Ethiopia Stalinists Back Reactionary War

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With the strong support of the Soviet Union and Cuba, and some military supplies from Israel, the Ethiopian 'Marxist" military dictatorship (the Derg) has launched a massive military attack on the national liberation forces in A similar army was ignominiously defeated last year. This year the 25,000 regular Ethiopian troops already fighting in Eritrea are also being reinforced by an irlift of troops and arms from Addis Ababa.

This counter-offensive follows everal weeks of spectacular 'ictories for the Eritrean nationalsts.

The three Eritrean liberation •rganisations now claim to control irtually the whole territory aside rom the capital, Asmara.

The Ethiopian attack has report-Ily been master-minded by the Soviet Union and was not launched intil the Soviet military delegation had satisfied itself that Eritrea was As we go to press the government crisis in Turkey remains unresolved, with right wing Justice Party leader Demirel unable to hold together a coalition with the extreme right National Action Party and the National Salvation Party.

Thus the stalemate that arose from the indecisive June 5 elections still paralyses the bourgeois parties, while international capitalists and Turkish employers wait impatiently for an economic and political equilibrium to be established.

The most hopeful direction for the bourgeoisie would seem to be the proposal for a compromise by Bulent Ecevit, leader of the biggest capitalist party, the liberal-reformist Republican Popular Party.

While there are differences between the parties, an RPP-JP coalition would immediately enlist the support of those reformist and Stalinist leaders within the workers' movement who gave electoral support to Ecevit.

Indeed Halil Tunc, the leader of the right wing trade union confederation CTWU, has threatened to call a general strike "that very day"

if a National Front coalition of right wing parties is formed, and demanded a JP-RP! coalition. recuperable.

One of the Soviet bureaucracy's aims in this reactionary struggle is undoubtedly to have access for its growing fleet to the important Red Sea Eritrean ports of Massawa and Assab as supplements (and possibly alternatíves to) the Somalian port of Berbera on the Gulf of Aden.

HOSTILITY

Hostility between Ethiopia and Somalia has been growing rapidly as a result of Somalia's support for the West Somalia Liberation Movement in the Ethiopian province of Ogaden.

This movement recently cut Ethiopia's main rail link to the sea and has scored other military victories.

As a result, the Somalian government, after recent questioning of its long standing military and political alliance with the Soviet Union, has now reportedly called for withdrawal of Soviet technical and military personnel from the country.

LINGERS Such statements have greatly perturbed the chiefs of the armed forces, and it is clear that if the bourgeois parties should lose control over the working class the military would not hesitate to intervene.

These manoeuvres are further confirmation policy of the Stalinists and reformists-backing Ecevit as a 'democratic' alternative to Demirel, rather than putting forward independent working class candidates is completely bankrupt.

This failure to present a clear alternative was one main reason why the fascists of the National Action Party won 922,000 votes in the elections.

In reality the fight for democratic rights cannot be separated in this crisis from the fight for a clear socialist programme geared to the needs and demands of both workers and peasants.

The starting point must be defence of the workers' movement against the fascists through defence squads based on factories and working class neighbourhoods.

The bourgeois courts must be challenged by the setting up of workers' inquiries into attacksespecially the May Day slaughter in Istanbul.

And a programme spelling out she namman nood for all warkers In the last few months Cuban Premier Fidel Castro has become one • of the principle agents of Soviet policy in this part of Africa.

In his recent tour of Africa he tried unsuccessfully at a secret meeting to mediate between the Derg and the Somalian government.

He has withdrawn previous Cuban support for the Eritrean guerrillas and is now offering military advice to the Derg.

Castro has publicly compared the putch in which Colonel Mengistu and the current Derg leaders seized power from the right wing rivals to the October 1917 Russian Revolution.

At the same time he is reported to be attempting to mediate between the Derg and the more "progressive" sections of the Eritreans.

REJECTED

This offer has reportedly been rejected by the Eritreans, resentful at Cuba's opportunist change of sides (many of their guerrillas were trained in Cuba).

They are also unwilling to make any compromise with the bloodthirsty and treacherous Derg, which has shown itself as totally hostile to the Eritreans' right to self determination as it is to its own left opposition, hundreds of whom have been slaughtered in massacres in recent months.

In order to reduce the number of fronts on which it is forced to fight, the Derg has recently tried to buy off its right wing oppositionthe Ethiopian Democratic Unionwith the offer of an amnesty to EDU supporters.

These dramatic developments and the strategic importance of Ethiopia's coastline and its potential control of the waters of the Nile, has turned the country's civil wars into an international battle-ground between counter-revolutionaries.

The Derg is supported not only by the USSR, Cuba and East Germany but also by Israel, anxious to prevent the Red Sea ports coming under Arab control.

One of the Eritrean movements (the Eritrean Liberation Front)

defines itself as "pan-Arab" and has support of the most reactionary Arab regimes (including Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia).

The other main movement (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Eritrea, which claims to be Marxist, receives little direct international support but has a military alliance with the Liberation Front.

The struggle, therefore, while it has broad popular support has hecome a pawn in the power