Opposing foreign intervention's impact on the warfare in civil wars: the case of the Ethiopian-Ogaden Civil War, 1976–1980

This article examines the impact of opposing foreign intervention on the course and nature of the warfare in the Ethiopian-Ogaden Civil War. The Ogaden War, having been sporadically fought between 1963 and 1988, was one of the longest and bloodiest in the Horn of Africa’s turbulent history. It was typical of civil wars in having attracted the involvement of a range of regional and international actors; in the Ogaden’s case, it was the Soviet Union, the United States, Somalia, Cuba, South Yemen, Israel, East Germany and North Korea. This article is an empirical study of the effect that external actors had on the warfare between the Ethiopian military junta (normally referred to as the Derg) and the main Ogaden Somali insurgent group, the Western Somali Liberation Front, between 1976 and 1980. The warfare in the Ogaden during this period can be divided into three distinct phases: medium intensity guerrilla warfare (1976–1977), conventional warfare (1977–1978), and low-intensity guerrilla warfare (1978–1980). It is argued that each phase was, to a large extent, influenced by the type and volume of support the Derg and the Western Somali Liberation Front received from international sponsors. Finally, the article concludes that the current theory on foreign intervention, and opposing intervention in particular, fails to capture the true complexity of its impact on warfare in civil wars.