■ There’s a lot of military activity in Africa and the Middle East these days, some confirmed, some unconfirmed. Now confirmed, the presence of Cuban troops in Eritrea where they are helping the Ethiopian government against the well-entrenched Eritrean Liberation Front. (An irony: a half-dozen years ago Castro was pro the Eritrean Liberation Front and many of the soldiers now facing the Cubans were trained in Havana.) . . . Reports from Nairobi indicate a major Soviet weapons buildup in Mozambique, including MiG-21 fighter bombers (with Cuban pilots), heavy Russian tanks, and surface-to-air missiles. The target: Rhodesia, against which the Patriotic Front promises escalated guerrilla attacks. . . . Middle Eastern sources say that among the prisoners swept up in Israel’s dash to the Litani River in Lebanon were Yugoslavs, Libyans, Algerians, and Pakistanis—all working with the PLO. . . . The London Observer, in an unconfirmed story, says a coalition of Arab, Iranian, and French interests has raised $18 million to help combat Soviet and Cuban influence in Angola and to “destabilize” the Marxist government of President Agostinho Neto. . . . Not all African leaders are silent about Cuba’s deep involvement in Angola. President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast says that in less than two years Cuban troops in Angola have “killed thousands of Angolans,” more than were killed in the 15 years of the guerrilla war against Portugal. . . . The British relief organization Christian Aid estimates that tribal wars, internal repressions, and disorders have now driven at least three million Africans into exile.
■ Good show: Three members of an 18-member congressional delegation to Moscow—Reps. Henry Waxman (Calif.), Robert Carr (Mich.), and Patricia Schroeder (Colo.) broke away from their official program to visit the family of imprisoned dissident Anatoly Shcharansky. Said Waxman: “We have to make clear that the Shcharansky case —if he goes on trial—will be very harmful [to U.S.-Soviet detente].” . . . Yuri Novikov, a Soviet psychiatrist who fled to the West in July, says the KGB forged psychiatric reports in order to send Gen. Pyotr Grigorenko to a special psychiatric prison in 1970—and that the KGB makes a practice of such forgeries. Grigorenko, now in the West, was stripped of his citizenship a fortnight ago as was cellist-conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, on grounds of “ideological degeneracy.”
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