Word: ethiopias
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With the rebels only 75 miles from the capital, the President discredited and the army demoralized, the script would seem to be preordained for Ethiopia. Liberia and Somalia have provided the worst kind of models in the past year: the government falls, blood splatters the capital, thousands flee the country, tribes and clans clash, anarchy prevails. This time, the foreshadowing has prompted an earnest attempt to rewrite the scenario. The chief scribe is the U.S., which until recently, when the Soviets became less active in the region, had little influence over Ethiopia's quasi-Marxist combatants...
...Haile Mariam's regime. Mengistu, whose 14-year reign of terror rivals that of Saddam Hussein, has been written off before, only to survive. But since late April, when Tigrean- led Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front guerrillas pushed as far south as Ambo, putting almost all of northern Ethiopia in rebel hands, the consensus has been that Mengistu is a goner. "It brought home that the 30- year seesaw of rebel victories and then government victories had irretrievably dipped," says a Bush Administration official. "This is the end game...
That would be a far better outcome than a flat-out rebel military victory, which would leave the Tigrean faction in a dominant position. The group's leaders, once Albanian-style Marxists who now espouse a blend of old-fashioned communism and American-flavored democracy, are widely distrusted in Ethiopia...
...sticky problem. Those around him, sensing a dark future for the government, are keenly interested in negotiations. The President is showing signs of stress -- he needs to take pills to sleep -- but he still seems to think he can hold out. Says a U.S. government specialist on Ethiopia: "He's the type to hang on to the bitter...
...world. We established American military credibility is the Middle East, not the world. America is not the world's policeman, nor should it be, nor can it be, no matter how much Congress inflates our military-industrial complex. If Bush thinks the U.N. would mobilize to defend Ethiopia from Mussolini (as the League of Nations failed to do), he is sadly mistaken...