Volume 32, Number 17 · November 7, 1985
Ethiopia: Victors and Victims
By James Fenton
We are all friends of Ethiopia but we are not all friends of the Dergue, the group that rules the country. The friend of Ethiopia sees a people in distress and wishes to do something about it. It seems a simple issue—people are starving and should be fed. The friends of the Dergue are a different lot—the object of their identification is a politburo, the former Provisional Military Administrative Council which overthrew Haile Selassie and set up Mengistu Haile-Mariam in his place. The friends of the Dergue need an ability to identify with an apparently omnipotent regime. People have this fantasy, and to a striking degree. It gives the fantasy a particular piquancy if you can feel not just that you are a friend of power, but that, through no fault of that power, you happen to be the only true friend it possesses.
Feature, 5127 words
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