THE ORGANIZATION OF AFRICAN UNITY, while recognizing the flagrant
inequities of the continent's imperial legacy, also understood that
once the principle of tribal and ethnic integrity was accepted, revolts would
erupt everywhere. Better to assent to an unsatisfactory situation than to an
intolerable one. It was a position the Somalis could not accept. During the
last week of July 1977, with the larger part of the Ethiopian land forces tied
down in Eritrea, Mohammed Siad Barre ordered a major offensive in the
Ogaden. He disguised the invasion by permitting thousands of his troops to
"resign" and then take up arms "voluntarily" on the other side of the
internationally recognized border. The poorly trained, uninspired Ethiopi-
ans, enervated by Mengistu's purges of their officers, fell back in disarray,
leaving behind their weapons and equipment. By early August the Somalis
had cut the rail line to Djibouti and captured more than a hundred towns.
By the end of September they controlled most of the Ogaden—nearly a
third of Ethiopia's national territory, and other ethnic groups had begun to
take up arms against the Marxist regime. The government in Addis Ababa
teetered on the edge of disaster.

Mengistu decreed a national mobilization of the Ethiopian people, and
he flew once again to Moscow and to Havana to plead for more-tangible
assistance. Within days Raúl Castro was in the Soviet capital with a number
of his generals to coordinate the airlifting of Cuban troops. Having alien-
ated the Somalis by failing to support their aspirations for unification, the
Soviets faced the prospect of losing a valuable foothold on the Horn of
Africa. They justified their direct intervention on the grounds that the So-
malis, by invading the Ogaden, were clearly the aggressors. For the Soviet