According to Ryszard Kapuscinski, author of the book The Emperor, Haile Selassie and his government lost all sense for reality long before they were put aside by military and police officers. The pictures that the English journalist Jonathan Dimbleby brought to the world, hundred thousand people dying in Wollo and Tigray, were first denied by the court and the government. Months before the september 12th 1973 there were mutinies in the army specially in Eritrea. There were student demonstrations and taxidrivers went on strike because of increasing fuel prices. Local peasants revolted and demanded land reform.

After the coup a Military Co-ordination Committee was formed; the Dergue. Up until 1977 the Dergue fought out there internal struggle for power. In 1974 there leader Aman Andom was murdered among with 57 high officers and civil servants. He wanted to solve the Eritrean conflict peacefully. The Ethiopian Patriarch and with the Emperor many monarchists were taken prisoner and killed. Left wing groups like the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party and the Ethiopian Socialistic Meison Movement had given the Dergue their Marxism-Leninist ideology but also became victims. The military rulers didn't accept any opposition and the EPRP was against a military government and wanted to solve the Eritrean conflict peaceful.

During the Red Terror in 1977 and 1978, among many students ten thousand members were captured, tortured and killed. On the radio people were summoned to report and many did. In Addis Ababa a terrified city was shackled at the radio hoping not to be named either to report or families left behind to hear that there loved ones were executed. Young students were forced to work in rural parts of the country and make the peasants conscious. Many others fled to Europe and North America. A complete generation disappeared and still you won't find to many intellectuals between the age of 30 and 40 in Ethiopia.

In 1977 Somalia attacked Ethiopia and in a short time they occupied the Ogaden and reached up to Harar. As so many times before, international politics played a mayor role in Ethiopian destiny. Already before the fall of the Haile Selassie, the United States lost interest in Ethiopia. They dismantled there listening-posts en replaced them to the Indian Ocean. The Sovjet Union changed partner from Somalia to Ethiopia and provided them with military and logistic support. Somalia lost the Ogaden. 50. 000 Cubans came to the country and supported the Ethiopian army in there battle against the EPLF and the TPLF. As we know now in vain. The internal struggle for power in the Dergue resulted in one leader Mengistu Haile Maryam. Outbreaks of dissents not only gave him the alibi to kill thousand of citizens but also seven party leaders including his predecessor General Teferi. From then on Ethiopia would be in a constant state of civil war. The TPLF and the EPLF in the north, the Somalies in the east and the OLF (Oromo Liberation Front) organised a less spectacular but ongoing unrest in the south.

The famine in 1973 - 74 was followed by a more severe one in 1985. No rainfall for three years, was most certainly the cause but politics made it to a disaster. A million people died of starvation because the Mengistu regime refused the aid being transported to areas which were controlled by the opposition. The migration of 200.000 families from the north to the south failed because of the brusque way it was executed. 100.000 people died because they were transported to a swampy area without any tools or aid and where the malaria mugs were omnipresent. The migration program was promoted to give the starving population a new future in fertile areas. In reality people were deported to prevent them to join the growing rebellion movements.

Although the land of the nobility and the Ethiopian church was nationalised and given to local peasants the forming of co-operatives and model-villages didn't improve the productivity. Only the state-farms and so called production co-operatives got governmental support and most peasants preferred to be independent. From 1985 to 1987 1.3 million houses were build and 8 million people moved to this villages. Apart from getting the land more economically used, through the 'Kebele' (a quarter) system people could be controlled. Most of those who were forced to live in the model-villages returned to there own houses after 1991.

In 1987 Ethiopia was proclaimed the 'Ethiopian Peoples Republic' and returned to civilian rule. A party COPWE was formed later to be the marxist EWU (Ethiopian Workers Party). A new constitution was proclaimed after the Romanian example, with Mengistu as the almighty President of the Ethiopian state In the same year the EPRDM (Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Movement) was formed. Initiated by the TPLF and supported by the EPLF it's major aim was to initiate a national democracy. Large parts of the country were in fact in control of the liberation movements. It became clear that although with Russian and Cuban support, the army was not capable to end the civil war with a victory. It was the other way around. Around Easter 1991, without any bloodshed, Addis Ababa fell in the hands of the TPLF. General Mengistu and 50 other high ranked officers and civil servants fled out of the country. Many others are momentarily on trail accused of mass murder.

In a conference in London a new constitution was written down. In it the right of all nations and nationalities to be independent and the accepting of the Human Right Declaration of the United Nations 1948. A provisional parliament together with president Melles Zenawi ruled the country. In April 1993 a referendum took place in Eritrea and 99% of the population voted for indepence and at May 24 1993 after a fierce struggle for 30 years Eritrea became officially independent and a member of the U.N. In December a new constitution became law, followed by elections on 8th May 1995. The EPRDF got most of the votes. Ethiopia now became the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. It became a federation with 10 regions based on historical and ethnically boundary. Some party's didn't take part in the elections and it is said that those who did were in some way allied to the EPRDF. Still opposition groups don't accept this chosen government as a democratic one.

Heinrich Scholler ex professor Law at the University of Addis Ababa now working at the University of Munich in his article ' Ethiopia Today' says:' Whether the new Ethiopian constitution will bring peace and order to the country, will ultimately depend also on the economical success.' He points at article 40 of the constitution. According to this article neither in the cities nor in rural areas private ownership of land or soil may exist. 'If this may prove to be a obstacle in developing the country is to be seen.' How to end an article about Ethiopian history?

Some see the concept of a Federation as the solution of the struggle for a united Ethiopia, others are sceptic or opposed. In the summer of 1996 the Dutch minister for Development Co-operation told protesting Ethiopians that Ethiopia is more secure than long before. A representative of a national Dutch foreign policy institute in contrast wrote that the unconditional aid that the Netherlands now gives to the Ethiopian Government supports a policy of divide and rule and bears in it the dangers of what we have seen in ex Yugoslavia. It seems clear that there is no independent justice system in Ethiopia. Judges and Public Prosecutors are being discharged if there judgement is not according to political convenience. The internet system momentarily only e-mail provided by several private companies is going to be centralised and controlled by the State owned postal and communication service.

The recent history of Ethiopia is not a pleasant one. Still today young people come to the Netherlands to find asylum. Nevertheless Ethiopia is fascinating and is much more then what is scarcely published in the newspapers. Getting to know Ethiopians in Holland was the start of a revelation which I am sure does not end here.