Ethiopia

In 1974 the "3,000" year-old reign of the descendants of Solomon and Sheba, personified in the "Lion of Judah" Emperor Haile Selassie I, was replaced by a national committee of military men, junior and noncommissioned officers known as the Dergue. In 1991, after a mere seventeen years in control, the Dergue - led since 1977 by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam - was replaced by a revolutionary coalition still holding power as a transitional government, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The EPRDF, pledged to holding national elections in 1994, has already seen two major coalition members break away: the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), representing Ethiopia's largest tribe, and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), seceding the province of Eritrea from Ethiopia. In 1992 Ethiopia was ranked "85" on the World Misery Scale - in the bottom fifteen percent, on a par with Haiti, Somalia, Angola and Laos.

This thumbnail sketch of contemporary Ethiopia points to both the tragedy - and the challenge - of the region. The Horn of Africa nations, of which Ethiopia is prominent, have been in the eyes of the world for over a decade now as the homelands of drought, famine and civil war. Eastern neighbor Somalia is currently occupied by United Nations peacekeeping troops attempting to keep the lines of humanitarian aid from being attacked by pillaging warlords. Western neighbor Sudan is witnessing an Irani

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ie and his imperial court were not interested in providing any national mooring to which the Ethiopian peoples could cling. As a consequence, unrest in Ethiopia was pandemic in the 1960s. Student unrest along socialist lines percolated in the capitol, Addis Ababa; in the hinterlands, discontent took on tribal attributes resentful of their Amhara lords. Even Haile Selassie's military, staffed along supposedly imperial-leaning noble family lines, was not immune to the influences: in December 1960 a major coup d'?tat was attempted, led by high-ranking, idealistic officers. Still respectful of the imperial institution, the coup plotters attempted to replace Haile Selassie with an (unsuspecting) relative while the emperor was on a state visit to Brazil, including with the new emperor's investiture a number of institutional reforms of a liberalizing nature. Their bloody failure - the emperor had the conspirators' bodies displayed in front of his palace for a week - did not discourage opposition to Haile Selassie, but merely drove it underground. Reflecting shifting international policy changes, Haile Selassie announced a "non-aligned" position for Ethiopia in association with India - thus enabling him to receive Soviet aid t
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Haile Selassie, Haile Selassie's, Orthodox Church, Horn Africa, Haile Mariam, Addis Ababa, Liberation Front, Cold War, Christianity Numerically, East African, haile selassie, haile selassie's, addis ababa, people's liberation, liberation front, cold war, transitional government, eritrean people's liberation, eritrean people's, soviet union, war politics, mengistu haile mariam, cold war politics, oromo liberation front, people's liberation front,
Approximate Word count = 4480
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page)

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