Suchergebnisse

In Addis Ababa's vast Revolution Square there are large pictures of Marx, Lenin, and Engels, and of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the head of the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia and leader of the newly organized Workers Party of Ethiopia. In the decade since a military committee, the dirgue, dethroned Haile Selassie and abolished the monarchy, these four have been proclaimed the saviors of Ethiopia. Today, however, many Ethiopians believe the dirgue's policies are responsible for inciting the nationalities to insurrection, reducing agricultural yields in the south, helping to cause the famine in the northeast, tying Ethiopia to the capital-poor Soviet Union and its allies, and unnecessarily alienating the capital-rich West. In their opinion, the government has failed the. revolution by being repressive and rigid. Mengistu and the ideology he represent should give way to new and more flexible leaders and politics.

In the Horn of Africa the stubborn politics of military regimes have caused as many as 750,000 people to seek sanctuary across international frontiers. They will remain in refugee camps until the various antagonists decide to compromise what they term "unnegotiable" national interests, the centerpiece of the tale is Ethiopia, which, until the revolution of 1974, worked to create a nation out of an empire by transforming its many peoples into a typical Christian peasantry, thereby alienating the Muslims and pastoralists of the south, east, and north. Under Haile Selassie it also brought great wealth to a tiny oligarchy while impoverishing the masses, a process spurred during the '50s and '60s as the country was being integrated in the world economy.