TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/110491/1104003.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.1 KB | 144 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 47

ETHIOPIA

Return to Normalcy


As the country begins to recover from war, President Meles
explains his unorthodox approach to governing

By JILL SMOLOWE -- Reported by Marguerite Michaels/Addis Ababa


    Looking backward, life seems to shine with new promise.
The civil war that ravaged Ethiopia for 30 years is over. In
the five months since Mengistu Haile Mariam, the country's
hard-line Marxist dictator for 14 years, was driven from power,
the competing guerrilla bands have achieved a relative peace and
joined in a transitional government. The death toll has fallen
from 10,000 people a month to a few hundred. Where torture and
disappearances once silenced opposition voices, Ethiopians now
feel free to voice their demands and even shout insults at
President Meles Zenawi, a democratic exercise he withstands
calmly. "That's their right," says Meles. With the recent rains,
even the gods seem to be smiling on the drought-ravaged land.

    The view ahead, however, is clouded. The shattered economy
remains moribund, the country's 53 million citizens
impoverished. The treasury is empty, half the factories are
closed and much of the farmland is eroded. Famine still
threatens millions of people. Foreign aid has amounted to a mere
trickle as potential Western donors wait to see if Ethiopia's
much vaunted turn toward democracy is a genuine renunciation of
years of Marxism or just a good sales pitch. The government
careens from one crisis to the next -- banditry in the east,
smuggling in the west, demobilization of Mengistu's army -- with
no road map to guide it. Where most of black Africa has opted
to quell tribal rivalry by imposing strict one-party rule, Meles
has embarked on a daring multiparty experiment that acknowledges
ethnic differences. But many of the country's 70-odd ethnic
groups continue to view one another over the barrels of the guns
that were never confiscated when the civil war ended. "This is
a country without any democratic experience," says Meles,
"plunging into it with arms in hand."

    It is something of a miracle, then, that the political
center fashioned after Mengistu's flight is holding. Though the
interim government is dominated by Meles' Ethiopian People's
Revolutionary Democratic Front, its ruling council includes
representatives from 35 different parties. Last July it adopted
a charter ensuring each ethnic nationality the right to
self-determination. Step One -- 12 regional elections to be held
by the end of the year -- will pave the way for local autonomy
or even secession. Already, the Red Sea province of Eritrea has
set up its own provisional government and will hold a United
Nations-sponsored referendum on independence in two years.

    All this could quicken Ethiopia's total disintegration.
The many tribes have always been held together by force only.
But Meles, the man shepherding this unorthodox democratic
experiment, is remarkably serene about the unpredictable
prospects. "A feudal monarchy and a repressive dictator couldn't
hold Ethiopia together," he says. "Now we are trying another
way. If Ethiopia breaks apart, then it wasn't meant to be."

    Pragmatic beyond his 36 years, Meles responds to trying
circumstances is untried approaches. Take his tactic for dealing
with tribal violence. Over the past few months, hostilities have
raged between the Afars and Tigreans, the Gurages and Wolaytas,
the Anuaks and Nuers, and the Oromos and Tigreans. Meles could
try to pacify them all by force. Instead, he has approached
tribal elders to find less drastic compromises. In the case of
the Afars, for instance, he has asked the elders to designate
which tribesmen should be armed. "To disarm them all is
unacceptable to the Afars," Meles explains. "So the choice is
to disarm the irrational elements and arm the rational
elements." By this risky equation, he is calculating that if
only the most cool-headed are armed, perhaps they will choose
not to use their weapons.

    Meles is also throwing out the textbooks on capitalism to
fashion distinctly Ethiopian economic policies. In August his
government unveiled a draft program that elicited skeptical
grimaces in the West. While the plan opens up road transport and
retail trade to private capital, it also maintains government
control of the petroleum, mining and chemical industries. Even
less encouraging to potential aid donors, who want to see
evidence that capitalist inclinations have buried socialist
leanings for good, private ownership of land is still forbidden.
Meles regards this as critical to protecting the interests of
the poor peasant farmers who constitute almost 90% of the
population.

    Meles sees this solution as practical, not polemical. "If
the economic policy doesn't address the peasant's concerns, if
the cities are bleeding the peasants as in most of Africa, then
you cannot have democracy," he says. But such approaches have
kept the foreign aid dollars from flowing. Some Ethiopians are
resentful that the foreign aid spigot is still dry. "You said
you would help those countries that formed democracies," says
Tekola Hagos, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs. "Where's the
beef? Please send cash." But Meles appears more tolerant. "For
us there is a commitment to democracy even without aid," he
says, "so whatever funding the U.S. gives us is a plus."

    Other crises press on the government, giving rise to the
phrase most commonly heard around the capital city of Addis
Ababa: "We're still working on that." One troubling issue is the
detention of nearly half of Mengistu's 400,000-strong army in
two dozen camps around Ethiopia and over the border in the
Sudan. Meles is worried that if the troops are released en
masse, they will return home to find no food and no jobs. With
half the population unemployed or underemployed, freedom for the
soldiers is not likely to come soon. "You'd have people trained
to kill with nothing else to do," says Meles. "That's a recipe
for political disaster."

    There are also thousands of civilian detainees, former
sympathizers of Mengistu, who are being held without trial in
Addis Ababa. The conditions are better than tolerable, and there
have been no charges of torture. But few are being released. "We
can't deal with them without a new judicial system," Meles
explains. He believes that the establishment of courts must take
a backseat to political and economic agendas, and offers no
apology for the delay.

    Meles knows he must move quickly to entrench reforms and
win the respect and trust of all the Ethiopian people. But the
young President is determined not to be diverted from his
political priorities, even if each step forward is followed by
multiple steps backward. "Democracy is the only way to unify the
country," he insists. And if ethnic or economic problems
overwhelm this unorthodox venture, sending Ethiopia the way of
Yugoslavia? Then that too will be an exercise in democracy. For
if the grand experiment fails, it will be the choice -- and
fault -- of all Ethiopians.