OGADEN, Ethiopia
 

   Correspondent Richard Tomkins was among a small group of Western journalists who recently toured Ethopia's embattled
Ogaden region. Here is a report on what drives the Ogaden rebels to fight.

Mahmoud Alim stood in the gentle desert breeze of the southern Ogaden and gazed at the horizon of sand, rocks and scrub
brush.

"I know it is not as fertile or as rich as many parts of the world," he said. "But in spite of this we love this place - it is our home.

"A few months ago when I went to the ogaden, I had to hide. Now I come in the open and see my flag flying freely. The fear
and apprehension korus in the south is over."

Alim, 30-year-old son of a nomadic herdsman, is a member of the Western Somali Liberation Front WSLF, a guerrilla group
that claims to control most of rhe Ogaden, Africa's hottest battleground, an arid region that comprises one-fifth of Ethiopia's
territory.

The guerrillas, seeking to free the Ogadan from Ethiopia and annex it to neighboring Somalia, are believed to number 3,000 and
6,000 hard-core regular Western reporters visiting WSLF territory, however, saw hundreds of people armed by the fron or
undergoing military training.

The hatred for ETHIOPIA HERE IN THE Ogaden is a longstanding one that grew from ethnic and regligious differences. But
for some tribesman, like Alim, nationalism is also based on personal experiences.

"I was 12 years old when the Ethiopians killed my father," he told a reporter. "He was a member of the former liberation front.

"Because they the Ethiopians suspected us of guerrilla activity, we were constantly under harassment."

Alim, raised near the Somali border, said his mother, younger sister and brother fled the Ogaden into Somalia after Ethiopian
soldiers burst into their dewelling after his father's death in 1969, searched the house and beat the mother.

It was then that he decided to join the rebels, Alim said, and he was trained in Somalia by older guerrillas.

The Ethopian military government has admitted it is losing ground to guerilla forces in both the Ogaden and in Eritrea, a northern
province where rebels are trying to establish an independent state.

Addis Ababa radio claimed Sunday that its forces had killed 127 Somalian soldiers in fierce fighting in the southern province of
Bale. Somalia, which supports secessionist guerrillas there and in the adjacent Ogaden, has repeatedly denied Ethiopian reports
that its regular armed forces are fighting alongside the rebels.

The Eritrean Liberation Front claimed that had captured the key towns of Keren and Agordat in that province and had
encircled the Red Sea port of Massawa.

During a tour by reporters of the rebel-held area of the Ogaden, new recruits were seen being given military drill at a former
missionary camp turned into a military headquarters in Kalfo about 100 miles from the Somali border.

The recruits varied in age, from teen-age boys to elderly men. They carried Soviet-type AK-47 automatic rifles and
Communist-bloc machine guns.

In other villages in the "liberated" zone, people who turned out to demonstrate their support for the WSLF carried an
assortment of arms, World War II American rifles and post-war Italian rifles. They were dressed in odd mixtures of garments.

Elderly men wore the traditional "hosgunty," a wrap-around skirt of brightly colored material, under remnants of Ethiopian army
coats or the khaki-colored shirts of the WSLF. Footwear often consisted of sandals and "safari" boots, and some were
shoeless.

The "home guard" contrasted sharply to the hard-core WSLF guerrillas, who had uniforms and boots. They carried AK-47s
almost exclusively and displayed mortars, anti-tank rockets and machine guns used against Ethiopian troops. Guerrilla
spokesmen refused to say where they obtain the bulk of their Communist-bloc arms.

Until it began switching its alliance from East to West a few months ago, Somalia had been receiving military help from the
Soviet Union. At the same time, Ethiopia, which had been supplied by the United States and other Western nations, turned
toward the Soviet Union for military help. This apparently accounts for the presence of Soviet and Western arms in the
Ogaden.

The Ogaden, an inhospitable environment, is peopled by ethni Somali nomads. They are Moslems who have been dominated
by Ethiopian Christians since the turn of the century.

The Somalis in the Ogaden view Ethiopia as a colonial power which occupied their desert land through military force. "We're
fighting for our rights as decent human beings," and executive member of the WSLF said in the Somali capital of Mogadishu
recently.

The Ogaden people claim they suffered under Ethiopi's rule in many ways.  WSLF spokesman claim the learning of Somali
script was forbidden under the Ethiopians, carrying of Somali money was a punishable offense, and soldiers arbitrarily collected
"taxes" by confiscating goods.

We are colonized and we don't see why we should be different from the rest of the world in securing our dignity and right of
emancipation," said one WSLF official.

The Associated Press (AP)
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