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| Ethiopia
Ethiopia, like its neighbors in the Horn of Africa, lies within borders drawn by colonial powers. Boundary disputes with Eritrea, which have caused three major rounds of combat in the last decade, still threaten to descend into armed conflict.
In the 1950s and 1960s, more than half of all US aid to Africa went to Ethiopia, whose armed forces served in US-led missions in Korea and the Congo. Emperor Haile Selassie also gave the US basing rights in the Red Sea territory of Eritrea, which his government annexed in 1962. Following pro-Soviet coups in Sudan and Somalia, the US strengthened its ties with Addis Ababa. After Eritrean guerrillas launched a war of independence, the US sent Ethiopia supersonic warplanes and Green Berets to train its counterinsurgency units.
In 1974, a group of Marxist-influenced soldiers called the Derg deposed the emperor. Their leader, Mengistu Haile Mariam, escalated fighting with Eritrean guerrillas as part of his campaign against rival Marxist groups in Ethiopia proper. But the new regime remained a US ally until 1977, when Mengistu booted the Americans out and became a Soviet client. Somalia, which had invaded Ethiopia’s southeastern Ogaden region in nominal support of rebels there, invited the US to take the Soviets’ place in Mogadishu. The Derg repulsed the Somalis, but in the next decade war with Eritrean and other Ethiopian militias caused famine on a terrible scale. There was heavy emigration to the West.
Eritrean victory in 1991 precipitated Mengistu’s downfall and left Ethiopia landlocked. Soon, hardliners were calling for reannexation of Eritrea or, at least, its southernmost port, Assab. Open warfare over the border raged from 1998-2000, claiming tens of thousands of lives and sending hundreds of thousands of refugees into flight. Blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers monitor the truce, but the international community failed to compel Ethiopia to accept the 2001 decision of a boundary commission. The frontier remains tense.
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