ETHIOPIA & PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR
9122 OU22 - Ethiopia- The Triumvirate
The three members of the junta who ran Ethiopia were fascinating characters. Between them they had run their (rebel) side of the civil war; and had then taken over to run the peace.
Meles Zenawi clearly was the dominant figure. He certainly was intellectually dominant. But he was also very modest. I remember him calling me in one-day when he got one of his early essays back and asking me to criticise it ruthlessly. I took it away and poured over it for a couple of days. It was one of best OU essays I had ever read. So, when I went back to him, I said as much. He was disappointed; he desperately wanted me to improve his writings. I truthfully said that, as a writer myself, he was as good as me even in his third language. I didn't think he needed to improve. Even so, he insisted I went through the whole essay word by word, polishing it so he could understand the best way of handling it.
My main contribution, though, was about handling his face-to-face contacts -- particularly in terms of PR. I don't know that I should have worried about this either, since he came across with a wonderful PR image. Admittedly, this was very modest image -- certainly not that of a demagogue, but that's a superb image for a leader in modern world.
During the war itself he had been second-in-command to Seeye, and I suspect he handled the various diplomatic contacts. When I visited his bunker I noticed that they had telephone numbers of all the leaders around the world, and long before they got into Addis he must have been working his magic on these. Though the Western press knew nothing about them, I'm sure the Western leaders did. In the bunker I also saw that there was a large library of books which he and Seeye shared. Even while they were under siege they were still busy learning from every book they could lay their hands on.
This brings me to Seeye Abraha, for whom I had the most admiration. Not least this was because, having been great leader in the war, he stepped aside for Meles to run the peace -- recognising that Meles would be better at this than he was. Seeye was not as academically brilliant as Meles, but he had a genius for innovation -- which made him both a superb partner for Meles but also a brilliant military strategist.
The way Seeye ran the army was totally different to any other in the world. There was none of the spit and polish that other armies consider essential to discipline. As far as I could see there was no drilling, and their uniform was comprised of anything they could find. In fact the only significant part of their uniform, until they got new uniforms when they arrived in Addis, was that they wore plastic sandals. Indeed, this became their emblem; when their opponents laughed about how ill-prepared they were. Thus, for the celebration of the first anniversary of the end of the war, their literature featured -- of course -- a dove flying with an olive branch in it beak, but the military elements consisted of a Derg helmet crushed under the plastic sandal of a rebel!
There was a complete difference in the way that the soldiers were motivated. Thus, when the time came for them to storm a machine gun post, or whatever, unlike Western troops who are trained to obey orders without question, their troops on the ground actually took a vote amongst themselves as whether they were going to storm it or not -- knowing full well that they were likely to die. They always chose storm it, but it was by their own choice. This meant that these soldiers were the best in Africa, and among some of the best in the world they; since they were so highly motivated in what they were doing.
The one technology that had strengthened their work in the war had been the CB radio. The whole operation had been coordinated by the CB radio. They had none of the other communications technology that we're used to. Indeed, all the weapons that they had amassed - including several thousand tanks - were what they captured from their opponents.
Eventually, they were as well equipped as any modern army -- except for an airforce. The result of this later aspect was that they operated mainly by night when the Derg airforce was grounded. Indeed, their bunkers - which were man-made caves carved into the face of a 1,000 foot high cliff in Tigray province - were their sanctuary from the patrolling planes by day; since the air force could not see where they were. But at night the cliff lit up like Manhattan, with each cave having fluorescent lighting driven by generators.
The final leg of the triumvirate was Tamrat Layne. As I have said elsewhere Tamrat was the odd man out. He was a war hero, and more than pulled his weight in the triumvirate; running the day to day operations of the country while the other two laid their far-reaching plans. But I had the feeling he was the token Amhara -- where all the others belonged to Tigray. But, as just one other example, his headquarters during the war were a few miles away from where Seeye and Meles were located. This may well have been a sensible precaution against them all being wiped out in one bomb attack, but whatever the reason it isolated him from the others. He was, though, a lovely person. He was also very handsome. I was astounded that his eventual downfall – when he was arrested for embezzling £2 million from the government - came from him being seduced by a woman rather than the other way round.
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