Ethiopia Invades Somalia - Campaign Scenarios

[MarkSheppard]

Will do.

By the way, a lot of what the Duchess wrote above is basically assumptions and a lot of reading between the lines, to try and construct a coherent narrative out of the limited information available to her.

Link to thread 1

The Islamic Court Unions, as typical for their expectations and overall goal (which is not the stability of Somalia, but conquest) fly the Black Flag of Jihad, black bearing the takbir in white.

In recognition of this, the following support has definitely been provided by other nations of the Islamic Ummah:

Djibouti: Military uniforms and medical supplies.

Egypt: Military training at Bal'ad north of Mogadiashu, in cooperation with the Eritreans and Libyans, to 3,800 troops of the ICU.

Iran: Sent three aircraft loads of machine-guns and M-79 grenade launchers, with ammunition, along with medical supplies and the service of three medical doctors. A large dhow also arrived at el-Adde on the 17th of August carrying 80 MANPADs with copious ammunition for them.

Hezbollah: The Islamic Courts Union sent 720 men to fight as a volunteer battalion with Hezbollah against Israel in the conflict over the summer. These men were reputedly combat veterans of al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan against our troops there. In exchange, Hezbollah served as a broker for the ICU to obtain additional supplies from Syria and Iran.

Libya: Provided training, funds, and sent several military aircraft to Somalia (It is possible these were still there, and the target of Ethiopian airstrikes against the Somalian airports), along with at least one consignment of arms.

Eritrea: One shipment by a heavy trading dhow (~200 tons burthen) of AK-47 assault rifles, PKM machine-guns, RPG-7s and ammunition. A second shipment by dhow of anti-aircraft guns, and a third shipment, by an Antonov transport, also of anti-aircraft guns. Volunteers from the Muslim Oromo Liberation Front which operates in Ethiopia against the government, and from Pakistan, arrived in Somalia on another dhow from Eritrea to join the ICU forces (75). Beyond these shipments a total of 2,000 regular Eritrean troops were dispatched to Somalia to form a strong backing cadre for the Islamists' tribal levies.

Saudi Arabia: A C-130 loaded with medicine and foostuffs was sent from Saudi Arabia to Mogadishu in June. In August around 320 volunteer jihadis arrived from Saudi Arabia along with seven truckloads of food and ammunition, probably shipped by dhow from the Saudi Red Sea coast.

Syria: In July, 200 ICU fighters were shipped to Syria for training in guerrilla warfare tactics.

Foreign volunteers:

The number of foreign volunteers stretches the whole of the Islamic world. There are estimated, discounting those listed above which were apparently dispatched by government efforts, around 8,000 jihadis from foreign countries in Somalia with the support of the ICU. Many of these are veterans of heavy combat against our forces in Afghanistan, and may include some of the old Arab cadres of Osama bin Laden who survived the US invasion in 2001 but were forced to flee, and are veterans of combat against the Soviet Army in the 1980s.

The largest numbers, however, are not Arabs, but rather Pakistanis, usually having crossed the Indian Ocean on trading dhows, though a sizeable quantity of Pakistanis of British citizenship or naturalized status are included in these forces, and perhaps as many as twenty of these have been captured in action by the Ethiopian Army during its advance.

In total:

1. 8,795 jihadis, 795 dispatched by governments and 8,000 independently arrived.
2. 2,000 Eritrean regulars.
3. Up to 720 trained Islamists who have combat experience against Israel (this category may overlap to some extent with 1.)
4. 3,800 local levies trained by Eritrean, Libyan, and Egyptian officers in Somalia.
5. 200 locals trained in guerrilla war tactics in Syria.
6. A number of medical specialists to provide a combat medical service for the Islamist army.

In short, the Islamists went into the conflict with around 15,500 trained fighting troops, most of them veterans of heavy combat against modern armies (or the Ethiopians). The rest of their force was tribal lashkars. It appears at this moment that only these troops have provided any serious resistance to the impetous of the Ethiopian advance. The tribal lashkars have defected or collapsed and fled generally at first onset; it is the foreign fighters and the heavily trained locals and probably outright Eritrean army units which have fought and held to the bitter end.

This also should quash any doubts about the ICU in Somalia being anything other than a growing hive for terrorism exactly like the Taleban in Somalia.

Link to thread 2

The Islamic Regime in Somalia reported to collapse.

Islamists fleeing from the capitol.

Islamists begin to hand their weapons over to the clan leaders, indicating a very serious collapse, as they're not attempting to leave to conduct guerrilla warfare.

And finally, the leadership of the ICU resigns. They phrased their message, encouraging the Islamists everywhere to secure strong-points for the sake of order, as suggesting to me that they plan guerrilla operations against the Ethiopians.

What is clear however is that even my wildest dreams about the Ethiopian operations have been exceeded here. The Ethiopian Army is limited only by supply in how fast they can arrive in Mogadishu; the old warlord of Jowhar (no definite indications on the status of that city yet) thinks by tomorrow they'll be in the capitol; I doubt that, but with only limited pockets of foreign fighters, often surrounded, providing any kind of resistance, they will be there soon.

The question is what happens next in Somalia. For the first time, the transitional government may actually have authority over up to one-fourth of the country's territory, and the whole capitol besides, if the clans of Mogadishu do not try to organize their own resistance, which seems now quite unlikely.

The biggest thing here is that the Ethiopians have shown that they have fully digested the lessons of the Border War and have whipped their army into a surprising degree of competence, perhaps as the best fighting force in Africa. This campaign was conducted professionally as a sophisticated maneouvre operation which used mechanized forces to chop the Islamist forces into a series of disconnected and leaderless pockets. It appears that in most cases the Islamist units simply collapsed as word spread that Ethiopian tanks were in their rear areas.

The Eritreans are not happy campers today, as this makes the Ethiopian reoccupation of the disputed regions from early this year something that they cannot reliably contest by force of arms, and paints bleak any conflict against Ethiopia they might have to fight.

I would not call the Ethiopians a modern army in any sense, on account of the weakness of their opposition, but they certainly have at least reached an early-WW2 level of tactical sophistication.

[Marek_Tucan]

I won't say the Ethiopean army is ill-trained, definitely not by region¨s standards IMO, their equipment atleast looks in good order what will suggest some training and discipline - contrary to rusted and worn off equipment Somali and ICU militias are using on most pics. Plus there is combat experience from clhes with Eritrea, so while i won't expect Ethiopia to be all that good by Western standards, by African standards (see this link, though from Liberia it tells alot Liberian combat techniques ) it's well trained. After all various African militias usually get into serious trouble when even a small group with certain combat training appears. From what I've read on this subject various military advisors (both governmental or mercenary) to various militia forces found that between these a common trait was to CLOSE EYES wehn shooting the rifle

No wonder some I believe British UN observer stated that the safest place where to stand during a firefight with those types is the very point they are aiming at as everywhere else the bullets from teir full-auto rock'n'roll are flying

[MarkSheppard]

The Duchess has remarked in the past that the Ethiopians are at least on the tactical level, equivalent to WWI armies; their great counteroffensive against the Eitreian army was very similar to the Russian Brusilov offensive of WWI; lines of men marching in waves, albeit with tank support.

[MarkSheppard]

The capabilities of the Ethiopian Army.

They use primarily 50's vintage Soviet equipment, except for a small cadre of fairly modern jet fighters which were acquired during the border war with Eritrea. They have this equipment, however, in copious numbers.

Generally speaking the Ethiopian mobilization system has been constantly improved since the war with Eritrea with an eye toward a second conflict with that nation; accordingly, it's probably likely that the Ethiopians can call well more than a million men to the colours with extensive efforts at mobilization but because of garrison duties in various areas of the country and the need to send on the order of 400,000 + men to the border with Eritrea if conflict resumes there, in no case should one expect a commitment of more than 200,000 men to Somalia, and that only after on the order of six - eight months of mobilization.

At the moment it seems that around 35 - 40,000 Ethiopian troops are either in Somalia or along the Ethiopian-Somali border and entering Somalia. They are well-equipped with tanks, but mostly T-55s and so on. Technicals form motorized units for the most part rather than dedicated IFVs. They do have a single elite paratroop regiment. They are well-equipped with artillery; it is entirely towed.

In general, Ethiopian tactics are based around using their immense manpower and mass to their advantage. They are capable of highly sophisticated strategic encirclement operations after achieving breakthrough, which was brought the Border War to a close (and caused them great resentment and hatred toward the UN, which promptly ignored the result of the fighting and awarded the disputed territory to Eritrea).

In terms of breakthrough, however, their tactics are exceptionally primitive. They are best described as the mass tactics of General Brusilov in the First World War. The essential Ethiopian plan for the final Battle of Badme (There were three over the course of the war) was to launch attacks on every point of the front, as thanks to massive attrition they outnumbered the Eritreans by at least 2.5:1 (For instance it's claimed that between 23 February to 26 March 1999, the Eritreans suffered 45,000 casualties, though this is not confirmed); by the final victorious offensives in May of 2000 the Ethiopians had around 700,000 men on the Front; the Eritreans, 250 - 300,000.

With all sectors engaged in massed offensives, the vast Ethiopian reserves were then committed at Badme, supported by concentrated tanks and a paradrop operation behind enemy lines, with Ukrainian-piloted Sukhois providing air cover and engaging in desultory bombing. In three days of fighting at least 15,000 and possibly 25,000 Ethiopian troops were killed or wounded but the Ethiopians broke through and were able to decisively exploit their successes. Had the UN not intervened, they would have quite possibly overrun the whole country of Eritrea.

Their actual field tactics are strictly human waves, and best approximate the sort of tactics employed by the British in 1917. Tanks advance at the front in line after a preparatory barrage, with the infantry following in tight columns, tens of thousands of men being employed in a single attack. Attacks are pressed with utter disregard to casualties. Eritrean soldiers from the battle of Tsorona, for instance, reported firing their AK-47s on full automatic "until they were to hot to hold", lines of Ethiopian troops toppling the whole time, until they were at last beaten back.

The Ethiopians admit to 70,000 combat fatalities and probably on the order of 210,000 wounded in the Border War; the Eritreans admit to 100,000 killed and wounded in total. Both are probably underestimations; the conflict was accurately described as "1950s technology, WW1 tactics, 19th century medicine."

The main Ethiopian hindrance toward operating in Somalia with large forces is logistics. The Ogaden is a vicious wasteland with few roads and to my knowledge no railroads. Conversely, however, the Somalians have no ability to develop vast and sophisticated entrenchments like the Eritreans could, and the Ethiopians have complete air dominance, the same as we do over Iraq, though they can use it to far less effect. Their forces in Somalia or near the border are armour heavy, and they have certainly learned lessons and applied them from the conflict with Eritrea, particularly post-breakthrough manoeuvre after the final Battle of Badme.

The support of the population is largely irrelevant in this case; the government, though democratic in a vague sense, rules over people culturally inured to death and suffering, and they are fully capable of sustaining mass casualties at impressive ratios; if Ethiopia had the same size population as the USA, they would have had 300,000+ dead soldiers. As many as one out of every 500 males in the country died in the conflict.

In terms of their ability to fight the Somalians, as long as they remain in formation and have artillery and prepared machine-gun emplacement support, their positions are essentially unassailable. They have a preponderence of armour, and they do not break in action but their units hold together under even murderous fire, as Tsorona demonstrated. They are the sophisticated army of an organized, Christian civilization, with a long tradition of vigorous combat against the forces of Islam, during which they were always victorious and retained their independence. Primitive by our standards, I nonetheless expect them to perform against the Somalians as well as a colonial army against a tribalist force.

I would not be surprised if they end up not only reaching but rather brutally sacking Mogadishu; one thing is clear, they will not adhere to the laws of war save in a more perfunctory manner, and those mostly traditional rather than Geneva. That said, the conflict will not be a short one, unless negotiations cause a halt in it; nor will their progress be swift. The Ethiopians, perhaps fittingly as they're also an Orthodox and Oriental civilization, will operate methodically in the Russian style to shove the enemy back on every front, and willingly engage in butchery if necessary to suppress partisan resistance. The Somalians don't have the terrain of the Afghanis to resist that, nor a modern benefactor (Only Eritrea and the Arab gulf states). Their main hope is in getting Eritrea to act against Ethiopia, creating a broader conflict.

If this happens, the Horn of Africa could quickly be embroiled in a conflict as devastating as the First World War: The Sudan and Kenya might get involved on the Moorish and Ethiopian sides respectively

[Smersh]

this cuaght my attention "...with Ukrainian-piloted Sukhois providing air cover"

Ukranians fighting in the conflict? or is this some kind of typo.

[Marcello]

"Ukranians fighting in the conflict?"

Learning how to use a T-55 isn't like learning how to use a high performance jet. A SU-27 is a slighty more intricate matter than a 50's soviet tank.If you do not have the luxury of being able to wait for years for the training of pilots and technicians you will need to hire mercs.
During the Cold War it was common practice for the USSR and eastern countries to send pilots to fight for their clients, even for wars in which they were not particularly involved. Now it is still happening, for cash only.