Ethiopia (New Union)

Ethiopia, officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa with over 85.2 million people and the tenth-largest by area with its 1,100,000 km2. The capital is. Ethiopia is bordered by Sudan to the west, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Kenya to the south, and a maritime border with Saudi Arabia and Yemen to the north.

Although Ethiopia was already in a bad state in 1991 the collapse of the Soviet Union further doomed the allready damaged nation. Mengistu Haile Mariam had fled to Zimbabwae and the country was on the brink of collapse. However with help from the Soviet Union the Ethiopian government was reinstated without him and with supplies from the Soviet Union Ethiopia has rebuilt itself into one of the most prosperous nations in Africa only being rivaled by South Africa and Egypt.

Reformation
Although Ethiopia was on the verge of braking up in 1991 the Soviet Union decided to try and help opposition leader Merera Gudina regain control of the country. Their were two major problems with this though, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front wanted to install its chairman Meles Zenawi as president and was still fighting government forces and Gudina's groups, while the Eritrean People's Liberation Front continued to fight the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea. Therefore the USSR supplies arms and equipment to Gudina and the capital was soon overun by his forces. With the capital in Gudina's hands though the government and TPLF surendered leaving the door open to peace talks between the EPLF and Ethiopia.

Gorbachev therefore desided to travel to Eritrea to fund pro federation activities in Eritrea with Soviet equipment and arms. The pro-federation forces soon gained control of the Eritrean resistance movement and agreed to form a federation with Ethiopia. Gorbachev sugested that each of the nationalities in Ethiopia and Eritrea would become their own republics which would be soverign states with control over all but international affairs. The Ethiopian federation was therefore formed on November the 12th with Gudina as a temporary president until elections could be held.

Early Years
Gudina won the next election under the supervision of the Soviet and EU supervisors, the Elections were legitimate and the EU and USA both decided to resume aid shipments to Ethiopia. In the first years of his presidency Gudina spent millions of US dollars on improving Ethiopia's economy and national infrastructure. Gudina ordered food to be stockpiled and by 1996 Ethiopia was the largest economy in East Africa with only Egypt matching it in the whole of Africa.

Therefore Gudina was able to begin financing the rest of his plans including a rebuilding of the Ethiopian road and hospital network, billions of dollars continued to flow into Ethiopia though and the economy was also proving money to keep the governments programs in budget. With Ethiopia rebuilt to a stronger level then it was under the PDRE and Derg Gudina was re-elected in 1999 as president and was able to continue his plans to rebuild Ethiopia and its armed forces.

Military Developments
With the majority of his reforms in place Gudina felt that he now had enough public support to try and remove the prominent position that the military had in public policies. In an unprecedented move that reminded people of the Derg regime Gudina had all military officials associated with the old regime removed from positions of power and sent to prison and replaced by people chosen from his own government. In addition to this Gudina arranged a deal with the USSR to transfer new equipment to Ethiopia to replace its current equipment, this included the majority of the USSR's old equipment including T-72 tanks, MiG-29 fighters, Su-25 attack fighters, Su-27 fighters and a variety of ships from the soviet navy including Kara class cruiser's and Sovremenny class destroyer's. In adition to this however the USSR sold one Kiev class carrier to the Ethiopian Federation on the condition that Ethiopia provide funding for the Yak-41 VTOL fighters and the new carrier under construction, Varyag which would be shared with the Ethiopian navy.

However all these developments upset many in the military and in January 2004 the world was shocked when a group of Ethiopian air force and army officers attempted to size control of the capital of the most secure nation in east africa. However the Ethiopian Navy remained totaly loyal and the Naval Infantry and FAA attempted to retake the capital. They succeeded a week later when they retook the capital and democratic government was restored.

Intervention in Somalia
As part of the war on terror the USSR and Ethiopia attacked Somalia to remove the ICU from power. The Ethiopian Navy and Air Force conducted raids on the ICU's bases while Soviet and Ethiopian naval infantry attacked the ICU on the ground, the ICU was defeated easily but with the splintering of the ICU the Ethiopian army has found itself involved in a long and protracted counter insurgency operation with several Islamic groups.

Government


Ethiopia is a federation made up of 15 republics and two chartered cities. These republics have similar powers to the ones in the, with them being granted control over most domestic affairs with the central government in Addis Ababa coordinating military, economic and foreign policy. This has however caused people to question whether the country is in fact one nation although it is represented as such on the world stage.

Military
The Ethiopian Military is one of the most powerful and largest in Africa, Equiped with large numbers of Soviet equipment the Ethiopian Military acts as the primary force in UN and AU peacekeeping operations in Africa as well as acting in the governments intreasts. However the large amount of training that it recives from the USSR has led to some acusing it of mearly being the USSR's arm in africa although this is totaly untrue.

The Ground Forces of Ethiopia are known as the Ethiopian Army. They are the second best in Africa and are equipped with a variety of Soviet equipment. It consists of 250,000 men split in 20 divisions, there are 10 infantry divisions consisting of 10,000 men equipped with AK-74 assault rifles along with special equipment such as RPG-9's and Dragunov SVD sniper rifles. In addition it consists of 6 mechanized divisions consisting of infantry mounted in BMP-2 IFV's and 4 armored divisions equipped with T-72 and E-95 (An Ethiopian manufactured version of the T-90 tank) tanks.

The Ethiopian Air Force is the air arm of the Ethiopian Armed Forces, Like the rest of the Ethiopian Armed Forces it is one of the best in Africa. It is equipped with planes from a variety of suppliers from the East and the West including the USSR, USA, China and the UK. This variety of suppliers is represented by the large variety of equipment it uses, the main combat aircraft of the EAF are the Su-27, YAK-41, Northrop F-20 (The F-20 Program was restarted by Northrop in 1995 as an upgrade for F-5 users), English Electric Canberra, Antonov An-12, Mil Mi-24 and the Mi-8.

The Ethiopian Navy is the largest and best funded of all three Ethiopian Services and unlike the EAF and Army which only compete on a continental level the Navy can maintain a presence in any body of water in the world on a moments notice. It has undergone a huge expansion since the late 1990's which has seen the purchase of a Kiev Carrier, a Kara Cruiser, Eight Sovremenny Destroyers, Twelve Burevestnik Frigates, several squadrons of OSA-II missile boats, four Kilo attack submarines and a single Gulf missile submarines. In addition to this the Ethiopian Navy shares the carrier Varyag with the Soviet Navy, operating it for six months each year. The Ethiopian Navy also conducts naval exercises with the Indian and Soviet navies each year in what is known as the GOASIE (Gulf Of Aden Socialist Indian Ethiopian) exercises. The most recent of these was GOASIE XI which saw two task forces of Indian, Ethiopian and Socialist ships competing for control of the Gulf. The Ethiopians were part of the Indian task force and although they were defeated by the Socialists they preformed well and the crews of the ENV Ethiopia (ex Novorossiysk) were praised for their skill.