Ethiopia Red Star Over the Horn of Africa

By John Greenwald

THE VICTORY OF SOCIALISM IS INEVITABLE! proclaims the arch that leads to Revolution Square in the capital, Addis Ababa. That slogan expresses the aspirations of those who lead one of the poorest nations on earth. Torn by famine and civil war, Ethiopia (pop. 40 million) has been stumbling from crisis to crisis for more than a decade. Now under Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, who seized power in 1977 after the military ousted Emperor Haile Selassie three years earlier, the ancient African nation is using a complex blend of doctrinaire Marxist-Leninism and old-fashioned nationalism to address its most intractable problems.

Signs of the strategy are evident everywhere, from the prominently displayed statues of Lenin and paintings of Stalin in Addis Ababa to the controversial policies that are creating peasant cooperatives across the countryside. A new constitution, to be adopted later this year, will enshrine the Soviet-oriented ruling Workers' Party of Ethiopia as the "guiding force of the state and the entire society." Says a Western diplomat: "Under the new constitution, Mengistu will have more power than the late Emperor." Meanwhile, more than 5,000 Soviet, East European and Cuban advisers are stationed throughout the Ethiopian armed forces and government ministries. In all, Moscow has provided Ethiopia with some $3 billion in military aid.

Behind the facade of Marxist rhetoric and trappings lies a host of formidable social and economic woes. Last year's famine took hundreds of thousands of lives and left 4.5 million Ethiopians on the edge of starvation; most are now receiving food aid, thanks largely to Western relief programs. While rains finally broke the drought last summer, much of the population remains undernourished. In the parched northern provinces of Eritrea and Tigre, a simmering civil war is making already harsh conditions even worse. The government's conflict with rebels in those regions has driven out relief workers and blocked food shipments. World Vision, a California-based agency, was feeding 370,000 people in Tigre province last May when threats of violence forced the organization's workers to flee.

In the face of such realities, Mengistu, 45, is trying to fashion a policy that combines the rigors of socialism with capitalist flexibility. While he is moving Ethiopia toward a centralized, state-controlled economy, he welcomes private foreign investment. At present, most of the country's crops are privately grown and some industry is in private hands. Associates say that from the moment Mengistu became chief of state nine years ago, the Chairman, as he is known, has been a nationalist first and a Marxist second. Now Mengistu is reaching the zenith of his influence at home and abroad. "Ethiopia is the key to the Horn of Africa," says a Western expert, "and Mengistu is the keeper of the key."

The Ethiopian leader has launched two vast population projects that could eventually reshape his nation: resettlement and "villagization." Both policies have raised outcries from foreign critics who say they cause needless death and suffering and are compelling countless numbers of people to move against their will. Since 1984, Mengistu's resettlement policy has shifted some 600,000 Ethiopians from parched northern provinces to 77 sites in more fertile southern and western regions. Addis Ababa's villagization program has relocated more than 3 million peasants from their scattered hilltop farms in Harar and neighboring provinces to centralized villages. There, services ranging from running water to medical care can be provided. "It is our duty to move the peasants," says a senior government official, "if they are too stupid to move by themselves." Plans call for villagization ultimately to relocate some 30 million people. Many peasants, though, have been reluctant to leave their homes. Resettled areas and villagization projects often have proved virtually uninhabitable; many of them lack both adequate health facilities and suitable shelter. Families have been broken up while relocating, and thousands of resettled northerners may have died along the way. Concedes one bureaucrat traveling to a newly created village near Ambo, some 75 miles west of Addis Ababa: "First we try to persuade people to move. If this doesn't work, we must sometimes use force." To escape, farmers have been voting with their feet: thousands have fled into neighboring Somalia. Faced with such resistance, Mengistu recently bowed to pressure from the European Community and others by suspending resettlement and slowing the pace of villagization -- at least temporarily.

Some Western governments feel they have no choice but to support the programs, which a few critics have compared to Joseph Stalin's collectivization policies in the 1930s. To stress its resolve to press ahead with villagization, Ethiopia has written it into the new constitution and made it a centerpiece of agricultural policy. "Mengistu and the party are determined to proceed with villagization," notes an Italian official. "Since they are determined to do it, the best thing we in the West can do is help out, if only to prevent people from suffering."

Italy, for its part, is contributing $220 million to a model relocation effort at Pawe, some 370 miles northwest of Addis Ababa. That project will initially house 80,000 people in 48 villages. Among the facilities will be 35 schools, 60 miles of roads, a 120-bed hospital and an irrigation canal to provide year-round water from Lake Tana.

Still, many foreigners remain skeptical. Jason Clay, research director of Cultural Survival, a Massachusetts-based human rights group, believes that ) Ethiopia's food output will drop under the new policy since the collectivized peasants lack incentives to produce. "There is no doubt production will decline," he says. "The question is by how much." One expert at the U.S. Agency for International Development warned last May of possible outbreaks of disease caused by poor sanitation facilities, unprotected water supplies and closely built houses.

While he pursues radical farm policies in the south, Mengistu remains at war in the north. "If he could solve the security problems in his country," says Gunter Verheugen, African-affairs spokesman for the West German Social Democratic Party, "then Mengistu might be able to accomplish his dream of making the country self-sufficient in food and improving the standard of living of his people." That is not likely in the foreseeable future. Ethiopia's standing army of 300,000 soldiers is the largest in black Africa, but it remains vulnerable to guerrilla actions. A lightning strike by the Tigre People's Liberation Front in February freed hundreds of imprisoned rebels. Government forces have met heavy resistance in Tigre and adjacent Wollo province. The Oromo Liberation Front, another secessionist outfit, has mined roads as far east as Harar.

Mengistu has had more success against the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, the largest and strongest rebel force. More than 50,000 Ethiopian troops used tanks and dense air cover late last year to drive the Eritreans back to their stronghold in the war-ravaged town of Nakfa. The two sides are now stalemated. While the Ethiopians are wary of attacking Nakfa's warren of artillery-guarded trenches and barbed wire, the 25,000 guerrillas and their dependents must live an underground existence, though they have built an impressive infrastructure of schools, hospitals and farms.

The military problems in Ethiopia are compounded by unresolved conflicts with Somalia to the east and Sudan to the west. Sudan gives sanctuary to Ethiopian rebels, and Addis Ababa retaliates by supporting Sudanese guerrillas. Somalia has long been at odds with Ethiopia over the Ogaden, a hilly desert region of Ethiopia that juts deeply into Somalia's midsection.

Ethiopia's deepest fears center on the U.S. The African nation's leaders are worried that the Reagan Administration may back rebel forces against Addis Ababa, just as it supports contra efforts to oust the Marxist-Leninist Nicaraguan regime. Yet officials in Washington, which provided $282 million in emergency aid to Ethiopia last year, say they have no wish to topple Mengistu. Notes a senior diplomat: "We've told the Ethiopians that we would like to engage in a serious dialogue with them. Every time we propose a place and a time, we are rebuffed."

For Mengistu, the message is clear. Though he could move closer to the Soviet camp, he cannot economically afford to break with the U.S. and the West. While Moscow supplies the weapons to combat Ethiopia's rebels, only the advanced industrial nations can provide the financial and technological assistance that the country needs to develop its supine economy. Given his Marxist philosophy and nationalist instincts, Mengistu seems determined to walk the fine line between East and West.

With reporting by James Wilde/Addis Ababa