A Land of Anarchy and Bloodshed

The faceless, unpopular military junta in Addis Ababa known as "the Dergue" (literally, the shadow) last week launched an all-out campaign to end the 14-year-old civil war in Ethiopia 's breakaway northern province of Eritrea. Following an appeal by Ethiopia's strongman, Brigadier General Teferi Benti, to "crush the reactionary forces," government sources claimed that tens of thousands of peasant volunteers were marching toward the Eritrean border, reportedly armed with such crude weapons as spears and ancient muzzle-loaders. But it seemed doubtful whether the government would be any more successful in putting down the rebellion this time than it has been in the past.

Since the coup against the late, disgraced Emperor Haile Selassie nearly two years ago, Ethiopia's revolutionary experiment in "scientific socialism " has proved to be as eccentric and quixotic as anything decreed by the old kingdom. In addition to the unresolved civil war in Eritrea and successive years of the ruinous drought that led to thousands of deaths by starvation, the Dergue has had to cope with a staggering array of other problems, including widespread internal discontent, armed rebellion in the countryside, and bitter antagonisms with neighboring countries. After visiting Ethiopia, TIME Correspondent William McWhirter reported:

In Addis Ababa, a senior military officer pulled down a copy of The Living Bible from his library shelves one evening recently and began reading from a chapter in Isaiah.* "Israel's kings will be like babies, ruling childishly. And the worst sort of anarchy will prevail, everyone trampling on someone else, neighbors fighting neighbors, youths revolting against authority, criminals sneering at honorable men." He paused and said sadly: "That is precisely the situation we now have in this country."

Ethiopia today seems caught between the chaos and tragic contrasts of trying to impose a socialist revolution, stitched together from Marxist-Leninist textbook ideology, onto an ancient and feudal land of almost bewitching beauty and vulnerability. The mountainside city of Addis Ababa itself reflects the dichotomy. Its haunting, wild setting amid mist-covered mountains, ancient stone paths and a profusion of roses and bougainvillaea is as timeless and unchanged as its poverty-stricken population, dressed in layers of worn, soiled clothing, sleeping in rag bundles on the sidewalks, and driving small flocks of donkeys and cows through the main streets. The city is still dominated by the immense, pale brick palace long occupied by Selassie, where the blinds are drawn as if he were only sleeping. Even the Emperor's horses are kept just as they were when he was alive, in their parade stables downtown.

For most Ethiopians, the ghost of the Emperor today holds no sway. On the contrary, they continue to accuse him and his family--as if it were one of their few sources of daily comfort--of pervasive abuses of power and privilege before the revolution, when the royal family controlled the courts, the land, the schools. "All that we produced we were forced to share with the landlords," recalls one peasant. "Before we settled our debts for one year, the next had come, so we always operated at a loss." The legacy of such conditions is a country where the per capita income is $80 a year, two-thirds of the population live a day's walk from a road, and one-third of all children die before the age of five.

The Dergue has failed to fill this vacuum with any kind of effective government. Says one foreign observer: "No one is ruling Ethiopia today. In every area there is a power struggle going on." Promises of land reform have led to village feuds and shootouts. Tribes and regional armed bands have begun exercising their own claims to local independence.

The paralysis has spread within the business community and the government's own bureaucracy. "The decision-making process has completely collapsed," says an officer of the government-controlled Commercial Bank. "You have one thing one week, another the next. Anyone who speaks out gets some lead in the head." Law and order, where it exists at all, is mercurial. Prisoners have been cleared by courts-martial only to be returned directly to jail after verdicts of innocence.

Napalm Raids. The government's search-and-destroy tactics in Eritrea have helped to alienate even the Christians there, who initially opposed the Moslem-led rebellion. Whole villages have been devastated by saturation bombing raids--sometimes involving napalm--carried out by U.S.-supplied Phantoms. The troubles in Eritrea have left the small French port of Djibouti as Ethiopia's only major outlet to the sea. The colony is set to gain its independence later this year, but the Addis regime fears it may be annexed by heavily armed, Soviet-backed Somalia, with which Ethiopia already has a simmering border feud that several times has exploded into open skirmishing. Ethiopia's 40,000-man army, largely American-equipped, is one of the biggest and best in Africa, but it will have all it can do to control Eritrea--let alone fight a pitched battle for Djibouti.

* Ethiopian emperors by legend descended from a son born to the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, then ruler of Ethiopia.

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