Before the revolution, the
Ethiopian Student Movement presented a threat to the monarchy. Many of their ideals were similar to those of the Derg.
Formation and growth ,
Tafari Benti and
Atnafu Abate|left After the
Ethiopian Revolution in February 1974, the first signal of any mass uprisings was the actions of the soldiers of the 4th Brigade of the 4th Army Division in
Nagelle in southern Ethiopia. They were mainly unhappy about the lack of food and water and then arrested their brigade commander and other officers and kept them incarcerated. When the government sent the commander of the
Ethiopian Ground Forces, General
Deresse Dubala, to negotiate with the rebels, they held him and forced him to eat their food and drink their water. Similar mutinies took place at the
Ethiopian Air Force base at
Bishoftu on 12 February, and at Second Division at Asmara on 25 February. It was these protests that gave rise to the general uprising among the civilian segments such as students and trade unions. The Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police and Territorial Army, known as the Derg, was officially announced on 28 June 1974 by a group of military officers. This was done under the pretext of maintaining law and order, due to the powerlessness of the civilian government following widespread
mutiny in the armed forces of Ethiopia earlier that year. Its members were not directly involved in those mutinies nor was this the first military committee organized to support the administration of Prime Minister
Endelkachew Makonnen.
Alem Zewde Tessema had established the armed forces coordinated committee on 23 March. Over the following months, radicals in the Ethiopian military came to believe Makonnen was acting on behalf of the hated feudal aristocracy. When a group of notables petitioned for the release of a number of government ministers and officials who were under arrest for corruption and other crimes, three days later the Derg was announced. The Derg, which originally consisted of soldiers at the capital, broadened its membership by including representatives from the 40 units of the Army, Air Force,
Navy,
Kebur Zabagna (Imperial Guard),
Territorial Army and
police: each unit was expected to send three representatives, who were supposed to be privates, NCOs and junior officers up to the rank of major. According to Bahru Zewde, "Senior officers were deemed too compromised by close association to the regime." The Derg was reported to have consisted of 120 soldiers, a statement which has gained wide acceptance due to the habitual secretiveness of the Derg in its early years. But, Bahru Zewde notes that "in actual fact, their number was less than 110", No new members were ever admitted, and the number decreased, especially in the first few years, as some members were expelled or killed. The Derg first assembled at the Fourth Division headquarters, and elected Major
Mengistu Haile Mariam as its chairman and Major
Atnafu Abate as vice-chairman. Their stated mission was to study and address the grievances of various military units, investigate abuses by senior officers and staff and root out corruption in the military. In July, the Derg obtained key concessions from emperor,
Haile Selassie, which included the power to arrest not only military officers but government officials at every level. Soon both former Prime Ministers
Aklilu Habte-Wold and
Endelkachew Makonnen, along with most of their cabinets, most regional governors, many senior military officers and officials of the Imperial court were imprisoned. In August, after a proposed constitution creating a constitutional monarchy was presented to the emperor, the Derg began a program of dismantling the imperial government to forestall further developments in that direction. The Derg
deposed and imprisoned the emperor on 12 September 1974. The Derg initially lacked a clear ideological commitment other than Ethiopian nationalism. As left-wing activists returned to Ethiopia in the summer of 1974, their ideologies became entrenched in Ethiopian society, and the Derg began adopting the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and Ethiopian Socialism from these leftist parties, seeing it as their mission to implement the demands of the popular uprising. On 15 September, the committee renamed itself the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC) and took full control of the government and all facilities within the government. PMAC said it was only a provisional administration, and months passed before the full force of the civilian opposition gained momentum. In the first major outbreak of opposition, on May Day 1975, soldiers killed some protesters who demanding a return to civilian government. Throughout 1974, since the overthrow of Emperor Selassie, underground student cells and the leadership of the
Confederation of Ethiopian Labor Unions (CELU) had united to form an alliance militantly opposed to the PMAC. The EPRP demanded an elected assembly and the immediate establishment of a people's democratic republic. The Derg responded to all this by repressions and suppression of anti-government protests, and formally disbanded the CELU in December. The Derg chose Lieutenant General
Aman Andom, a popular military leader and a
Sandhurst graduate, to be its chairman and acting head-of-state. This was pending the return of Crown Prince
Asfaw Wossen from medical treatment in Europe when he would assume the throne as a constitutional monarch. However, General Aman Andom quarreled with the radical elements in the Derg over the issue of a new military offensive in
Eritrea and their proposal to execute the high officials of Selassie's former government. After eliminating units loyal to him—the Engineers, the Imperial Bodyguard and the Air Force—the Derg removed General Aman from power and executed him on 23 November 1974, along with some of his supporters and 60 officials of the previous Imperial government, what became known as the
Massacre of the Sixty. Brigadier General
Tafari Benti became the new Chairman of the Derg and the head of state, with Mengistu and Atnafu Abate as his two vice-chairmen, both with promotions to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. The monarchy was formally abolished in March 1975, and socialism was proclaimed the new ideology of the state. Emperor Haile Selassie died under mysterious circumstances on 27 August 1975 while his personal physician was absent. It is commonly believed that Mengistu killed him, either by ordering it done or by his own hand although the former is considered more likely. Both Derg and Haile Selassie government relocated numerous Amharas into southern Ethiopia, including present-day of the Oromia region, where they served in government administration, courts, church and school, where Oromo texts were eliminated and replaced by Amharic.
Red Terror's campaign From 1976 to 1978, the Derg conducted a very brutal military campaign to suppress its potential opponents, not only separatist movements but also rival
Marxist-Leninist groups (as
EPRP or
MEISON). The campaign officially began on September 23, following a failed assassination attempt on an influential member and future leader of the Derg,
Mengistu Haile Mariam, by the
Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (according to the Derg). By this time, the EPRP was very active in killing Derg members and supporters across the country, including the capital
Addis Ababa. Many EPRP members were among the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the government campaign, causing the EPRP's activities to be significantly curtailed.
Under Mengistu's leadership giving a speech Mengistu did not emerge as the leader of the Derg until after the 3 February 1977 shootout, in which Chairman Tafari Benti was killed. The vice-chairman of the Derg, Atnafu Abate, clashed with Mengistu over the issue of how to handle the war in Eritrea and lost, leading to his execution with 40 other officers, clearing the way for Mengistu to assume control. He formally assumed power as head of state, and justified his execution of Abate (on 13 November of that year) by claiming that he had "placed the interests of Ethiopia above the interests of socialism" and undertaken other "counter-revolutionary" activities. Mengistu intensified the junta's repression during the Red Terror and his army's military operations in Eritrea: the Red Terror campaign intensified after he came to power and claimed more lives than before, about 500,000 people, according to Amnesty International. By the end of 1979, Mengistu, “the Chairman,” was being projected through the official media in a strong totalitarian light. He derived from his earlier years an exceptional acquaintance with the regional diversity of Ethiopia. Many who have met him attest to his great calmness, a cool realism that has enabled him to overcome the many problems which he has faced. In 1987, he formally dissolved the Derg and established the country as the
People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) under a
new constitution. Many of the Derg members remained in key government posts and also served as the members of the Central Committee and the Politburo of the
Workers' Party of Ethiopia (WPE). This became Ethiopia's civilian version of the Eastern bloc communist parties. Mengistu became Secretary-General of the WPE and President of the PDRE while remaining the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and the undisputed
totalitarian dictator of Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Civil War Opposition to the reign of the Derg was the main cause of the
Ethiopian Civil War. This conflict began as extralegal violence between 1976 and 1978, known as the Red Terror, when the Derg struggled for authority, first with various opposition groups within the country, then with a variety of groups jockeying for the role of
vanguard party. Though human rights violations were committed by all sides, the great majority of abuses against civilians as well as actions leading to devastating
famine were committed by the government. The Derg spied on Ethiopian citizens through its
secret police, the
Central Revolutionary Investigation Department. The
Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which represents the Christian
state church of Ethiopia for centuries, was disestablished in 1974. The Derg declared a policy of
state atheism, a tenet of
Marxist-Leninist ideology; this was opposed by the vast majority of the Ethiopian population. On 4 March 1975, the Derg announced a program of
land reform, according to its main slogan of "Land to the Tiller", which was unequivocally radical, even in Soviet and Chinese terms. It nationalized all rural land, abolished tenancy and put peasants in charge of enforcing the whole scheme. Many students embraced Mengistu as a 'the hero of the reform'. But in 1980, state farms and cooperatives combined accounted for only 6 percent of agricultural output and 20 percent of marketed production. In July 1976, the group who wanted a rapprochement with the EPRP was eliminated from the Derg: In the same month junta introduced the death penalty for some political crimes, and prolonged the
state of emergency proclaimed in September 1975. As a result, insurgencies began to spread into the country's administrative regions. By late 1976 insurgencies existed in all of the country's fourteen
administrative regions. commemorating the victory of the Derg over
Somalia in the
Ogaden War|324x324pxDuring 1976, civilian opposition to the regime was ruthlessly cracked down on following an attempt on Mengistu's life. In some cases entire families were executed based on the accusation of being 'reactionary'. Under the Derg, Ethiopia became the Soviet bloc's closest ally in Africa and became one of the best-armed nations in the region as a result of massive military aid, chiefly from the
Soviet Union,
East Germany,
Cuba and
North Korea. In October 1978, the Derg announced the
National Revolutionary Development Campaign to mobilize human and material resources to transform the economy, which led to a ten-year plan (1984/85 – 1993/94) to expand agricultural and industrial output, forecasting a 6.5% growth in GDP and a 3.6% rise in per capita income. Instead, per capita income declined considerably to 0.8% over this period. Because of the impact of the wars in Ogaden and Eritrea, food output did not even keep pace with population growth in the 1974-1978 period. Between 1977 and 1979 Ethiopia faced severe food shortages, both in the towns and in parts of the countryside. By 1980, the original 120 members of the Derg had been whittled down to only 38. All members but three were ethnic
Amhara and were predominantly from settler colonialist
neftenya origins. Many member of the ruling elite were deeply opposed to the idea of loosening control on the rebellious
southern regions conquered under Menelik II. Hundreds of thousands fled economic misery, conscription and political repression and went to live in neighbouring countries and all over the
Western world, creating, for the first time, an Ethiopian
diaspora. More accurate evidence suggests that the famine was deliberately induced by the government in rebel areas of the Ethiopia (such as
Tigray and Eritrea) as part of the junta's
counterinsurgency strategy against guerrilla such groups as
Tigray People's Liberation Front or
Oromo Liberation Front. Although the Mengistu's regime did not openly block all
humanitarian aid to the rebel regions, he used that famine as government military policy against the rebellion: aid was delivered through companies closely associated with the Derg and strictly limited by the regime. Due to organized government policies that deliberately multiplied the effects of the famine, around 1.2 million people died in Ethiopia from the famine where the majority of the death tolls were from the present day Tigray Region and
Amhara Region and other parts of northern Ethiopia.
Aid and controversy The 1984–1985
Tigray famine brought the political situation in Ethiopia to the attention of the world and inspired charitable drives in
Western nations, notably by
Oxfam and the
Live Aid concerts of July 1985. The money they raised was distributed among
NGOs working in Ethiopia. A controversy arose when it was found that some of these NGOs were under Derg control or influence and that some Oxfam and Live Aid money had been used to fund the Derg's
enforced resettlement programmes, under which they displaced millions of people and killed between 50,000 and 100,000. A
BBC investigation reported that
Tigray People's Liberation Front rebels had used millions of dollars of aid money to buy arms; these accusations were later fully retracted by the corporation.
Dissolution and trials tanks in the streets of
Addis Ababa after rebels seized the capital Although the Derg government came to an end on 22 February 1987, three weeks after a
referendum approved the
constitution for the PDRE, it was not until September that the new government was fully in place and the Derg formally abolished. The surviving members of the Derg, including Mengistu, remained in power as the leaders of the new civilian regime. The geopolitical situation became unfavourable for the communist government in the late 1980s, with the Soviet Union retreating from the expansion of Communism under
Mikhail Gorbachev's
glasnost and
perestroika. Socialist bloc countries drastically reduced their aid to Ethiopia and were struggling to keep their own economies going. This resulted in even more economic hardship, and the military gave way in the face of determined onslaughts by guerrilla forces in the north. The Soviet Union stopped aiding the PDRE altogether in December 1990. Together with the fall of Communism in the Eastern Bloc in the
Revolutions of 1989, this itself dealt a serious blow to the PDRE. Towards the end of January 1991, a coalition of rebel forces, the
Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) captured
Gondar (the ancient capital city),
Bahir Dar and
Dessie. Meanwhile, the
Eritrean People's Liberation Front had gained control of all of Eritrea except for
Asmara and
Assab in the south. The Soviet Union, mired in its internal turmoil, could no longer prop up the Derg. In the words of the former US diplomat Paul B. Henze, "As his doom became imminent, Mengistu alternated between vowing resistance to the end and hinting that he might follow Emperor
Tewodros II's example and commit suicide." His actions were frantic: he convened the
Shengo, for an emergency session and reorganized his cabinet, but as Henze concludes, "these shifts came too late to be effective." Mengistu was sentenced to death in 2008
in absentia, charged with genocide, homicide, illegal imprisonment and property seizures. In 2009, Zimbabwe's late former Information Minister,
Tichaona Jokonya, in an interview with
Voice of America said Harare was not going to extradite Mengistu. In August 2018, Ethiopian former Prime Minister
Hailemariam Desalegn while heading an
African Union election observer mission in Harare met with Mengistu, and shared their photo on
Facebook, which was quickly deleted as it proved so controversial and generally unpopular. It is thought that Prime Minister
Abiy Ahmed, who had at that time released thousands of political prisoners, had approved the visit possibly because some opposition groups had used Mengistu's image to voice their disapproval of Abiy's policies. In May 2022,
Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister Ambassador
Frederick Shava gave a clear sign that Harare would be prepared to extradite Mengistu in a reversal of Jokonya's policy. The trial ended 26 May 2008, and many of the officials were sentenced to death. In December 2010, the Ethiopian government commuted the death sentence of 23 Derg officials. On 4 October 2011, sixteen former Derg officials were freed after twenty years of incarceration. The Ethiopian government paroled almost all of the Derg officials who had been imprisoned for 20 years. Other Derg ex-officials managed to escape and organized rebel groups to overthrow Ethiopia's new government. One of these groups is the
Ethiopian Unity Patriots Front which waged an insurgency in the
Gambela Region from 1993 to 2012. At the conclusion of a trial lasting from 1994 to 2006, Mengistu was convicted of
genocide,
war crimes and
crimes against humanity and sentenced
in absentia to death by an Ethiopian court for his role in Ethiopia's
Red Terror. The Ethiopian legal definition is distinct from the legal definition as outlined in the
Genocide Convention by the
United Nations and other definitions in that it defines genocide as intent to wipe out political and not just ethnic groups. In this respect, it closely resembles the definition of
politicide outlined by
Barbara Harff, who wrote in 1992 that no Communist country or governing body had been convicted of genocide. ==Military==