Shifting Sands on the Horn

Guns and geopolitics in the desert

The flag of the Somali Democratic Republic--at the Horn of Africa--proudly bears a five-pointed star: one point for each of the five regions in which the predominantly nomadic Somalis live. The problem is that only two of these five regions are inside the borders of the republic. The other three belong to Somalia's neighbors--Ethiopia, Kenya and the newly independent state of Djibouti--and Somalia has designs on all of them. Last week, after 16 years of sporadic fighting, it looked as if the Somalis might be on the verge of winning their third star, the Ogaden region of Ethiopia.

Though no Western correspondents were allowed to observe the desert combat at first hand, Somalia's Radio Mogadishu reported that guerrillas of an organization known as the Western Somali Liberation Front had captured as much as 90% of the Ogaden--all, in fact, except the Ethiopian strongholds of Dire Dawa, Harar and Jijiga, where fighting was raging.

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.

A hollow boast, perhaps, but the fact is that the Ethiopian empire of the late Haile Selassie is today threatened with disintegration. Indeed, the two hottest wars going on anywhere in the world at present are both taking place within Ethiopia. In the northern province of Eritrea, Addis Ababa's Marxist military government of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam has lost everything but the provincial capital of Asmara and the port cities of Massawa and Assab to the secessionist rebels. If Ethiopia should be defeated in both of its desert wars, it would lose more than 40% of its territory, 6 million of its 28 million people, and its access to the sea.

In the 1930s and '40s, the sands of northeast Africa were a cockpit of conflict between rival European colonial powers, chiefly Britain and Italy. Today, in both Eritrea and 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 to the superpowers.

For 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 are helping to train Colonel Mengistu's "peasant army."

During the same 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 and the Ethiopians with American-made M-60 tanks--yet the superpowers, in the years since they provided the armor, have changed sides. Actually, the Russians are still supplying a trickle of aid to the Somalis, yet the alienation seems to be all but complete. A high-ranking Somali official told a Western journalist last week: "I am getting tired of all those press stories saying we are a Soviet satellite. After all, we are showing the Russians the door. So what more proof do you want?"

Similar shifts in alignments are taking place to the north, west and east of the Horn. Egypt has thrown off its Soviet influence. So has the Sudan, which is currently aiding the Eritrean secessionists in Ethiopia even though its Soviet-furnished army and air force are short of equipment; the Sudanese suffered considerable losses while putting down an attempted coup last year that allegedly was backed by Libya, the most steadfast of the remaining Soviet clients in the region. Libya, of course, has just finished fighting a weekend war with Egypt, which abrogated its friendship treaty with Moscow only last year. Egypt has also warned Libya to knock off its guerrilla activities against Chad, a former French territory adjacent to Libya and Sudan. Libya, in the meantime, is sending military aid to Ethiopia--the only Arab state to do so. All in all, the situation is so complex and unstable that it has become difficult to tell who is doing what to whom without a score card. Says a Western diplomat in Moscow: "The Horn of Africa is the new battlefield between the big powers--and the little ones as well."

The issue is who will be the dominant force in the region: the Soviet Union or the conservative Arab regimes led by Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are using their oil money to help Somalia, Sudan, Chad and the Eritrean secessionists. They take credit for having wooed Somali President Siad Barre away from the Soviets. They have also won over the radical Marxist government of Southern Yemen with the promise of a million tons of crude oil and $300 million in economic aid. As the Arab News of Jeddah commented, "Saudi Arabia does not aspire to fight Communism throughout the world, but it is certainly interested in keeping the Russian bear away from the Red Sea and the Gulf." Added the paper: "The smell of success is already in the air."

All of which has left Moscow on the Horn of a dilemma: how--and whether --to try to maintain its influence in both Ethiopia and Somalia. If it comes to a showdown, the Soviets are more likely to stick with Addis Ababa than with Mogadishu, since Ethiopia, with a population of 28 million, is the second biggest country in the region (after Egypt) and eight or nine times more populous than Somalia. But giving up on the Somalis would be more than just an embarrassment for the Soviets: they could lose their important foothold at the port of Berbera too.

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