Ethiopia’s Wars against Somalia and Eritrea
Ethiopia has the enviable record of being the only African nation that was never successfully colonised. But the country has fought two separate wars with neighbours Somalia and Eritrea, over contested land.
Between 1977 and 1978, Somalia mounted an offensive against Ethiopia over an area known as Ogaden. It took Russian and Cuban support for Ethiopia to push back the Somalis.
The Ethiopian-Eritrean war started in 1998 over a border dispute. It took hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives before final peace efforts were crystallized in 2018.
