy season hampered such air attacks; however, the bad weather
also bogged down Somali reinforcements on the dirt roads.
The Soviet Union's decision to abandon Somalia in favor of
Ethiopia eventually turned the tide of battle in the Ogaden. From
October 1977 through January 1978, about 20,000 WSLF guerrillas
and SNA forces pressed attacks on Harer, where nearly 50,000
Ethiopians had regrouped, backed by Soviet-supplied armor and
artillery and gradually reinforced by 11,000 Cubans and 1,500
Soviet advisers. Although it fought its way into Harer in
November 1977, the SNA lacked the supplies and manpower to
capture the city. Subsequently, the Somalis regrouped outside
Harer and awaited an Ethiopian counterattack.
As expected, in early February 1978 Ethiopian and Cuban
forces launched a two-stage counterattack toward Jijiga.
Unexpectedly, however, a column of Cubans and Ethiopians moving
north and east crossed the highlands between Jijiga and the
Somali border, bypassing Somali troops dug in around the Marda
Pass. Thus, the attacking force was able to assault the Somalis
from two sides and recapture Jijiga after two days of fighting in
which 3,000 Somali troops lost their lives. Within a week,
Ethiopia had retaken all of the Ogaden's major towns. On March 9,
1978, Siad Barre recalled the SNA from Ethiopia.
After the SNA withdrawal, the WSLF reverted to guerrilla
tactics. By May 1980, the rebels had established control over a
significant portion of the Ogaden. Eventually, Ethiopia defeated
the WSLF and the few small SNA units that remained in the region
after the Somali pullout. In late 1981, however, reports
indicated that the WSLF continued to conduct occasional hit-and-
run attacks against Ethiopian targets.
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