The Red Terror

The early years of the Ethiopian revolution were heady ones. University and high school students who had rallied against the failures of the old regime were eager to convert the rural masses to scientific socialism. 40,000 young people took part in the Zamacha ('campaign' in Amharic), teaching literacy and building schools and clinics in the countryside. Land, foreign businesses, and church properties were nationalized in the early stages of the Derg regime. A series of sweeping reforms affected every part of Ethiopian life and destroyed the feudal system completely.

But 1977 the politicization of the army had turned the Ethiopian revolution into just another military coup. Idealistic dreams faded as purges, torture, and witch-hunts against political opponents in the cities turned into a meaningless bloodbath. This 'Red Terror' lasted throughout the late 1970s, and conservative estimates from the human rights group Africa Watch say that up to 30,000 people were killed.

Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, the son of a night-watchman, clawed his way to the top of the Derg in a series of brutal power struggles. He became Chairman in 1977, at the height of the Red Terror.

The Derg never managed to reach a peace agreement with the Eritrean rebels. It also failed to tackle demands for Tigray, Oromo, and Somali areas. Several armed resistance movements were formed, the most important of which were the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).

Saved by the USSR and Cuba from defeat in 1978, Ethiopia remained firmly in the communist camp for the rest of the Cold War. Socialist central planning of the economy was introduced, and a restrictive agricultural policy gave little incentive to Ethiopian farmers. Price controls and interference in marketing led to mediocre production of food and cash crops.

Ethiopia became the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, controlled by a single party, the Workers' Party of Ethiopia. Open political dissent was dangerous, and rare. Large numbers of political prisoners were detained, and a powerful security apparatus silenced all but a few critics.

The famine of 1984/85

The terrible famine of 1984 and 1985 was the result of a combination of war and drought. Early warnings were ignored or mistrusted, and by the time the outside world and the Ethiopian government had been shocked into action by TV reports, it would be too late to save the lives of at least half a million people. The famine marked a tuning point for Ethiopia, and for the international community. Ethiopia may never shake off the association with hunger, and the aid organizations and donor governments may never again underestimate the power of public concern to raise money for disaster relief. Goaded by the singer Bob Geldoff, the British public alone raised $100 million in response to the famine.

The civil war

Brutalized by a ferocious but incompetent leadership, 100,000 soldiers of the Revolutionary Army died in the civil war that ravaged Ethiopia throughout the 1980s. The former rebel movements are still reluctant to release full details of deaths on their side, but, in Eritrea and Ethiopia combined, their losses were possibly almost as high.

Civilians suffered on both sides of the front lines. In the government-held areas, forced conscription and arbitrary taxation devastated communities, and in liberated areas the Ethiopian Air Force bombed and burnt schools, clinics, and villages in an attempt to terrify people into resisting the rebels. Napalm and cluster bombs were used on civilian targets. Hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans and Eritreans fled from war and drought and became refugees in Sudan. Ethiopians with money or education managed to get refugee status in Northern countries: a brain drain from which the nation is still recovering.

In the most notorious atrocity of the war, a key market town in Tigray, Hawzie, was bombed by Mengistu's air force in June 1988. As MIG bombers pounded the town, helicopter gunships strafed thousands of fleeing civilians. At least 1,800 people died in a single day.