In the famine of 1984, as Ethiopians died by the thousands in the countryside, Mengistu hosted a lavish celebration of the Derg’s 10th anniversary in Addis Ababa, hiding the emergency from the world. And when international relief agencies revealed the extent of the famine he used relief supplies as a weapon, diverting food away from needy rebel areas and selling the country’s grain reserves to buy Soviet arms. In international human-rights circles, the trial of the Derg, which had been three years on preparation, was being spoken of as an African Nuremberg. Mengistu himself fled to Zimbabwe, where he remains. For the Amhara elite of Ethiopia, the double shock of the loss of the province of Eritrea and the ascendancy of the Tigrayans has had a disorienting effect. It is as though Soviet Communism had been overthrown not by Russians but by Ukranians, and the Ukranians had taken power in Moscow.
