The Somalis Go

But will the Cubans follow?

Out of the nettle of disastrous defeat, Somalia's President Mohamed Siad Barre last week sought to pluck a flower: the U.S. military assistance for which he has been campaigning for months. From Mogadishu, Barre ordered home 20,000 Somali troops who have been battling Ethiopians, and recently Cubans and Russians, in the neighboring Ogaden region of Ethiopia in support of ethnic Somalis living there. By playing the peacemaker and withdrawing his invasion forces from territory to which he had no claim anyway, Barre satisfied a Washington condition for receiving defensive weapons to protect himself against the troops now sweeping toward his borders.

President Carter hailed the Somali decision and urged the Soviet-Cuban expedition to do exactly the same thing: leave Ethiopia. Said Carter: "As soon as Somali forces have withdrawn completely, and as soon as Ethiopian forces have reestablished control over their territory, withdrawal of the Soviet and Cuban combat presence should begin." By week's end there were reports out of Washington that Moscow has told the Administration it expects a "very substantial reduction" in the number of Cubans in Ethiopia, currently about 12,000.

But it is likely that the Horn of Africa will remain among the several problem areas Washington has on that continent. And, as the President well knew, Barre's battalions were not conducting an orderly withdrawal; they were being badly beaten. Several thousand Somali soldiers are estimated to have died last week around the strategic Ogaden town of Jijiga.

Militarily, the speedy windup of the fighting was a Soviet tactical triumph. For centuries, Jijiga has been protected against attacks from the west by the Ahmar Mountains and the Karamarda Pass. Instead of trying to fight through the pass, a combined combat force, estimated at 68,000 Ethiopians and 7,000 Cubans, simply went over the mountains. Light armor --tanks or armored personnel carriers --was airlifted behind the lines of the surprised Somalis by Soviet heavy Mi-6 or Mi-8 helicopters based at Dire Dawa. The Somalis had been pinned down by repeated MiG-17 and MiG-21 air strikes flown by both Ethiopian and Cuban pilots. Caught between the airlifted forces and ground units moving through the pass behind Soviet T-55 tanks, Somali units were cut off and chopped up. Jijiga itself, whose 2,000 inhabitants had begun a painful rebuilding following heavy battles there last fall, was destroyed.

Diplomatically, the victorious side fared even better. At his press conference, Carter made a trade-off sound reasonable: Somalia had pulled back, now the Soviets, Cubans and other Warsaw Pact advisers in Ethiopia should do the same. But the Soviets, while suggesting that a substantial Cuban withdrawal would follow the Somali pullback, did not offer a timetable or mention any numbers. When, why or whether such a reduction would take place was debatable. But Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, leader of Ethiopia's Provisional Military Council, would scarcely want to see the Russians and their Havana Hessians depart so soon. Apart from Ogaden, Mengistu has at least one other serious problem with which the Soviets might help: more tenacious anti-Ethiopian rebels in Eritrea. About the most Washington could hope for as a result would be that Mengistu would honor his "personal assurances" to Carter last month that his troops would not plunge into Somalia itself.

Scattered guerrilla groups of the Western Somali Liberation Front--ethnic Somalis living in the Ogaden--could conceivably keep the fighting going in the region for years; indeed, they managed to do so before regular forces entered the war last July. Barre has persuaded his people the West is to blame for the Ogaden debacle because it did not send him arms and has not renounced claims to the Ogaden.

Carter said last week that the U.S. stands ready "to assist the Organization of African Unity in working out the basis for negotiations between Ethiopia and Somalia which would ensure the territorial integrity of all countries in the region and the honoring of international boundaries." In view of the latest events, it was not likely that the O.A.U. could or would want to step in between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa--or, more to the point, between Washington and Moscow.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.