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Map during the Ethiopian Civil War showing insurgent strategic route in advance of Addis Ababa. The EPLF and ELF were successful in seizing 80% of Eritrea, but the Derg as soon as diverted their attention to Eritrea after victory against Somalia, fearing the loss of Red Sea in isolation of Ethiopia. In early 1978, they organized 90,000 powerful ...
The Derg (or Dergue; Amharic: ደርግ, lit. ' committee ' or ' council '), officially the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), [4] [5] was the Ethiopian state that existed from 1974 to 1987 military dictatorship which then including present-day Eritrea, when the military junta formally "civilianized" the administration but stayed in power until 1991.
As the Derg's political radicalism became more apparent, merchants were blamed for causing the famines of 1972–1974 and were viewed as class enemies of the revolution. Many prominent merchants aligned themselves with conservative parties, such as the Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU), which was militarily active in Tigray and Gondar .
Two senior regime officials lived in the Italian embassy in Addis Ababa from 2008 [19] until their death sentences were commuted and they were granted parole in 2020. [20] Another individual who was found guilty in absentia in May 2002, Kelbessa Negewo , was returned from his exile in the United States several years later to serve a life sentence.
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. [13] 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.
When the Derg took power in 1974 they relabelled the provinces as regions (kifle hager). [4]: 222 By 1981 Addis Ababa had become a separate administrative division from Shewa, and Aseb was split off from Eritrea in 1981, making 16 administrative divisions in total.
July – the famine garnered international attention especially from Western community. The Oxfam and Live Aid concerted charity which ignited controversy whether NGOs in Ethiopia were under the control of Derg government or Oxfam and Live Aid coordinated to the Derg's enforced resettlement programmes, which displaced and killed between 50,000 and 100,000 people.
The Derg had initially approached the Western Bloc, including the United States and Western European countries, but shifted towards the Eastern Bloc (Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact) due to the lack of US support for Ethiopia and the recurring human rights violations in the country. The foreign policy of the military regime was characterized by a ...