The course of the Ogaden War

The serious foreign invasion made the Ethiopians realize that they must reunite to defend the Ogaden. Ethiopian leader Colonel Mengistu promptly stopped the purge of his men and returned the few remaining former royal army officers to their military camps. He also resisted pressure and reached an agreement with Israel, allowing Ethiopian Jews to immigrate to Israel. In exchange, Israel sent pilots to help him fly American-made fighter jets and regain air supremacy over the Ogaden. Through the efforts of these Israeli mercenaries, the Somali Air Force temporarily disappeared from the skies of the Ogaden, but the Ethiopian Army could not withstand the joint attack of the SSL and the Somali Army. On September 9, the air force connecting the Ogaden and the hinterland of Ethiopia The important town of Jijijia was lost. Mengistu later recalled that he almost despaired.

Faced with the crisis, Mengistu took the initiative to show goodwill to the Soviet Union, the Somali "backstage", saying that it would allow the Soviet Union to set up military bases in Ethiopia and expel the US military delegation. Mengistu was right. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, soon invited him to visit Moscow. The two sides immediately signed a package of military cooperation agreements. The Soviet Union not only provided Ethiopia with military advisors and weapons and equipment, but also It is recommended that Cuba send troops to Ethiopia to "support the Ethiopian people's revolution."

After learning the news, the Somali government angrily expelled all 6,000 Soviet advisers in the country. However, this reckless move only exacerbated its own predicament. The Soviet Union quickly transferred 1,500 of them to Ethiopia, these people know the Somali army thoroughly and easily commanded the Ethiopian army to deal with their "Somali students".

Tom Cooper, a British scholar who has studied this period of history, said that the real reason why the Soviet Union abandoned Barre and chose Mengistu was that Ethiopia was a traditional African power. The armed struggle remains an independent African country, and its influence extends far beyond Somalia.

The Ogaden War suddenly fell silent after October 1977. Because of the onset of the rainy season, the two armies fell into a stalemate. The Soviet Union originally wanted to use this "no war, no peace" situation to manipulate both Ethiopia and Ethiopia at the same time, but Mengistu did not accept this trick. He hinted to the Soviet Ambassador to Ethiopia Volovanin that if The Soviet Union wanted to please both sides, and he would not hesitate to break away from the Soviet Union's embrace.

In order to ensure its influence on Ethiopia, Brezhnev ordered support for Ethiopia's "just cause" and emphasized that the support operation must be carried out with great fanfare to demonstrate to NATO "the Soviet Union's unparalleled strategic strike" ability". On November 25, 1977, the Soviet Union began a large-scale airlift of supplies to Ethiopia. That night, at least 225 transport aircraft flew from the Soviet Union to Ethiopia, unloading enough tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, rocket launchers, and a large number of fighter jets and equipment to equip three divisions. Gunships and the personnel to operate them were also flown in from Cuba. For the next two weeks, a Soviet transport plane landed at Addis Ababa Airport, the capital of Ethiopia, every 20 minutes on average. In order to ensure command and communication for air transportation, the Soviet Union also launched a satellite.

The Somalis immediately realized that any hope of victory had evaporated. Barre had to declare that the country was in a state of war, began to mobilize reserves, and asked for help from the United States, which he had denounced as a "country of gangsters and bandits" a few months ago. Barre established three military bases in one go to attract Americans. of attention. However, the United States, which was in the "global strategic defense stage", responded very slowly. Only some U.S. transport planes painted with Egyptian military emblems brought 1,500 tons of arms and scrapped military uniforms and helmets to appease the Somali regime.

The disaster for the Somalis finally struck on March 5, 1978. Soviet General Vasily Ivanovich Petrov (who was awarded the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1983) commanded 120,000 Ethiopian troops. The army launched a three-dimensional joint offensive against Jijijia. The defender of the Somali army was Aidid, the militia leader who later opposed the US military in 1991. According to ancient customs, he organized a fire line supervision team, placed machine guns behind the Somali soldiers, and executed the deserters on the spot. Ethiopian offensive. But Petrov then used the Soviet ace force, the 76th Airborne Division, to implement a strategic airborne landing 20 kilometers east of Tidiga. The Somali soldiers were surprised to see a large number of "fair-skinned Ethiopian soldiers" attacking behind them. Many of them were sent to the west by Soviet paratroopers before they understood what was going on.

The panic about the "white-skinned Ethiopian paratroopers" caused Aidid's defense line to disappear in an instant. The Somali defenders rushed to flee towards the border of their country, and Aidid was also picked up by his own guards. The jeep fled in panic. By April 7, Jijiga's Somali army was completely wiped out, and about 3,000 Somali soldiers died on the battlefield. Only Aidid and a few others managed to escape back home. The Ethiopian army commanded by Petrov recovered all the lost territory in just seven days, but the Soviets prevented the Ethiopian army from further actions and did not allow them to cross the border. The Ogaden War is basically over.