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Cohen's encouragement of the group's takeover made the U.S. the target of much of the animosity vented in Addis Ababa last week. Expecting to get a negotiated coalition government, many residents were furious to get instead a junta composed only of the Democratic Front. Resentments were further aggravated when Cohen announced that Washington supported the Eritreans' right to self-determination. Mobs marched to the gates of the U.S. embassy, shouting anti-American slogans and hurling stones into the compound. Protesters dubbed the change of government "Cohen's coup."
Opposition to the Democratic Front is rooted in part in the eccentric politics of the group, which is an umbrella organization of resistance factions dominated by the Tigrean People's Liberation Front. Originally rigid Marxists, the Tigrean fighters have proclaimed themselves converts to pluralism and the free market, as have the Eritreans, who also once claimed allegiance to a quasi-socialism. But the policy statements of the Democratic Front, formed in 1988, still contain hints of old orthodoxy. Moreover, the moves the organization has made toward moderation are largely unknown to the citizens of Addis Ababa, who still tend to think of the Tigrean-led front as a group that out-Marxed Mengistu, whose own policies left the population impoverished.
Ethnic tension was a central element of the trouble in Addis Ababa. The central government, like the capital itself, has long been dominated by the Amhara people, who consider themselves the most sophisticated of the Ethiopians and therefore the country's rightful masters. The Tigreans speak a different language and stem from a region hundreds of miles north of the capital. They have been rivals of the Amharas for two millenniums, going back to a time when the capital of ancient Ethiopia was Aksum, in the heart of Tigre country. When the Democratic Front arrived in Addis Ababa, hundreds of people flooded into the streets simply to stare in wonder at these strange Tigreans, these "bandits" and "barbarians" Mengistu had warned about for years.
The newcomers are saying many of the right things, promising, for instance, that there will be no indiscriminate reprisals against members of the former regime. Meles said in London that only those who committed "war crimes and things like that" would be punished and that they would be tried in the open, with international human rights groups invited to observe. Some excesses are nonetheless inevitable. According to diplomats, Tigrean soldiers have already summarily executed a few of Mengistu's aides.
Still, the Tigreans, as well as the Eritreans, have a better record of respecting human rights and democratic principles than Mengistu did. In the areas the rebels have administered since before Mengistu's fall, democracy exists at the village level, based on people's councils that seem to be freely elected. Political debates are lively, and medical and educational systems are better than most of those offered by the central government.
In any case, the Tigreans say they do not intend to rule Addis Ababa indefinitely. Under terms worked out in London, a wide spectrum of Ethiopians are to meet again by July 1 to construct a more broadly based government that would lead the country until multiparty elections are held within the next 12 months.