http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adst/the-last-emperor--the-fal_b_8296134.html
ADST
The Unfiltered History of American Diplomacy -- Jake Silverman
The Last Emperor -- The Fall of Haile Selassie
Posted: 10/14/2015 2:44 pm EDT Updated: 10/14/2015 6:59 pm EDT
Few could be more considered more central to the modern history of
Africa's longest independent nation, Ethiopia, than Emperor Haile
Selassie. Regent from 1916-1930, he became emperor of Ethiopia on
November 2, 1930 and ruled for nearly 45 years. More than most other
authoritarian rulers, Emperor Selassie embodied one-man rule,
ultimately to the detriment of his own health and the growth of his
nation.
In the end, his efforts to modernize the country's education system
also contributed to his downfall, as foreign-educated students
returned to Ethiopia seeking reform. Calls for change by students, the
military and other members of the ruling family, combined with the
emperor's decreasing mental awareness, led to his abdication in 1974.
Haile Selassie can be considered the world's last emperor who held
true political power.
Sheldon Vance served as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) in Addis Ababa
from 1962-1966. While serving as DCM, he came to know Halie Selassie
personally while working with the emperor to transform the nation into
a constitutional monarchy. John Buche served as a political officer in
the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa from 1963-1966 and describes the
feudal system of rule under Emperor Selassie. Parker Wyman worked as
DCM in Ethiopia during the last few years of Selassie's reign and
gives insight into his final days as Emperor. Richard Jackson became
familiar with the workings of the Selassie government while working in
the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Horn of Africa Desk at the
State Department from 1968-1970.
Read about the hijacking of Ethiopia Flight 961
http://adst.org/2014/10/ethiopian-flight-961-the-worst-hijacking-in-history-before-911/.
Read the entire piece here.
http://adst.org/2015/10/the-last-emperor-the-fall-of-haile-selassie/
"He really was God in the eyes of his people"
Sheldon Vance, Deputy Chief of Mission, Addis Ababa, 1962-1966
VANCE: [Selassie] had decided, after he was returned to his country by
the British after the war, that he would have to make strenuous
efforts to modernize his country, and he ruled, among other things,
that education for the future would be in English, not in Amharic, so
that his educated people could communicate with the rest of the world
more easily.
He said also that public education would be modernized. Before the
Italian occupation, education had been entirely in the hands of the
Coptic Church, and it was said that there were many Coptic Church
teachers who believed still that the earth was flat and other
wonderful bits of intellectualism of that nature.
As I look back on my four years in Ethiopia, that man dragged his
country kicking and screaming out of the cave age. What happened? He
regarded the United States as his greatest friend, and we supplied his
prime minister with a legal advisor.
We helped them draft a modern constitution which envisaged a
Parliament with two houses, which would have a general election, have
public participation in the elections. The emperor would appoint a
prime minister, there would be a Cabinet, and it all looked like
Thomas Jefferson had been at work.
However, looking back on it, the emperor, I should add (although very
friendly to me personally and to close foreign friends, people he
regarded as close friends) he really was God in the eyes of his
people. I've been standing with him and have seen reasonably senior
Ethiopians come up and prostrate themselves flat on the floor in front
of him.
We did not realize how really, totally, a thousand percent feudal the
old man was. He simply was not about to delegate anything to anybody.
We used to joke that he decided whether to put a 25-cent stamp on any
letter that left the government, or a 50-cent stamp.
What happened was, he lived too long. If he had tried to use the
educated, trained youth and the structure in the government [things
would have been alright.] We talked him into land control and land
reform, brought in airplanes to map the country so that people would
know who owned what, rather than just the dukes and their equivalents
owning everything in sight from the mountaintop. It all fell apart.
"He was the only person who had the full view"
BUCHE: Without sounding too naive or too prone to oversimplify, the
Emperor was the source of almost all power. His ability to move
ministers and governors around, which he did periodically so that they
could not build up a power base or could not get any expertise, was
one way he exercised power. He moved governors and judges around,
moved generals out to be governors, governors in to be ministers,
shuffled the military and police constantly.
He had three or four intelligence systems running concurrently, spying
on each other and spying on everyone else. In his prime he was able to
keep the many balls in the air. He was pretty busy keeping things in
motion, but that was a source of power.
There was an inherent instability to the system, since he was the only
person who had the full view. While he would occasionally tolerate and
even praise independent initiatives by subordinates, such actions were
usually viewed negatively and punished in some way.
Officials in Addis Ababa or in the provinces learned that it was safer
to consult with the Emperor before undertaking an action that was not
routine. We heard of many sudden assignments to the provinces or from
one province to another, where the rumors had it that the cause was
displeasure on the part of the Emperor at an action by the official.
The Emperor grabbed power as a young man and held on against many
rival contenders for decades. He was shrewd, cunning, farsighted, and
decisive in his prime. In 1963 when I arrived in Ethiopia, I believe
the Emperor was about at the zenith of his mental abilities. What he
accomplished on the international scene over the next several years
was most impressive. The fact that he held the country together in the
1960s as well as he did, given the many internal and external
challenges, demonstrates his extraordinary talents.
"Haile Selassie made a strategic miscalculation"
BUCHE: The Emperor had survived the 1960 coup, and there was a
slightly faster pace of reform. The coup was still on peoples' minds,
although it took place in December 1960, and the last executions were
completed by mid-1961. It was a bloody coup, and there were deaths on
both sides, not only from the fighting, but also the killing of
hostages by the Revolutionaries and then the executions by the
Government.
The coup punctured the mystique surrounding the Emperor, damaged the
relations between Haile Selassie and his son, the Crown Prince,
revealed the bitter rivalries in the military and security forces,
demonstrated the extent of hatred toward the reactionary nobles around
the Emperor, and inspired other opponents of the regime to continue
their fight.
A pesky insurgency was festering in Eritrea. The rebellion did not
have to happen. Haile Selassie made a strategic miscalculation.
Haile Selassie wanted complete amalgamation, but he saw that proposal
was not going to fly. He was absolutely opposed to independence, so he
accepted federation. By 1961, Haile Selassie had the Eritrean
Parliament under his control. He gave the signal and the Eritrean
Parliament voted to abolish the Federation and join "Motherland
Ethiopia". The rebellion began a few months later.
"The forces he unleashed were ones ultimately...he couldn't control"
BUCHE: Both his physical and mental powers began to weaken and the
system became unglued. You could see in the late '60s, early '70s,
that things were coming undone. He could no longer juggle hundreds of
important issues, keep up a heavy schedule of foreign and domestic
travel, decide on the numerous personnel appointments, and continue to
dispense instructions, rewards, and punishments through face-to-face
meetings with his officials.
The embassy tried hard, frankly, to get Haile Selassie to abdicate, to
step down in favor of his son, the crown prince, who had been educated
in England, who was a centrist moderate, let's say, who admired the
British monarchy, who took as his model the British monarchy, so that
he would have been not exactly a figurehead, but he would have been a
constitutional monarch, with a prime minister and elections, real
elections, to choose a government under his general suzerainty.
"We began to see the collapse of the entire previously-existing power structure"
Parker Wyman, Deputy Chief of Mission, Addis Ababa, 1972-1974
WYMAN: All military units sent representatives to Addis to present
their combined grievances to the central government. The ones sent
were either junior officers or non-commissioned officers, and tended
to be the most radical and vociferous in their units.
Those representatives then formed a committee in Addis which was
called the "Derg," a word which simply means "committee." One of those
men was Major Mengistu, who would gradually come to dominate the
entire group by methods which included murdering his rivals.
Meanwhile the incidents, strikes, and mutinies continued to grow in
scope. The Prime Minister was replaced, the government's authority
looked increasingly weak.
Gradually we began to see the collapse of the entire
previously-existing power structure. It became obvious that the new
civilian government was being manipulated by the Derg, and we heard
more and more of Mengistu's influence in the Derg. Its members had
gone way beyond the role of presenting grievances and were calling the
shots themselves even though Haile Selassie was still emperor and
there was still a civilian government. By this time many of the most
influential people in the country had been arrested and thrown into
the same prison in Addis.
Their influence was growing and expanding into this power vacuum,
where nobody else was really able to control matters. That situation
went on, basically-I don't think there's too much point in going into
the details-went on, basically, until the Emperor was-in August of
that year, roughly six months after the revolution started-was really
thrown out of his palace and taken off to house arrest.
I have always remembered the last meeting I had with the emperor, not
long before he was arrested. I remember him shaking his head and
saying sadly, just before I left, "Times are changing very rapidly
these days." Ostensibly, he said this in relation to Kagnew base, but
I felt sure from the tone of his voice and the look on his face that
he was also thinking of the traditional Ethiopian political and
economic structure which was collapsing around him.
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Ethiopia Eritrea Haile SelassieAfrica
Received on Thu Oct 15 2015 - 14:59:37 EDT