Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0129/01294.txt

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$Unique_ID{COW01294}
$Pretitle{228}
$Title{Ethiopia
Chapter 5C.   Foreign Military Assistance}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Robert Rinehart}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{military
soviet
ethiopian
ethiopia
eplf
forces
states
united
troops
aid}
$Date{1980}
$Log{Figure 16.*0129401.scf
Figure 17.*0129402.scf
Figure 18.*0129403.scf
}
Country:     Ethiopia
Book:        Ethiopia, A Country Study
Author:      Robert Rinehart
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1980

Chapter 5C.   Foreign Military Assistance

     The use of foreign military advisers has a long history in Ethiopia,
going back to the arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. French,
White Russian, Belgian, and Swedish advisers all contributed to efforts before
World War II to build a modern army, and in 1942 Britain assumed
responsibility for training and equipping the army. The air force was
developed and for a number of years was commanded by Swedish officers.
Similarly, Norwegian officers were contracted to organize a navy.

     American influence first came into play through association with the
Kagnew Battalion of the Imperial Bodyguard that served with the United States
Army's 7th Division in Korea. When the British military mission departed in
1951, the task of providing assistance to the army was largely assumed by the
United States, although Israel trained Ethiopian paratroops and other
specialized units, and India furnished instructors for the military academy.

United States Aid

     In 1953 the United States signed a military assistance agreement with
Ethiopia and undertook to train and equip Haile Selassie's armed forces in
return for a twenty-five-year lease on the Kagnew Communications Center, near
Asmera. At the time Kagnew was the world's largest radio relay and receiving
station; its facilities, manned by 4,000 American military personnel, were
later developed for satellite tracking and monitoring Soviet missile tests.
During the more than twenty-three years that the agreement remained in effect,
the United States provided military and economic aid amounting to about
US $606 million. Military assistance, accounting for one-third of total aid,
included direct grants, credits, and guaranteed loans. Ethiopia also acquired
excess American military equipment at cost. In 1974 its armed forces were
totally dependent on the United States for military hardware and parts.

     At the peak of the American-Ethiopian involvement in the 1960s, more
than 300 personnel were assigned to the United States' Military Assistance
Advisory Group (MAAG). Nearly 23,000 Ethiopian servicemen, including at least
twenty who subsequently became members of the Derg, received advanced training
under military education programs, 4,000 of them at facilities in the United
States.

     American aid continued without interruption after the 1974 coup, although
it was accompanied by proposals for a negotiated settlement in Eritrea. After
the "Bloody Saturday" purge in November 1974, the United States postponed
signing a pending aid agreement, but shipments of aircraft and tanks doubled
the dollar value of military assistance in 1975 (see Revolutionary Change, ch.
1). Citing the "arms imbalance in the region" resulting from Soviet aid to
Somalia, the United States proposed to update Ethiopia's arms inventory over
a three-year period by turning over US $200 million worth of surplus materiel
originally earmarked for Vietnam. Transfer of a squadron of F-5As from the
Iranian air force was also authorized. The PMAC was particularly concerned to
ensure a continuing flow of spare parts-"down to the boot-laces" -while the
United States sought to prove to other African countries that it could be
relied on to keep military aid commitments and that it was "responsive to
[political] change" on the continent. Total American arms sales to Ethiopia
in 1974 and 1975 amounted to US $35 million.

     During 1976 further tensions developed between the United States and
Ethiopia concerning the ongoing Military Assistance Program. The PMAC
rejected a new Foreign Military Sales (FMS) credit agreement because of the
higher interest rate imposed by the United States, and it also complained
about delays in arms delivery schedules in the face of growing Soviet military
assistance to Somalia. The United States, meanwhile, refused to approve a
US $60 million program to replace ammunition expended in Eritrea.

     In August 1976, however, a United States Department of State official
testifying before a congressional committee characterized the Ethiopian
government as "not systematically or intrinsically anti-U.S." The first
concrete shift in relations between the two countries came in December of that
year when a PMAC delegation headed by Mengistu visiting Moscow concluded an
arms agreement with the Soviet Union valued at US $385 million that was
designed to end the United States' virtual monopoly on arms supplies to
Ethiopia. The agreement was the result of negotiations entered into with the
Soviets earlier in the year.

     In February 1977 Secretary of State Cyrus Vance testified before a
United States congressional committee, recommending that grant military
assistance to Ethiopia be ended because of violations of human rights
attributed to the governing regime. Grant military assistance represented
only a small portion of the total American military aid program, which totaled
US $26 million in FY 1976 and was scheduled to be US $62 million in FY 1977.
(These figures contrasted with an annual average of US $10 million in military
assistance to the imperial regime.) The United States also informed the PMGSE
that it intended to reduce the size of the American military mission and to
shut down the Kagnew communications station, where activities had already been
phased out, by the end of September. As a result of these actions, the PMGSE
concluded that all military assistance would eventually be eliminated, and it
responded on April 23 by closing American military installations and giving
MAAG personnel a week's notice to leave the country. A large store of
equipment was left behind in the rapid American departure. Ethiopia formally
abrogated the 1953 Military Defense Assistance Agreement and terminated the
lease on Kagnew. In the absence of a bilateral agreement, the United States
had no legal basis for the delivery of aircraft, armored vehicles, ships, and
a number of Maverick and Sidewinder missiles that had been approved for
delivery and on which the PMGSE had made partial down payments.

Soviet and Cuban Aid

     Ethiopia had been assured Soviet aid in 1976 (before it abrogated the
military assistance agreement with the United States), and Lieutenant Colonel
Atnafu Abate, then vice-chairman of the PMAC, had announced that Ethiopia
would in the future restrict its purchases to "socialist countries." Soviet
supplies were in the pipeline when in August 1977 Jijiga fell to the Somali,
and Mengistu issued an urgent appeal to the Soviets for aid. Deliveries began
to arrive the following month.

     The Soviet supply effort was massive and was efficiently carried forward.
In three months time as many as fifty Soviet ships had passed through the
Suez Canal to off-load crated fighter aircraft, tanks, artillery, and
munitions at Aseb-an estimated 60,000 tons of hardware-for delivery to the
Ogaden front. Additional Soviet equipment was shipped from Aden. At the height
of the buildup between November 1977 and February 1978, Soviet transport
aircraft, including the giant An-22, were reportedly landing at twenty-minute
intervals at Ethiopian airports. An estimated 225 transports-about 15 percent
of the Soviet air fleet-were involved in the operation, which was believed to
have been coordinated through a military reconnaissance satellite launched
for that purpose in November.

     The Soviet supply operation in 1977-78 impressed Western observers, who
admitted that the display of Soviet transport capability had added a "new
strategic element" to th