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Ethiopia The Demise of the Military Government
In retrospect, perhaps the two crucial factors in the fall
of the Mengistu regime were the abortive coup of May 1989
and the loss of Soviet military and political support. In
the aftermath of quelling the coup, disaffection spread
throughout the army. Thereafter, whole military units
defected, taking their arms and equipment with them as they
joined insurgent groups. At the same time, Soviet military
deliveries dwindled and then ceased, a source of supply that
Mengistu was never able to replace, leaving government
forces still further weakened and demoralized. It was these
developments that led Mengistu to attempt economic reforms
in 1989 and 1990 and to initiate peace talks with the EPLF
and EPRDF under Italian and United States auspices.
During the early months of 1991, both the military and the
political outlooks darkened considerably for the government.
The EPLF pressed its sweep down the Red Sea coast with the
aim of capturing Aseb (see
The Eritreans, ch. 5). In
February and March, EPRDF forces overran large portions of
Gonder, Gojam, and Welega, threatening Addis Ababa from the
northwest and west (see
The Tigray, ch. 5). In mid-April the
National Shengo proposed talks with all political groups
that would lead to a transitional government, a cease-fire,
and amnesty for all political prisoners. At the same time,
the National Shengo tempered its peace initiative by calling
for the mobilization of all adults over the age of eighteen
and for the strengthening of the WPE. A few days later, on
April 26, Mengistu, in a gesture to his opponents,
reshuffled the government, dropping several hard-liners and
replacing them with moderates. Among the latter were
Lieutenant General Tesfaye Gebre-Kidan, one of the army's
commanders in Eritrea, who was promoted to vice president,
and Tesfaye Dinka, former foreign minister, who became prime
minister. Both belonged to a group of advisers who had been
urging Mengistu to compromise with the Eritreans and the
Tigray.
The main opposition parties--the EPLF, EPRDF, and OLF--
rebuffed the National Shengo's offer. During the next month,
as all parties prepared for the next round of talks
scheduled for London in late May, the EPLF and EPRDF pressed
hard on the military front. In late April, EPRDF forces were
reported to be some 100 kilometers west of Addis Ababa and
still advancing; in Eritrea the EPLF made gains along the
Red Sea coast and closed in on Keren and Asmera. In mid-May
the last major government strongholds north of Addis Ababa--
Dese and Kembolcha in southern Welo--fell to the EPRDF. With
little but demoralized and fleeing troops between the
capital and the EPRDF forces, Mengistu resigned the
presidency and fled the country on May 21. His exit, widely
regarded as essential if the upcoming negotiations were to
succeed, was secured in part through the efforts of
Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen, who pressured
Mengistu to resign and arranged for his exile in Zimbabwe.
Lieutenant General Tesfaye, now head of state, called for a
cease-fire; he also offered to share power with his
opponents and went so far as to begin releasing political
prisoners, but to no avail. EPRDF fighters continued their
advance on the virtually defenseless capital and announced
that they could enter it at
will. Meanwhile, on May 24, the EPLF received the surrender
of Keren and the 120,000-member garrison in Asmera, which
brought the whole of Eritrea under its control except for
Aseb, which fell the next day. The goal of independence from
Ethiopia, for which Eritreans had fought for three decades,
now seemed a virtual certainty.
Against the background of these events, the London
conference opened on May 27. The main contending parties
were all in attendance: the government party headed by
Tesfaye Dinka, the EPLF under Issaias Afwerki, the EPRDF
under TPLF leader Meles Zenawi, and the OLF under its deputy
secretary general, Lencho Letta. Assistant Secretary Cohen
served as a mutually acceptable mediator. Ostensibly, the
conference was supposed to explore ways to set up a
transitional government in Addis Ababa, but its proceedings
were soon overtaken by events on the ground. The talks had
hardly gotten under way when Cohen received a message to the
effect that Lieutenant General Tesfaye had lost control of
the government's remaining armed units and that Addis Ababa
was threatened with a complete breakdown of law and order.
To prevent uncontrolled destruction and looting, Cohen
recommended that EPRDF forces immediately move into Addis
Ababa and establish control. Tesfaye Dinka strenuously
objected, but he spoke from a position of weakness and could
not prevail; he subsequently withdrew from the conference.
On the night of May 27-28, EPRDF forces marched into Addis
Ababa and assumed control of the city and national
government.
The next day, Cohen again met with leaders of the EPLF,
EPRDF, and OLF, but now as an adviser and not as a mediator.
The insurgent leaders committed themselves to a pluralist
democratic society and government for Ethiopia and agreed
that Eritreans would be free to determine their own future,
including independence if they wished. They also agreed that
the EPRDF should continue to exercise temporary control in
Addis Ababa. The task of constructing a transitional
government, however, was postponed until early July, when a
national conference broadly representative of all major
political groups would convene in Addis Ababa to take up the
matter. With these agreements in hand, the London conference
adjourned, but not before Cohen stressed the need for
fundamental reforms and conditioned future United States aid
upon construction of a democratic political system.
By early June, the EPRDF claimed that it had established
effective control over most of the country, the last
remaining government troops in Dire Dawa and Harer having
surrendered along with some 300 officials and military
officers of the former regime. The new rulers faced a number
of daunting problems, among them famine and starvation
affecting several million people, a severely dislocated
economy and society, the prospect of Eritrean independence
and with it the loss of direct access to the Red Sea, and
the thorny and far from settled question of ethnicity. The
explosive potential of these problems was immediately
apparent when, only a day after having marched into Addis
Ababa, EPRDF soldiers shot or wounded several demonstrators
protesting the EPRDF takeover, agreements affecting Eritrea,
and United States policies toward the country. Even so,
there was much hope
and optimism about the future among a war-weary population,
as well as a palpable sense of relief that seventeen years
of despised military rule had at last come to an end.
* * *
One of the first accounts of the Ethiopian revolution, and
still a valuable book for understanding the earlier phases
of the process, is Marina and David Ottaway's Ethiopia:
Empire in Revolution. In recent years, there have been a
number of outstanding scholarly works on the Ethiopian
revolution. The best among these are Christopher S.
Clapham's Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary
Ethiopia, a richly detailed institutional analysis of the
revolution; Fred Halliday and Maxine Molyneux's The
Ethiopian Revolution, a scholarly Marxian interpretation of
the first five years of the revolution; John W. Harbeson's
The Ethiopian Transformation, a study of the revolution and
its military foundations; Edmond J. Keller's Revolutionary
Ethiopia: From Empire to People's Republic, a comprehensive
analysis of the underlying and precipitating causes of the
revolution and its consequences; John Markakis's National
and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa, a critical,
Marxian analysis of the regional political dimensions of the
revolution; and Mulatu Wubneh and Yohannis Abate's Ethiopia:
Transition and Development in the Horn of Africa, an
overview of Ethiopian politics, economy, and society up to
the late 1980s. There are few good inside accounts of the
revolution, but two works stand out: Dawit Wolde Giorgis's
Red Tears, an insightful account of the inner workings of
the Mengistu regime, written by a former member of the WPE
Central Committee and head of the RRC; and David A. Korn's
Ethiopia, the United States, and the Soviet Union, which
describes the revolution as seen from the perspective of a
United States diplomat living in Ethiopia.
Useful accounts of the various liberation movements are
scanty. Among the more notable recent works are Bereket
Habte Selassie's Conflict and Intervention in the Horn of
Africa, James Firebrace's Never Kneel Down, and Jordan
Gebre-Medhin's Peasants and Nationalism in Eritrea. Each of
these is best on the Eritrean struggle. The most
comprehensive discussion of the TPLF can be found in
Markakis's National and Class Conflict in the Horn of
Africa. (For further information and complete citations, see
Bibliography.)
Data as of 1991
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