Vultures Hover in N.e. Africa

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Last week the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Djibouti, France's last colony in Africa, voted for independence, though a French military presence will remain.

Djibouti is a tiny enclave once known as French Somalia, and officially the Territory of the Afars and Issas.

It occupies a crucial strategic position between Eritrea (in the north of Ethiopia) and Somalia, It is also Ethiopia's main rau outlet to the sea.

On the eve of its independence Djibouti already faces the threat not only of internal clan rivalries but also of invasion from two places. This could come from Ethiopia, anxious to prevent the capture of Djibouti by its enemies, Somalia, or by one of the Eritrean liberation armies; or it could come from Somalia, whose government claims the territory as part of "Greater Somalia" (which also stretches across a large stretch of Ethiopia and Kenya).

INSTABILITY

Both Ethiopia and Somalia say they will not intervene until the other does so.

Djibouti has thus become a new source of instability in this crisis-ridden region of Africa. The present centres of this crisis are in Ethiopia.

The left-talking Ethiopian military dictatorship, the Derg, is now fighting four open wars. Three are against the three Eritrean liberation armies-the Popular Front for the Liberation of Eritrea, (which delines itself as Marxist and has an army of 12,000 guerrillas, the Eritrean Liberation Front (with over 20,000 guerrillas) and smaller right wing group.

Between them these movements (which have recently abandoned an attempt to establish a joint command) control at least half of Eritrea and have in the last few months made huge gains.

The Eritreans, especially the ELF, have received aid from President Numeiri of Sudan and from Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

EXPELLED

These regimes are not concerned with supporting Eritrean independence so much as ensuring Muslim rather than Soviet control of the entrance to the Red Sea.

The Soviet Union for its part has thrown its weight against the guerrillas, by giving increasing support to the Ethiopan leader Colonel Mengistu who seized .. power by eliminating his rivals in the Derg last February.

Although his main civilian political support comes from the Me'ison group, the Maoist Mengistu went to Moscow last week appeal for additional military aid from the Soviet government.

He had only just expelled virtually all American representatives from the country after Carter had cut off aid.

Mengistu is in desperate need of aid not only against the Eritrean rebels and the threat of conflict with Somalia.

More and more he needs it against his own opposition against which he has launched a ruthless campaign of extermination.

"MILITIA"

A government-organised "militia" has been set up and given a carte blanche to round up and slaughter "counter-revolutionaries"

The technique was used against the Eritreans last year.

But within the last few weeks the bloody campaign of "national mobilisation" against the opposition (which includes the Union and the left wing Popular Revolutionary Party) has led to reports of dozens or even hundreds of deaths each day..

Since the end of April over 1,000 people are reported to have been summarily murdered in the Most of these were believed to be from the left opposition; many of them were demonstrating students. Amnesty International estimates that there are 8,000 political prisoners.

Brezhnev's reluctance to give Mengistu all the military support he wants appears to be not because of any qualms about this blood letting but because of the complicated web of manoeuvres the Kremlin has carried out in that part of Africa.

Mengistu The main opponent of further Soviet arms to Ethiopia is the Somalian government, the first and most loyal ally of the Soviet Union in Africa.

It was this embarassing conflict which Fidel Castro during his recent African tour tried unsuccessfully to solve in a secret meeting in South Yemen with Mengistu and the Somalian President, Siad Barre.

But last week Barre publicly called into the question the alliance with the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile the imperialist vultures, along with their allies in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, wait to swoop on the first sign of any casualties of the Soviet diplomatic offensive in Africa.

MASSAWA ASMARA YEMEN DAN BEGEMDIR GOJJAM KENYA NAIROBI Letter: science has also become distorted.

According to Mao's dictum "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend". , different schools of science and medicine should be

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ADDIS ABABA• ARRAR ETH