Workers League - Behind the US invasion of Somalia - Mehring Books

aised the rate of literacy to 60 percent, and the changeover to Somali
as the language of state administration.
In September 1974, the Ethiopian emperor was overthrown in a
military coup and replaced by a military council known as the Dergue
(Shadow). 18
The Dergue also employed radical-sounding rhetoric,
proclaiming a "socialist state" based on "Marxism-Leninism." But
Ethiopia remained a semifeudal and economically backward country
under the rule of a tiny economic elite. Especially after the assumption
of unchallenged power within the Dergue by Lt. Col. Mengistu
Haile Mariam in February 1977, the regime moved ruthlessly to
suppress all opposition from workers, students and oppressed nationalities
like the Eritreans and Somalis. 19
The guerrilla warfare in Eritrea, under way since 1962, flared into
open civil war and half the Ethiopian army was sent to attempt to deal
with it. Other armed rebellions broke out in the Ogaden and in Tigre
province. Believing the situation opportune, the WSLF launched a
military offensive in the Ogaden in July 1977 and, with the help of
Somali government forces, made considerable inroads into Ethiopia.
This brought the Somali regime face to face with the utter
cynicism of its patrons in the Soviet bureaucracy. In December 1976,
the Dergue had signed a secret military agreement with Moscow and
with the outbreak of war in both Eritrea and the Ogaden, the
Ethiopian regime appealed for massive Soviet military aid.
The Stalinists airlifted a gigantic amount of aircraft, tanks, transport
equipment and munitions to Ethiopia, together with aviators,
Soviet officers and 17,000 Cuban troops. The aid eventually amounted
to $2 billion. The Barre regime responded by breaking relations with
the Soviet Union in November 1977. By early 1978 its military forces
were routed and it was forced to withdraw from the Ogaden.
The Soviet bureaucracy considered that the price of having to
leave Somalia was more than compensated for by the increase of its
influence in Ethiopia, a far larger and richer country, with a highly
strategic position on the shores of the Red Sea and at the straits of Bab
el Mandeb.
US imperialism moved quickly to fill the breach left by the
withdrawal of support from the Soviet Union. Siad Barre, the selfstyled
"socialist," became enrolled among the allies of the "free
world." Washington became his principal sponsor and for the next
decade, armed and financed his regime.
In the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution and Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, the US efforts to establish bases in the Middle East were
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