Well, I wouldn’t be that dismissive. Ethiopia has the longest aviation heritage in sub-Saharan Africa. Ethiopian Airlines just won the Africa Airline of the Year award from some organization. Ethiopian pilots are good and often get poached by Middle-Eastern airlines. The Ethiopian Airlines facility in Addis Ababa has been certified by Pratt & Whitney as a quality service center for certain engines.

In addition to what Cuito has said, all Ethiopian Air Force cadets received their ab-initio training at Ethiopian Airlines’s pilot training school. They have to meet their standards (pretty stringent with extremely high attrition rate) before starting Air Force training.

EAL’s pilot training school is well recognized and has trained over 300 foreign pilots from 52 countries.

PLA-MKII

The evidence you claim from your geocities.com link is highly unsubstatiated. Nobody has hijacked the UIC cause, your claim that the UIC declared war on Ethiopia BEFORE ethiopia moved its troop in is also highly unsubstantiated.

Yes, UIC has been hijacked. The head of the UIC, Sheick Aweys, used to be the head of Alittihad which planted bombs in Ethiopian cities and attempted to kill an ethnic Somali minister. After repeated attacks, Ethiopia went to Somalia in 1996 to wipe them out. Alittihad ceased to exist but its leaders fled to Mogadishu.

UIC didnot exist until recently when the elders who lead the local courts (mostly uneducated) got together and set up a council. That is when it got hijacked since the council members are not from the local elders. Some are even “former” notorious warlords.

your earlier claim does not seem to stand up to scrutiny. About Ethiopia giving “evidence” of foreign fighters – one needs to scrutinize very carefully what an avowed enemy state of Somalia has to say about the UIC. Its a lot worse than the “evidence” the US gave that Iraq was “without doubt” having nuclear weapons. If you can’t see a greater agenda than “fighting against terrorists” then I don’t know how else I can convince you.

Most of the dead bodies were shown on TV and those fighters captured said they were trained in Afghanistan.

Going back to Arthur’s pic – that shows that someone outthere is backing the UIC – if they are getting their supplies from Kazakhstan. Russian involvement perhaps? They’d need to cross a whole lot of countries to get to Somalia, and refuel in between as well.

The recently released UN document in Somalia has all the details. The plane was chartered by an Eritrean construction company which transported cargo from Eritrea to Somalia. The support is not only limited to Eritrea.

The UIC did declare ‘jihad’ against Ethiopia.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/09/africa/AF_GEN_Somalia.php

Also, the same individuals that are in key positions of the UIC were leaders of Al-Ittihad Al-Islamia, an radical islamic organization that received substancial support from Al-qaeda. The group was completely destroyed by an Ethiopian offensive in 1996. Recently a “former” Al-qaeda operative from Yemen told his story of his Somali involvement.

http://www.geocities.com/~dagmawi/Zebenya/07/BBC_focus_al-qaeda_somalia_pg1.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/~dagmawi/Zebenya/07/BBC_focus_al-qaeda_somalia_pg2.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/~dagmawi/Zebenya/07/BBC_focus_al-qaeda_somalia_pg3.jpg

The Ethiopian Air Force has the following equipment

Fighter
MIG-21bis
MIG-23BN/ML
SU-25T
SU-27SK

Helicopter
MI-8/17
MI-24/35

Transport
An-12
An-32
C-130
Hercules
DHC-6

Training
SF-260TP
L-39C/ZA

During the war with Eritrea in 1998-2000, 2 Eritrean MIG-29s were shot down by Ethiopian SU-27s. The story of Aster Tollossa shooting down a MIG-29 is not only completley made up but a pilot by that name does not even exist.

On the current Somali conflict, it is not new.

In 1996, Ethiopia deployed four MI-24 helicopter gunships to destroy Alqaeda/Alittihad operatives close to the border. The same group of Somalis that were leading Alittihad Al-Islami have now regrouped in a much larger way and are using Islam for their “cause”.

Russian/eastern training and equipment is vastly inferior to the west, especially to American. The training is especially sub-standard. Nowadays, thanks to end of the cold war, Russians are able to integrate western equipment in their aircraft which has gotten some remarkable export avenues.