V o L u m e I : a d

control, and projection of power. The geopolitical competition between

the United States and the USSR revolved around the Ethiopian-Somalian

conflict.

America’s foothold in the Horn was Ethiopia, where it had maintained a

presence since 1953. The Soviet Union initially had a strong presence in

Somalia. Between 1953 and 1974, when Ethiopian ruler Haile Selassie was

overthrown, the United States supplied more than $200 million in military

aid to Ethiopia, which in 1970 comprised almost half of all aid to sub-Saharan

Africa. In 1953, an American military base opened at Kagnew Station in

Asmara, Ethiopia, for, among other purposes, tracking space satellites and

relaying military communications. More than 3,200 U.S. military personnel

were stationed there. The United States also supported counterinsurgency

teams fighting the Eritrean Liberation Movement. American support of

Ethiopia was largely a response to the regional machinations of the Soviet

Union. General Barre, the head of the Supreme Revolutionary Council of

Somalia (an overtly socialist organization), had by 1977 received more than

$250 million in military aid from the Soviets. The Soviet Union also helped

construct port facilities at Berbera, overlooking the Red Sea, as well as

communication facilities. This base was strategically situated almost directly

opposite the Soviet naval facilities in South Yemen’s port of Aden.

The strategic equation in the Horn took a strange twist beginning in the

mid-1970s. With the weakening and then the collapse of Selassie’s regime

in Ethiopia, the United States was forced to abandon its base in Asmara and

moved its base of operations to the island of Diego Garcia (1,500 miles off

the African coast in the Indian Ocean). Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, the

leader of the Derg military junta, ruled Ethiopia under a Marxist-Leninist

dictatorship from 1974 until 1991. This provided a window of opportunity

that the Soviets could not resist, but they had to be careful not to alienate

their Somali allies.

The Soviets responded to the new Ethiopian government’s request for

assistance (which the United States was no longer willing to provide) just as

the Eritreans and Somalis were enjoying more success in Ethiopia. In Sep-

tember 1977, the Soviet Union began the delivery of approximately $385

million in arms, including 48 MiG jet fighters, 200 T-54 and T-55 tanks, and

SAM-3 and SAM-7 antiaircraft missiles. The Soviet Union had gambled that

its new relationship with Ethiopia would not affect its relationship with

Somalia, a bet that it lost. The Soviet Union was expelled from Somalia in

1977. It also failed to achieve its aims in Ethiopia, for after seven years of

civil war the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) from far southern

Ethiopia entered Addis Ababa in May 1991, overthrowing the Marxist regime.

Meanwhile, the United States had become the major patron of Somalia,

supported Barre throughout the 1980s, and inherited the strategic base in

Berbera once held by the Soviets.

During the 1960s, Washington ordered a series of covert actions in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, Zaire). The DRC was a flashpoint

in the Cold War almost from its inception. Three central events in its history

punctuate the role it played in the U.S.-USSR geopolitical competition in

Africa

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sub-Saharan Africa: the defeat of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and rise

of Mobutu Sese Seko, the first secessionist crisis in Katanga (renamed Shaba

in 1971) in 1960, and the second secessionist crisis in Shaba in 1978.

The first and most significant result of such actions was the assassination

of Lumumba and the subsequent rise of the pro-Western Mobutu. Mobutu,

who ran what became commonly known as a kleptocracy, received approxi-

mately $1.5 billion in economic and military aid over the course of nearly

twenty-five years. The United States considered Mobutu a vital cog in its

global anticommunist network as well as a supplier of important strategic

minerals (cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, cadmium, and uranium).

In June 1960, the Belgian Congo gained independence and was renamed

the Republic of Congo, with Joseph Kasavubu as its first president and

Lumumba as its first prime minister. Lumumba, a leftist, almost immedi-

ately faced a secessionist crisis in the mineral-rich Katanga province. At the

request of the Congolese government, United Nations (UN) troops were

sent in to restore order. The United States opposed Lumumba’s nationalist

and nonaligned policies and his implicit support of the Soviet Union. In Sep-

tember 1960 President Kasavubu, along with the army, dismissed Lumumba

and in January 1961 delivered him to the secessionists in Katanga province

who then executed him.

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Africa

Volunteers with the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC) during the 1960s. Established in 1960 by the

United Nations Security Council to assist the newly independent Congo by restoring order and providing technical

assistance, the ONUC operated until 1964. (Corel)

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From 1961 until 1964 (when Belgian paratroopers finally restored order),

there was fighting between rival secessionist groups. American-educated

Moise Tshombe then emerged as the leader of the Katanga secessionists.

After a short period of exile, Tshombe was named the premier of the Gov-

ernment of Reconciliation by Kasavubu in 1964. Two years later Tshombe

was dismissed and accused of treason and again went into exile. He was

kidnapped and imprisoned in Algeria, where he died in prison in 1969. Pres-

ident Kasavubu was ousted in a second Mobutu-led coup in November

1965. By 1967, the pro-Lumumbist elements had been effectively defeated.

Zaire then became a staging area for neighboring Cold War struggles.

Mobutu’s involvement in neighboring Angola’s civil war resulted in the

Front for the National Liberation of the Congo (FLNC) invasion of Zaire’s

Shaba region in March 1977, known as the Shaba I Crisis. Included in the

invading force was a small remnant of the Katangan rebels. The FLNC

quickly captured several towns and gained control of the railroad to about

thirty kilometers from the copper mining town of Kolwezi. The dissidents

aimed to take over the entire country and depose Mobutu. Their advance

and the threat to Kolwezi forced Mobutu to appeal for international assis-

tance. Thus, Belgium, France, and the United States responded to Mobutu’s

request by immediately airlifting military supplies to Zaire. Other African

states, namely Egypt and Morocco, also supported Zaire during the crisis. By

the end of May, the joint force had regained control of Shaba. The FLNC

then withdrew to Angola and Zambia.

Government reprisals after Shaba I drove 50,000–70,000 refugees into

Angola. Also, Zaire’s continued support for Angolan dissident groups ensured

continued Angolan government support for the FLNC. The Shaba II Crisis

was triggered in May 1978 when the FLNC launched its second invasion of

Zaire in a little over a year. During early May 1978, ten FLNC battalions

entered Shaba through northern Zambia, a sparsely populated area inhabited

by the same ethnic groups (Lunda and Ndembu) that made up the FLNC.

A small group went toward Mutshatsha, about 60 miles west of Kolwezi, to

block the path of Zairian reinforcements that threatened to move into the

area. During the night of 11–12 May 1978, the remainder of the force moved

to Kolwezi, where it joined with the rebels who had earlier infiltrated the

town. The town of Kolwezi was lightly defended, and the rebels quickly

gained a foothold in the mineral-rich Shaba (formerly Katanga) province,

thereby controlling about 75 percent of the country’s export earnings. The

French and Belgian governments requested U.S. help in putting down the

rebellion.

The administration of President Jimmy Carter viewed Shaba II as an

instance of Soviet expansionism. Subsequently, in a total of thirty-eight flight

missions, U.S. planes transported roughly 2,500 French and Belgian troops

and supporting equipment to the region. The American commitment to

Mobutu and Zaire was consistent with its long-standing support of Mobutu

and with the U.S. concern over Soviet/Cuban influence in neighboring

Angola. President Carter, in fact, rebuked Cuban leader Fidel Castro for sup-

porting the FLNC attack launched from Angolan territory. Carter’s national

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