military and among the radical groups followed
until in February 1977 Colonel Haile Mengistu
eventually emerged as the victor and unleashed
a reign of terror; opponents were rounded up
and summarily executed. Assuming the red star
and the trappings of a Marxist people’s republic,
he wielded absolute power over the political and
economic life of the country and crushed his
opponents as enemies of the revolution.
The Soviet Union saw here an opportunity to
advance its influence in a region of Africa bor-
dering on the Red Sea, which was of obvious
strategic significance. Moscow cynically hailed
Mengistu’s seizure of power as a truly ‘Bolshevik’
revolution and provided arms and aid. Mean-
while the internal divisions in the country and
Mengistu’s dictatorship had one other result: the
resumption of fierce fighting between the central
Politburo in Addis Ababa and outlying Eritrea, a
province attached to Ethiopia after the Second
World War. Faced with Eritreans in the north
and with Somalis in the south-east, Mengistu
depended on Soviet weapons and military train-
ing. The demands of the military, the devastation
of the endless warfare over a disputed frontier
with Somalia, and the Eritrean war of liberation
condemned the Ethiopian people to one of the
lowest standards of living in Africa. Periodic
famines killed hundreds of thousands and threat-
ened the lives of millions more. Television cameras
revealed the terrible scenes of hunger to the hor-
rified West in 1984 and 1985. But spectacular
public responses, such as Band Aid organised by
a pop singer, to provide cash for the starving could
not attack the roots of the problem – the cor-
ruption and mismanagement of Mengistu’s dic-
tatorial regime added to the continuous warfare
in the Tigray and with Eritrea and Somalia.
It was already too late when on 5 March 1990
Mengistu declared that the state would abandon
Marxism–Leninism. In May of the following year,
the game was up: the rebel forces were closing in.
The coalition led by the People’s Revolutionary
Democratic Front captured Addis Ababa. By that
time Mengistu had fled to safety in Zimbabwe.
The guerrillas had overcome a 350,000-strong,
seemingly modern army and air force equipped
with weapons supplied formerly by the Soviet
Union. The old ally had deserted Mengistu and
the army was demoralised. After seventeen years
Mengistu had lost all credibility.
Threatened by the turmoil were a group of
black Ethiopians professing as their religion a
form of ancient Judaism. The Ethiopians called
them ‘strangers’, Falashas. Some 140,000 – that
is, most of those who had remained after the first
airlift in 1984 – were now rescued, plucked out
of Africa and brought to Israel. The Israelis
had once more demonstrated to the world that
they would protect their own, regardless of all
other considerations – economic, international,
political and social. Black Jews would be inte-
grated into Israel like Jews from all other conti-
nents, races and ethnic groups. Service in the
army and education of a new generation would
do their work.
The new leaders in Ethiopia faced a daunting
task in their attempts to revive a devastated coun-
try. At least they were no longer at war with
Eritrea, whose independence was in sight. As if its
own problems were not enough to cope with,
Ethiopia was also attempting to feed hundreds of
thousands of refugees fleeing from southern
Sudan.
In the early 1990s, Eritrea had a population of
3.5 million. The country had been forcibly
colonised by Abyssinians, by Turks and finally in
1889 by the Italians. Italian colonies were run
mainly for the benefit of Italy, so local national-
ist feelings were suppressed. ‘Liberated’ by the
British in 1941, Eritrea was not granted inde-
pendence, despite wartime promises. In fact,
there were long wrangles after the war between
the victors about what to do with the former
Italian colonies. The British and the French could
not simply take them over as new colonies, as
spoils of war. The climate prevailing at the United
Nations would not have permitted such blatant
colonialism. There was only one thing on which
the Western victors were agreed and that was to
keep the Soviet Union out. Eventually, in 1951,
the former Italian colony of Libya was granted
independence.
The Eritreans fared the worst. By a UN reso-
lution, they were to be assured respect for ‘their
institutions, traditions, religions, and languages,
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