africa

The countries in horn of Africa are poor, backward and are suffering from instability, sectarian feuds, and tribal conflicts apart from dictatorships. Utter poverty in these countries speaks for themselves and terrorism also has found a breeding ground. Ogaden is a province of Ethiopia with people of Somali origin and Ogaden national Liberation Front (ONLF) was formed in 1984 and it has been fighting for secession from Ethiopia. ONLF is dubbed as the agent force of Eritrea, an arch rival and abetted by Islamic terrorists of Somalia. The conflict has roots in Somalia- Ethiopian war of 1976-78. This war was the result of Somalian adventure to extend its territory into Ogaden to create Greater Somalia. However this adventure did not succeed. World powers amply supported this war and took sides during the cold war period. Somalia had only 36000 strong army while Ethiopia outnumbered them greatly. But Somalia had larger tank forces and better air force. Somalia finally withdrew and Ogaden still remained part of Ethiopia and the dream of Somalia to establish greater Somalia failed. The crisis however is of long standing and continues as an Achilles heel.

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Eritrea is a tiny North East African nation close to Ethiopia. It overlooks the Gulf and strategically thus important too. It has Ethiopia, Djibouti and Sudan as immediate neighbors. It has long coast line of Red sea. The Eritrean War of Independence (1961 - 1991 ) was a conflict fought between the Ethiopian government and Eritrean separatists, both before and during the Ethiopian Civil War. The war went on for 30 years until 1991 when the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), having defeated the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea, took control of the country. In April 1993, in a referendum supported by Ethiopia, the Eritrean people voted almost unanimously in favor of independence. Formal international recognition of an independent and sovereign Eritrea followed later the same year (1). Thus, another warring nation was born in horn of America adding to chaos, confusion and instability in a volatile region and strategically very important due to approach to Suez Canal, the link between Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

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Sudan a country on east coast of Africa, of late has emerged as the sponsor and abettor of international terrorism. "A number of international terrorist groups including AlQaeda, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Egyptian al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the Palestine Islamic Jihad, and Hamas continued to use Sudan as a safe haven, primarily for conducting logistics and other support activities." Sudan, in northeast Africa, is the largest country on the continent, measuring about one-fourth the size of the United States. Its neighbors are Chad and the Central African Republic on the west, Egypt and Libya on the north, Ethiopia and Eritrea on the east, and Kenya, Uganda, and Democratic Republic of the Congo on the south. The Red Sea washes about 500 miles of the eastern coast. It is traversed from north to south by the Nile, all of whose great tributaries are partly or entirely within its borders.

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Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa and the most populous country in Africa. Nigeria shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast lies on the Gulf of Guinea in the south. Since 1991, its capital has been the centrally-located city of Abuja; previously, the Nigerian government was headquartered in the coastal city Lagos. The people of Nigeria have an extensive history, and archaeological evidence shows that human habitation of the area dates back to at least 9000 BC.^[4] The Benue-Cross River area is thought to be the original homeland of the Bantu migrants who spread across most of central and southern Africa in waves between the 1st millennium BC and the 2nd millennium AD.

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