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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 military dictatorship that ruled Ethiopia, then including present-day Eritrea, from 1974 to 1987, when the military junta formally "civilianized" the administration but stayed in power until 1991.
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 ...
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.
The regime only survived another week after his ousting before the EPRDF poured into the capital and captured Addis Ababa. The EPRDF immediately disbanded the Workers' Party of Ethiopia and shortly afterward arrested almost all of the most prominent Derg officials that were still in the country.
The Derg, the military junta that had ruled Ethiopia as a provisional government since 1974, planned for transition to civilian rule and proclaimed a socialist republic in 1984 after five years of preparation. The Workers' Party of Ethiopia (WPE) was founded that same year as a vanguard party led by Derg chairman Mengistu Haile Mariam.
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.
While Selassie's regime made some effort to redress overpopulation by resettling groups from the Highlands region, the Derg was able to gain significant support with a pledge to abolish the land-tenure system, calling for "land to the tiller." Land reform became the central issue the revolution. [12]