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While trying to cope with rebellion in Addis Ababa, Mengistu has had to deploy nearly half his 50,000-man army in a losing struggle against three different forces in Eritrea. The 20,000-man Eritrean Liberation Front (E.L.F.) controls much of the land near the Red Sea coast, while the 15,000-man Eritrean People's Liberation Front (E.P.L.F.) rampages through western Eritrea. Five thousand guerrillas of the Eritrean Liberation Front-Popular Liberation Forces (E.L.F.-P.L.F.) are fighting in the province's north central region. Variously supported by such Arab states as Syria, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, the guerrillas would doubtless fall to fighting among themselves were they not determined first to defeat the Ethiopians. Mengistu's troops still hold the Eritrean capital of Asmara, but they can only resupply it by air or by twice-weekly convoys from the Red Sea, which are often ambushed or sniped at on the way from the port of Massawa to the city. The rebels have long since cut off all land routes between Asmara and the rest of the country.
Other Fronts. The Eritrean rebels are not the only ones who oppose Mengistu's rule. Just south of Eritrea, 1,500 guerrillas of the Tigre People's Liberation Front (T.P.L.F.) control about one-third of Tigre province. In the western provinces of Goijam and Gondar, 2,000 men of the right-wing Ethiopian Democratic Union (E.D.U.) are fighting for a non-Marxist civilian government and deny charges that they plan to restore a monarchy under Haile Selassie's sole surviving son, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, 60, who is now in London. About 1,000 shiftas—armed nomads of the Western Somali Liberation Front—periodically mount hit-and-run attacks along the Somali frontier.
Mengistu also faces the possibility of war with Somalia for control of the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas, whose 215,000 citizens last week voted for independence.* Mengistu fears that Somalia will encourage the territory's Somali-speaking Issa majority to cut the railroad linking Addis Ababa with the port of Djibouti, through which moves more than half of Ethiopia's foreign trade. Unless he can work out a deal with Somalia's President, Muhamed Siad Barre, Ethiopia may have yet another combat zone on its frontiers when the territory becomes the Republic of Djibouti—Africa's 49th nation —on June 27.
Mission to Moscow. It was partly because of the possibility of a war over Djibouti that Mengistu visited Moscow this month to solidify his new alliance with the Soviet Union. Mengistu and Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny signed a declaration laying the "foundations for friendship and cooperation"—diplomatic sugar-coating on Moscow's agreement last December to supply Ethiopia with $100 million in arms. Moscow had good reason to show such benign feelings: Mengistu last month expelled all American military advisers, communications experts and information officials on the ground that the U.S. had helped the late Emperor "suppress the liberation struggle of the oppressed masses" (TIME, May 9).