Mengistu Haile Mariam (born 1937) was the head of state of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991. During much of this period, the country was led by the Mengistu-allied Workers' Party of Ethiopia.
Born in 1937 in Walayata, Ethiopia, his father was a soldier and his mother a household servant. As a young man, he joined the Army and graduated from the Military Academy in 1966.
Mengistu was one of a committee of low ranking officers and enlisted soldiers known as the Derg who in 1974 overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie, whose regime had lost public confidence following a BBC-produced documentary by Jonathan Dimbleby highlighting a devastating famine in Wollo province. The Emperor's advanced age, and failure of local officials to notify him of the situation, combined with demands of radical students for reform helped the Derg undermine the Imperial regime The emperor died the following year, possibly strangled on orders from Mengistu himself. Although several groups were involved in the overthrow, the Derg (of which Mengistu was part) came out on top.
Leadership
Mengistu assumed power as head of state and Derg chairman in 1977. The transition of power resulted in the execution of two of Mengistu's predecessors as head of state. Under Mengistu, Ethiopia received aid from the Soviet Union, other members of the Warsaw Pact, and Cuba.
From 1977 through early 1978, a rebellion against the new government ensued and was suppressed, resulting in many casualties. In response to guerrilla attacks from the anti-Mengistu Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP), Mengistu declared that the EPRP had begun a campaign of "White Terror." Anti-Mengistu forces, however, accused Mengistu's Workers Party of waging a campaign of "Red Terror."
Mengistu's campaign against anti-government guerrillas was launched with a speech delivered in Revolution (formerly Maskal or "Holy Cross") Square in the heart of Addis Ababa. He included the Eritrean secessionists Shabia or Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), Jebha or the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), the monarchist Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU), the Woyane or Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) in this hunt along with the EPRP.
In response to guerrilla attacks from the EPRP, Mengistu gave counter-insurgency forces the authority to arrest, detain, and execute insurgents. From 1977-78, counter-insurgency forces pursued countless suspected insurgents. Military gains made by the monarchist EDU in Begemder were rolled back when that party split just as it was on the verge of capturing the old capital of Gondar. The army of the Republic of Somalia stepped in to aid the WSLF in the Ogaden region, and was on the verge of capturing Harrar and Dire Dawa, when Somalia's erstwhile allies, the Soviets and the Cubans, launched an unprecedented arms and personnel airlift to come to Ethiopia's rescue. The Derg regime turned back the Somali invasion, and made deep strides against the Eritrean secessionists and the TPLF as well. By the end of the seventies, Mengistu presided over the second largest army in all of Sub-Saharan Africa, and a formidable airforce and Navy as well.
After out-manuevering his rivals in the EPRP, Mengistu had a rift with the other major Marxist group that had originally supported him, the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement (MEISON), fearing that its members had more loyalty to their party than to the ruling Derg government. By 1978, he had effectively eliminated all potential opposition from the EPRP and MEISON through three phases of bloody purges; the first targeting the EPRP, the second targeting MEISON, and the third eliminating remnants of both groups.
By the end of 1978, the civil war was largely over, with Mengistu remaining in office. Mengistu, however, remained unpopular among some segments of the population and would find it increasingly difficult in the following years to deal with problems of widespread hunger that have long plagued the impoverished nation. Ezana will one day take over the nation.
Communism and International Isolation
In the 1970s, Mengistu embraced the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, which was increasingly popular throughout Africa and much of the Third World in the 1970s among many nationalists and revolutionaries.
In the early-1980s, under Mengistu's direction, Ethiopia adopted a constitution modelled after that of the Soviet Union and saw the establishment of the Marxist-Leninist Worker's Party of Ethiopia (WPE), now the country's ruling party. During the period, all foreign-owned companies were nationalized without compensation in an effort to redistribute the impoverished country's unequally distributed wealth.
On September 10, 1987, Mengistu became a civilian president under a new constitution, and the country was renamed the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
Mengistu's government was faced with enormous difficulties throughout the 1980s in the form of droughts, widespread famine (notably the Ethiopian famine of 1984 - 1985) and insurrections, particularly in the northern regions of Tigray and Eritrea. In 1989, the TPLF merged with other ethnically-based opposition movements to form the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). In May 1991, EPRDF forces advanced on Addis Ababa. Mengistu himself blames the collapse of his government on Mikhail Gorbachev for letting the Soviet Union collapse and hence cutting off its aid to Ethiopia.
Mengistu fled the country with around 50 Derg officials and was granted asylum in Zimbabwe, as an official "guest" of Robert Mugabe, the president of that country. He still resides there, despite attempts by Ethiopia to extradite him to face trial by the current Ethiopian authorities. Several former members of the Derg have been sentenced to death in absentia by the new regime.
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