Ethiopian Civil War

The Ethiopian Civil War was a civil war in Ethiopia and present-day Eritrea, fought between the Ethiopian military junta known as the Derg and Ethiopian-Eritrean anti-government rebels from 12 September 1974 to 28 May 1991.

This article is about the civil war of 1974 to 1991. For other civil wars in Ethiopia, see Ethiopian civil war (disambiguation).

The Derg overthrew the Ethiopian Empire and Emperor Haile Selassie in a coup d'état on 12 September 1974, establishing Ethiopia as a Marxist-Leninist state under a military junta and provisional government. Various opposition groups of ideological affiliations ranging from Communist to anti-Communist, often drawn from a specific ethnic background, began armed resistance to the Soviet-backed Derg, in addition to the Eritrean separatists already fighting in the Eritrean War of Independence. The Derg used military campaigns and the Qey Shibir (Ethiopian Red Terror) to repress the rebels. By the mid-1980s, various issues such as the 1983–1985 famine, economic decline, and other after-effects of Derg policies ravaged Ethiopia, increasing popular support for the rebels. The Derg dissolved itself in 1987, establishing the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) under the Workers' Party of Ethiopia (WPE) in an attempt to maintain its rule. The Soviet Union began ending its support for the PDRE in the late-1980s and the government was overwhelmed by the increasingly victorious rebel groups. In May 1991, the PDRE was defeated in Eritrea and President Mengistu Haile Mariam fled the country. The Ethiopian Civil War ended on 28 May 1991 when the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of left-wing ethnic rebel groups, entered the capital Addis Ababa. The PDRE was dissolved and replaced with the Tigray People's Liberation Front-led Transitional Government of Ethiopia.^[8]

The Ethiopian Civil War left at least 1.4 million people dead, with 1 million of the deaths being related to famine and the remainder from combat and other violence.

1974:

Battle of Tirro

1977:

First Battle of Massawa

1977:

Siege of Barentu

1977–1978:

Battle of Jijiga

1978:

Battle of Harar

1982:

Red Star Campaign

1988: , 17–20 March

Battle of Afabet

1988: , 28 December 1988 – 19 February 1989

Battle of Shire (1989)

1990: , 8–10 February

Second Battle of Massawa

Neftenya

Second Afar Insurgency

(1991). Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia. Human Rights Watch. ISBN 9781564320384.

De Waal, Alex

Hammond, Jenny (1999). Fire from the ashes: a chronicle of the revolution in Tigray, Ethiopia, 1975 - 1991 (1. print ed.). Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press. 978-1-56902-086-9.

ISBN

Young, John (1997). Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. 0-521-59198-8.