Preface
This is a book on Ethiopia by an Ethiopian scholar. It is an inside look, a probing mirror-image analysis by one of the members of the Ethiopian intelligentsia of the postwar years and about their role in the revolutionary upheavals during the past decades. Most of the data quoted in this book are based on documents of Ethiopian, British, United States, World Bank, and United Nations origin. Large parts of them were kept secret for a long time. Additional information is garnered from the questionnaires answered by respondents that include former high-level consultants of the Haile Selassie regime and over 50 Western expatriates.
Enriching this account further are the author’s personal audiences with Emperor Haile Selassie. There are also interviews with some key political personalities, including an anonymous former member of the Derg (military committee that presided over the dethronement of Emperor Haile Selassie), and the main leaders of the two most important political parties—the All Ethiopian Socialist Movement and the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party—both of which emerged during the final years of the feudal regime. To fathom the author’s considered opinion after the fact and grasp the whole picture, the reader is encouraged to carefully read the “Postscript”.