Ogaden - The Deadly Little War

BYLINE: By BRIAN JEFFRIES, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: SHILABO, Ethiopia

BODY:

   Mohammed Abdulahi Aden is only 12 years old.

He stood in clearing in the bush with a French-made automatic rifle slung over his shoulders.

The rifle was almost as big as he was, but he carried it proudly, as a warrior should.

"I am a member of the Western Somali Liberation Front army," he announced.

"And I am fighting for my land."

Bloodied but still defiant, ethnic Somalis living in Ethiopia's eastern Ogaden region are continuing a war stretching back 15
years.

Aimed at freeing them from Ethiopian rule, the war is waged against an opposition that includes thousands of Cuban troops,
tens of thousands of Ethiopian soldiers and sophisticated Soviet-supplied equipment.

Since the Cubans and Soviet military advisers spearheaded an Ethiopian offensive eight months ago, sweeping through the
region to recapture it from the guerrillas and regular Somalian troops, the Ogaden war has slipped from public view.

But a three-day trip through part of the Ogaden - the first made by foreign journalists since the March offensive - found that the
ethnic Somal who populate the area have lost none of their fighting spirit. They are determined to press forward with their "war
of liberation" - one they consider no different from others that have ended colonial rule in Africa.

The mostly nomadic Ogaden Somalis - numbering between 2 million and 4 million and of the same ethnic stock as the people of neighboring Somalia are intensely nationalistic. The region has been part of Ethiopia since its conquest in the late 19the century.

But the Somalis consider themselves to be colonized and complain that the world fails to recognize this because the colonization was by black Ethiopians rather than by white settlers from beyond Africa's shores.

When the full-scale war ended and the regular Somali troops pulled back across the border, WSLF officials say, the guerrillas
were left with no option but to pull back from their positions, disperse into the countryside and regroup for what they anticipate
will be protracted hit-and-run war.

They are now concentrating in isolating the Ethiopians and Cubans in the towns and cutting their supply lines. In this objective at least, they appear to be successful.

Shilabo is one of the few towns still held by the guerrillas, although it has been deserted for three months after a series of
bombing raids by Ethiopia planes. Many of the population of 6,000 are hiding out in the bush fearing further raids. But others
have regrouped nearby, building themselves a temporary village of thatched huts and loosely woven shelters of branches.

They hope the village is difficult for Ethiopian fighter planes to spot from the air. So far the village has escaped unsoathed.

It is the headquarters for a WSLF committee that overseas a region embracing 100,000 people, says Hussein Muhammed
Hassan, the committee's chairman.The committee is responsible for mobilizing the entire area for the war effort. Other regional
committees carry on the same work throughout the Ogaden and are the keystones of the WSLF structure, say guerrilla officials.

Each regional committee is divided into sections responsible for political, economic and defense affairs. The most important is
defense, said Hassan.

That section picks recruits for the regular WSLF guerrilla army fighting at the fronts, gives universal military training to civilians
to enable them to protect themselves, advises on the best way to disperse camels, goats and other livestock from water wells
during an air attack and provides manpower to remove the wounded from the battlefields.

"We have no problem recruiting people to fight," Hassan said. "Everybody volunteers, men and women, but the committee
keeps back those like the younger children and the elderly."

Not everybody gets a gun. In the town of Jidale, a middle-aged Somali was seen baranguing senior WSLF officials.They
explained that the regional committee was refusing to arm him.

"But we dare not do so," said one official. "He is a little unstable and we fear that if we give him a gun, he will rush off into the
Ethiopian lines and get himself killed."

The Cubans and Russians have inspired more hatred than even the Ethiopia's aid and turned the tide of the war against the
Somalis just when they appeared about to capture the entire region.

In a guerrilla line blockading the town of Kebri Debare, one fighter recounted how he and a group of comrades dug up the
body of a Cuban killed in a battle with the WSLF and placed a slain guerrilla in the grave.

"We wanted a man who fought for his land to be buried in the land - not a Cuban," he said, "we left the Cuban to the hyenas."
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