Somalia wins the Ogaden War

So lets say the Ethiopian civil war goes a lot worse than OTL and several higher ups in the Derg and military are killed including Mengistu Haile Mariam due to this the Soviets view backing the very unstable Ethiopia as a bad idea and stick with their Somali allies all this results in a far worse Ethiopian army and a failure to hold Dire Dawa and Harar against the Somali invaders. The Somalis capture almost all of the Ogaden and are able to repel the poorly armed and beset with infighting Ethiopian counterattack in January 1978 and force the Ethiopians to a Soviet negotiated peace.

So questions
1. How plausible is this?
2. What would the effects of this be on the politics of Ethiopia and Somalia?
3. What would the effects be on the wider world?
 
This is a neat idea!

Unfortunately, I don't think it's very plausible. Or rather, I think it's plausible that Somalia could have done better, capturing Dire Dawa and occupying the entire Ogaden.

But given the relative strengths of the combatants, I just can't see Somalia keeping Ogaden. 1970s Ethiopia had double the area, eight times the population, and an economy ten times bigger than Somalia. Even if you hand over Ogaden and ignore Eritrea, it's still something like 5-1.

As long as the USSR is pumping in tanks and airplanes, Somalia can maybe hang on. But why would the Soviets keep Somalia on life support when Ethiopia, a much larger and more important country, was ready to cut a deal?

I suppose if you kill of Mengistu and keep the Derg at each others' throats long enough, you could get a metastable situation. But sooner or later a leader would arise, cut a deal for superpower support, and move to throw the Somalis out.


Doug M.
 
Not to threadjack, but this inspired a thought.

OTL the turning point of the long Ethiopian Civil War was the alliance between the Ethiopian rebels (who wanted to topple Mengistu) and the Eritrean rebels (who wanted an independent Eritrea that was no longer a coastal province of Ethiopia). The two groups agreed to work together and coordinate their actions.

Is it remotely plausible to bring the Ogaden Somalis into this? OTL they had nothing to do with it (AFAIK -- it's not my field). Their attitude seems to have been "Mengistu is an Ethiopian and our enemy, and so are the rebels opposing him in Ethiopia". And on the Ethiopian side, I doubt there would have been much enthusiasm for joining with the Ogaden Somalis, even if they did share a common enemy.

On the other hand, it's not obviously more daft than the alliance with the Eritreans. If you'll work with one ethnic secessionist group, why not another?

In this TL, Mengistu falls, Eritrea becomes independent -- as iOTL -- and Ogaden gains independence too, whereupon it promptly joins Somalia.

I have no idea how plausible this is, though. Anyone?


Doug M.
 
The somalis did defeat the ethiopians in the ogaden war, and captured 90% of the ogaden before the cubans and soviets arrived.

In 1978 the ethiopian army faced complete collapse, it lost all its armour and most of its artillery, only the airforce was a potent force but this was removed conveinetly for the somalis becuase of ethiopian infighting.
The airforce officers where on the losing side of the power struggle and were decimated, and the entire airforce grounded.

prior to being grounded the ethiopian airforce having more experienced pilots were winning in the dogfights with thier F-5s against somali mig-17s and 21s.
not surprising since the ethiopian airforce was founded in 1947 while the somali airforce was founded in 1961 with the first pilots flying in 1964.


The somalis are unlucky to have been the victims of 2 firsts in millitary history, The first aerial bombardment against a colonial people in revolt.
(the british against the forts of the mad mullah in 1920).

and the first air mobile mechanized attach, when the cubans light tanks were airlifted behind somali lines and the somalis were aerially enveloped.


The defeat was inflicted by the cubans there were 20,000 cubans and some east germans , soviets and south yemeni communists against the 24,000 somali army..

the ethiopians were not a functioning army at that point,
the dergue hastilly conscripted peasants and reformed a 50,000 army and deployed it to harar.

if the soviets remained nuetral, do you think
a recovering ethiopian army with no airforce, that lost nearly all its armour
but has hundreds of thousands of conscrited and half trained peasants armed with rifles against a mechanized force of 24,000 is much of a threat?

before the cubans arrived the 50,000 ethiopian conscripts were under siege in harar, they would have been bombarded and starved out, and dire Dawa would have been the next target.

The vital gara marda pass was in somali hands as well, meaning the ethiopians would have had to fight thier way through to resupply thier forces.(the reason for the aerial envelopment in the first place as the somali comanded an excellent position).


http://s188567700.online.de/CMS/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=140&Itemid=47
 
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Not to threadjack, but this inspired a thought.

OTL the turning point of the long Ethiopian Civil War was the alliance between the Ethiopian rebels (who wanted to topple Mengistu) and the Eritrean rebels (who wanted an independent Eritrea that was no longer a coastal province of Ethiopia). The two groups agreed to work together and coordinate their actions.

Is it remotely plausible to bring the Ogaden Somalis into this? OTL they had nothing to do with it (AFAIK -- it's not my field). Their attitude seems to have been "Mengistu is an Ethiopian and our enemy, and so are the rebels opposing him in Ethiopia". And on the Ethiopian side, I doubt there would have been much enthusiasm for joining with the Ogaden Somalis, even if they did share a common enemy.


On the other hand, it's not obviously more daft than the alliance with the Eritreans. If you'll work with one ethnic secessionist group, why not another?

In this TL, Mengistu falls, Eritrea becomes independent -- as iOTL -- and Ogaden gains independence too, whereupon it promptly joins Somalia.

I have no idea how plausible this is, though. Anyone?


Doug M.


Would you believe that both presidents of ethiopia and eritrea used to travel with somali diplomatic passports, and had offices in moqadishu.
The somalis funded and supported all the rebel movements in ethiopia.
We even acted as intermediets between the arabs and the eritreans.
 
Bump! Does anyone have any thoughts on the butterflies resulting from this?

These are hard to determine without a precise POD and knowing the immediate fallout. I'm going to go out on a limb here though and say that it might be a net benefit of Ethiopia.
 
If Somalia won the Ogaden war, it would have survived today.
Ethiopia would not have survived.
Between the 2 there was a race to discover who would collapse first.
Ethiopia did actually collapse but was brought back to life by the Eritreans and thier allies.
They with the blessing of the US government crushed all the other Liberation groups and the EPLF and TPLF consolidated power in 1991-94
with the Eritreans getting thier Independance made official by the proteges they helped place in power the TPLF.

The Eritreans came to regret this when the relationship soured due to money issues and they realized that thier proteges the TPLF thier former students now control the resources of the Entire Ethiopian Empire and
will use it against them.

A surviving somalia would have insured that Ethiopia is never re-contituted after its 1991 collapse and would have insured that the ORomo nation and its OLF(45% of the Total Ethiopian population) would achieve independance as well the Afars.
Ethiopia would have disintegrated into at least 5 or 6 countries.

Since Ethiopia recovered first it has used its influence to insure that somalia never stabalizes,
nearly every warlord between 1995-2006 was in the Ethiopias pocket,
they alsohave strong influence over Puntland and Somaliland.
 
No offense, but this seems very unlikely. Ethiopia has been around a very long time. It's had something like its current shape since the late 1800s. And it's got a pretty strong sense of national identity.

The Amhara / Oromo split is a real problem, but it's never come close to dividing the nation. (IIUC, that's in part because it's as much a social or class division as an ethnic one). The Oromo dissidents aren't consistent about whether they want secession, autonomy, or just better treatment within a unitary Ethiopia. My understanding is that most ordinary Oromo are Ethiopian nationalists; they don't want to break up the country, they're just annoyed with having the damn Amhara over them.

It may seem odd that ethnically and linguistically homogeneous Somalia has shattered into pieces while Ethiopia, much more diverse, shows no signs of breaking up. But there it is.


Doug M.
 
Ethiopia has been around a long time but it reached its current size as recently as 1900.

prior to that Ethiopia was confined to the northern highlands, the region as as gondar and tigray where the amahara and the Tigray live.
the southern highlands are a multi ethnic melting pot of dozens of ethnic groups speaking dozens of langauges, these are the remnants of the various different states mostly muslim sultanates that were rivals to the
Ethiopians in the northern highlands.
Bordering them were the pastrolists such as the Somali and afar.

between 1250 and 1540 there was a never ending see-saw battle between the christian amaharic speaking ethiopian solomonic state and the various multi-ethnic but muslim sultanates, among them Shoa, and Ifat and Haddiya and dewaro.

The Ethiopians conquered shoa which was a muslim sultanate and thoroughly assimilated the population and today it is the heartland of the amahara.
The rest of the muslim sultanates coalesd into the sultanate of Ifat which was the rival to christian ethiopia.

when this was defeated the power shifted further east to Harar and Ziela, which made up Adal.

Even Adal lost and was a vassal state by 1522 when the jihad of ahmed gurey started, gathered all those opposed to the Ethiopians and devastated the ethiopians all the way to Tigray.
This had a profound affect as they still scare children with stories that the gran will get them if they are naughty.

The Oromo which were majority non-muslim or christian and were a neutral bystander during all those conflicts between the 2 sides, filled the vacume.
The Oromo practically conquered most of the contested area.
Like the mongols most converted to islam becuase of the influence of the regions they conquered, and some converted to the coptic church...



The Ethiopians expanded into the current borders because of the availability of over 100,000 modern rifles mostly remingtons and martini-henries and they had support from the french and even some russian adventurers that helped train this force..

They still took nearly 20 years to destroy the Oromo as a millitary force
and turned most of them into serfs.
Allot of the oromos chose to convert to christianity and assimiltaed into the Amhara ruling elite..

The ogaden was only pacified at the end of the 1920's and Ethiopian rule has been tenacious since then..
 
Ethiopia is not as stable as you think,
the TPLF tigray which represent about 5-7% of the population monopolize all power.
They have the Amahara that were the ruling elite as a strong opposition
they make up most of the officers and professionals in the armed forces,
and are waiting for thier chance to grab power..

The Oromo are divided, while 60% are muslim and very pro-independance
the the rest are divided into coptic christians that are pro-Ethiopia and are partially assimilated into amhara culture, while the rest are protestants and evangelicals that are divided in thier loyalties.

The Afar are small minority about 2-3 million from a population of 70-80 million and are also divided in thier aims.

The somalis which are equal to the Tigray in population are also divided
along clan lines with some pro-government and other not, and a large part of the Oagaden is a no go area and all ethiopians require millitary convoys to move from town to town.
 
I don't think Ethiopia is stable in the sense that everything is wonderful and everyone gets along. Ethiopia 's modern history has seen lots of violent resistance movements, civil wars, ethnic conflicts, coups and revolutions. I expect that will continue.

But I don't think the Ethiopian nation-state is going to disintegrate, or even lose control over much of its current territory.

To bring this back to the WI: as noted, I don't believe Siad Barre could have actually won that war. But okay, let's say he did. What consequences for the evolution of Somalia?


Doug M.
 

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Ethiopia is not as stable as you think,
the TPLF tigray which represent about 5-7% of the population monopolize all power.
They have the Amahara that were the ruling elite as a strong opposition
they make up most of the officers and professionals in the armed forces,
and are waiting for thier chance to grab power..

The Oromo are divided, while 60% are muslim and very pro-independance
the the rest are divided into coptic christians that are pro-Ethiopia and are partially assimilated into amhara culture, while the rest are protestants and evangelicals that are divided in thier loyalties.

The Afar are small minority about 2-3 million from a population of 70-80 million and are also divided in thier aims.

The somalis which are equal to the Tigray in population are also divided
along clan lines with some pro-government and other not, and a large part of the Oagaden is a no go area and all ethiopians require millitary convoys to move from town to town.
Which translated in African terms constitute a very stable state. It's more than 10 years since the latest Oromo uprising, and the Oromo homeland is a total wank, which constitute a nice counterweight to the Amharic elite I guess.
 
Somalias demise is a by product of the Ogaden war.
Siad barre became paranoid when his efforts at micro-managing the war from moqadishu were opposed by the generals in the field.
The generals were facing a life an death struggle and chose to ignore allot of stupid orders.
siad barre found this a threat to his power and executed several high ranking and experienced officers in the middle of the war.
This upset the clans that they belonged to..

Siads became even more paranoid when officers from the majerteen clans led by Col abdullahi yusuf (president from 2004-2006) attempted a coup.
when this failed he launch a darfur like repression on thier lands and killed thousands, the first rebel force the SSDF was formed and they ran into
Mengistu's arms.
Mengistu supplied them with weapons and gave them bases in ethiopia..

This was 1978, Siad barre then aliented another major clan the Issaq
and they launched thier own rebel movement the SNM.



Without the Ogaden war Siad probaly would have aliented the clans
but he would have survived longer, and the disruption would have been less severe...


About winnig the war it was possible in 1977 , infact ethiopia was defeated.
The problem was that Siad barre misread the geo-political implications.
You do not kick out the soviets and cut ties and expect them to be nice.
Vasili petrov the advisor to the Somali army siad that somalia will pay dearly for this when he was leaving..

He wasnt joking , the 20,000 cubans and communist troops were led by the same vasili petrov.

Siad barre also had the misfortune of trusting the Saudis.
They provided $500 million and assured him that they can get the carter administration on his side.
Nothing of the sort happened, the chinese and iraqis and Egyptians provided ammunition and spare parts.
The pakistanis povided some pilots..

but no major aid arrived till the reagen administration.
 
WI the POD was different?

Let us suppose that Ethiopia gets Eritrea after World War II only as a result to trading Somali areas to one or both Somalilands. What are the effects on Ethiopian and Somalian history?
 
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