The Derg's Marxist junta fell when rebels took Addis Ababa
Ethiopia's civil war ran from 12 September 1974 to 28 May 1991, pitting the Derg military junta against Ethiopian and Eritrean rebels. After toppling Haile Selassie, the Marxist–Leninist regime faced EPLF and other fronts until the EPRDF entered the capital and the president fled.
Discontent with Haile Selassie's rule was building by the 1950s, as aristocrats chafed at stagnation and the emperor refused to tolerate reform. By the 1960s poor living standards, slow growth and abuses had made the government unpopular at every level; radical students demanded land reform, and the Imperial Guard staged a failed coup in December 1960. Soldiers, increasingly recruited from educated Ethiopians and repeatedly sent to crush protests and revolts in Ogaden, Bale and Eritrea, grew politicised themselves, and by 1973 many observers believed the army held real power.
On 12 September 1974 a committee of junior officers and enlisted men, the Derg, ousted the emperor. In March 1975 it abolished the monarchy and declared Marxism-Leninism its ideology. Its army was dominated by Amharas, who held more than 80 percent of generals' posts. The Derg never fully controlled the country, and it faced Eritrean separatists who had been fighting since 1961, when the Eritrean Liberation Front took up arms after annexation, as well as groups ranging from monarchists to rival leftists. One early peasant march called for 100,000 volunteers to crush the Eritreans but mustered only 30,000.
In the southeast, the Western Somali Liberation Front had pushed Ethiopian troops back to Jigjiga, Dire Dawa and Harar by June 1977, and Somalia's president Siad Barre committed his regular army. Moscow responded with an airlift and sealift of around two billion dollars in weapons, 1,700 advisers and 17,000 Cuban troops, and in early 1978 a Soviet-planned offensive led by Cubans drove the Somalis back. At home the regime's Red Terror targeted opponents.
The 1983 to 1985 famine and economic decline boosted support for the rebels, and in 1984 the Eritreans regained the initiative. The junta formally civilianised in 1987 as the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. On 28 May 1991 the EPRDF coalition entered Addis Ababa, President Mengistu Haile Mariam fled abroad, and a transitional government led by the Tigrayan front took over. At least 1.4 million people died, about a million of them from famine.
Source: Ethiopian Civil War
