Playing the Horn, Moscow Style

In one area of their Africa policy, chuckles a U.S. State Department official, the Soviets have got themselves "in the position of the fellow who is pinned to two girls on the same campus. Let's see if they can pull it off."

The campus, in the Soviets' latest enterprise, is the Horn of Africa, the stretch of real estate that is strategically placed along the Red Sea routes vital to Arab oil trade (see map). There the Soviets are simultaneously cultivating a new interest--Ethiopia--while trying to remain on good terms with an old friend --Somalia. Since the two African countries dislike one another intensely, the Soviet effort is delicate work.

So far, Moscow has been able to extend its influence in Africa aggressively, although the long-range benefits of this effort are not yet clear. With client regimes in power in Angola and Mozambique, the Russians have buckled a kind of Red belt of influence across the middle of the continent. Now if they can hold on to Somalia and bring Ethiopia into their orbit, they will have hooked a suspender onto the belt. Meanwhile the other gallus is shaping up along the Atlantic coast of Africa, involving Zaire, the Congo, Benin and Guinea-Bissau.

These twin projections of Soviet influence reaching northward alarm the Arab states situated above black Africa. "Angola yesterday, Zaire today, Sudan tomorrow," worries the prestigious Cairo daily al Ahram. What troubles the Arabs particularly is that if the Soviets can pull both Ethiopia and Somalia firmly into their orbit, they may successfully create an axis of influence along the African Horn that in time of crisis could give them control of the Bab el Mandeb Strait linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

The principal countries involved:

ETHIOPIA. Pop. 28 million. Chief export: coffee. Religions: Christianity (Coptic) and Islam. A military government with increasingly Marxist orientation. The armed forces, numbering 50,000 men, have been equipped until recently by the U.S. The regime is embattled on several fronts. One is the northern province of Eritrea, where the Sudanese-supported Eritrean Liberation Front, after more than a decade of fighting, claims it controls two districts and has Ethiopian forces pinned down in other urban areas. Another is the Somali border, where Ethiopians and Somalis have quarreled. Meanwhile the French Territory of Afars and Issas, with its key port of Djibouti, which provides an Ethiopian rail link to the sea, gains independence from Paris next month. Both Ethiopia and Somalia covet it.

SOMALIA. Pop. 3.17 million. Chief exports: livestock and bananas. Religion: Islam. Military regime closely allied with Moscow since 1969. The well-equipped military includes 25,000 men and one of the largest tank forces in sub-Saharan Africa. The Soviets have installed a large, tightly guarded missile base at Berbera to service missile warships. Neighboring nations fear that land-based missiles might be brought in as well; that could not only threaten the nearby strait of Babel Mandeb, but also the entrance to the Persian Gulf at Hormuz 1,300 miles away.

SUDAN. Pop. 18 million. Chief export: cotton. Religion: predominantly Islam. The armed forces consist of 53,000 men. President Jaafar Numeiry, who is vigorously antiCommunist, has lately been developing close ties with the U.S., which is supplying military transport planes to Khartoum. Numeiry is backing the Ethiopian rebels plaguing the Addis Ababa regime.

The spread of Soviet influence on the Horn so distresses Arab leaders that four of them recently convened an extraordinary summit at Ta'iz, in the Yemen Arab Republic. The four included Numeiry and Somalia's Red-lining President Mohamed Siad Barre, the Marxist President of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen and the leader of the Yemen Arab Republic. They set aside differing political views long enough to agree on a pan-Arabic, pro-Moslem program against Ethiopia. Meanwhile neighboring Saudi Arabia, which has been pushing aid to Somalia in hopes of wooing it away from Moscow, is urging the U.S. to provide arms. The Saudis made the same pitch two years ago, but the U.S. demurred. The grounds: such a move would offend Washington's good friends in Addis Ababa.

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