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Ethiopia

isals against the soldiers and supporters of the preceding regime, concentrating instead upon rebuilding the country; it has arranged $672 million in aid from the World Bank and other international organizations for infrastructure repair.

It is a tentative situation, fraught with perils beyond the control of the participants. Potential destroyers of the fragile peace - and the hopes for recovery that lie beyond - stand on all sides. It will be the goal of this study to examine the sources of disruption and reconciliation that are playing on the stage called "Ethiopia" today.

Perhaps the biggest misconception the American observer must overcome relates to the popular view of the pre-Dergue/Mengistu regime of Haile Selassie I (ruled as regent 1917-30, as emperor 1930-74). Admired for his impassioned plea to the League of Nations in 1934 warning against fascism, in the post-War years Haile Selassie was praised as a "modernizer," a man who brought his country into the 20th Century as a constitutional monarchy.

To a certain extent, Haile Selassie earned this admiration. With a country existing on a medieval level of feudal infrastructure, the schools, university and hospitals he built - primarily with U. S. aid - and the centralized government he encouraged, these most certainly were steps forward for the country. Yet, as one observer noted in 1972, two years prior to the end of Haile Selassie's reign (and after fifty-two years in power): "in the face of what needs to be done to reform agricultural practices, rural communications and health, the pace of change is agonizingly slow." Slow and backward-looking: the reforms Haile Selassie instituted in the 1920s were modern by turn-of-the-century Ethiopian tribal standards; by 1974 they resembled the type of autocratic, near-fascist ruling approach that he had argued against forty years earlier, no better for being home-grown than foreign-born.

Indeed, Haile Sela...

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Ethiopia. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 02:18, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1687001.html