Ethiopia: A Post-Cold War African State

by Theodore M. Vestal

When the oppressive Marxist-Leninst dictatorship of the Derg collapsed in 1991, there was hope that a new era might begin for a democratic Ethiopia. However, backed by the United States, the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Front established a government that would not share power. Instead of a transition to democracy, the EPRF denied opposition parties meaningful participation in elections, violated human rights, and intensified ethnic distrust among the people. According to critics, repressions of the government are on a scale equivalent to those of the world's worst dictatorships. Vestal examines the plight of the Ethiopian people and counters questionable government pronouncements. He concludes with suggestions for a revised U.S. policy toward Ethiopia and for peaceful negotiations between the government and its political opposition to develop a more democratic approach. Ethiopia, an African nation with close ties to the United States dating from World War II, is a troubled land. When the oppressive Marxist-Leninist dictatorship of the Derg collapsed in 1991, there was hope that a new era might begin for a democratic Ethiopia. However, backed by the U.S., the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front established a government that would not share power. Instead of a transition to democracy, the EPRDF denied opposition parties meaningful participation in elections, violated human rights, and intensified ethnic distrust among the people. According to critics, repressions of the government are on a scale equivalent to those of the world's worst dictatorships. Vestal examines the plight of the Ethiopian people and counters questionable government pronouncements. He concludes with suggestions for a revised U.S. policy toward Ethiopia and for peaceful negotiations between the government and its political opposition to develop a more democratic approach.

Hardcover

First published September 30, 1999

About the author

Theodore M. "Ted" Vestal is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Oklahoma State University, where for twenty years he taught courses on world politics and constitutional law emphasizing civil liberties and civil rights. In 1964-1966 he served as a Peace Corps executive in Ethiopia and has maintained an academic interest in the country ever since. He was President of the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and has served overseas as a director of Peace Corps/Ethiopia, New York's Educational Resources Center in New Delhi, and OSU-Kyoto. Vestal attended the University of North Texas, Yale Law School, and Stanford, where he received a Ph.D. in Political Science. He lives in Tulsa with wife, Patricia, who is an artist, and who taught painting at the Creative Arts Center of Haile Selassie I University.