Who is Mengistu Haile Mariam (መንግሥቱ ኀይለ ማርያም)?
Mengistu Haile Mariam (Amharic: መንግሥቱ ኀይለ ማርያም, pronunciation: [mənɡɨstu haɪlə marjam]; born 21 May 1937) is an Ethiopian soldier and politician who was the president of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991 and General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Ethiopia from 1984 to 1991. He was the chairman of the Derg, the socialist military junta that governed Ethiopia, from 1977 to 1987, and the President of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) from 1987 to 1991.
The Derg took power in the Ethiopian Revolution following the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974, marking the end of the Solomonic dynasty which had ruled Ethiopia since the 13th century. Mengistu purged rivals for power from the Derg and made himself Ethiopia's dictator, attempting to modernize Ethiopia's feudal economy through Marxist-Leninist-inspired policies such as nationalization and land redistribution. His bloody consolidation of power in 1977–78 is known as the Ethiopian Red Terror, a brutal crackdown on opposition groups and civilians following a failed assassination attempt by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP) in September 1976, after it had ignored the Derg's invitation to join the union of socialist parties. The death toll is unknown, but is often estimated as between 30,000 and 750,000.
Internal rebellion and government repression characterized Mengistu's presidency, the Red Terror period being a battle for dominance between the Derg, the EPRP and their rivals the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement, who had initially aligned themselves with the Derg. While this internal conflict was being fought Ethiopia was threatened by both Somali invasion and the guerilla campaign of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front who demanded independence for Eritrea, then a province of Ethiopia. The Ogaden War of 1977–78 over a disputed border region with Somalia was notable for the prominent role of Mengistu's Soviet and Cuban allies in securing an Ethiopian victory. The catastrophic famine of 1983–85, is what brought his government the most international attention.
Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe in May 1991 after the PDRE National Assembly dissolved itself and called for a transitional government. His departure brought an abrupt end to the Ethiopian Civil War. Mengistu Haile Mariam still lives in Harare, Zimbabwe, despite an Ethiopian court verdict which found him guilty of genocide in absentia.
Mengistu's government is estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 500,000 to 2,000,000 Ethiopians. This includes Tafari Benti, a founding member of the Derg.
Mengistu Hailemariam Ayana was born on 21 May 1937 in Wolayita zone of southern Ethiopia or Kaffa Province. Mengistu’s father was a soldier and mother was a servant. His mother died during childbirth when Mengistu was only eight years old. After the death of his mother, Mengistu and his two siblings went to live with their grandmother for a few years. He then came back to live with his father and soon after joined the army at a very young age. Mengistu's father was very proud of his son's military achievements, though some people believe the Ethiopian popular account that states that his family was far from proud of his political accomplishments.
Mengistu trained as army officer in Holeta, Ethiopia and United States. Mengistu’s father was a soldier and his mother was a servant. Mengistu followed his father and joined the army, where he attracted the attention of the Eritrean-born general Aman Andom, who raised him to the rank of sergeant and assigned him duties as an errand boy in his office.
Mengistu graduated from the Holetta Military Academy, one of the two important military academies of Ethiopia. General Aman then became his mentor, and when the General was assigned to the commander of the Third Division took Mengistu with him to Harar, and later was assigned as Ordnance officer in the 3rd division. He was subsequently sent to the US for the first time in 1964 to the Savanna Army Depot in Illinois for a Ordnance testing course. A few years before his second departure for training to the US he was in conflict with the then 3rd Division commander General Haile Baykedagn whose policy of strict discipline and order did not sit well with Mengistu. At the time, the Ordnance group was offered military technical training support in the US. Despite his disapproval of Mengistu's insubordination and disrespect, the General was obliged to release him and Mengistu went for a 18-month training program at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, United States. He also took some night classes at the University of Maryland, making him fluent in English. He returned for a third time 1970, this time as a student at the Combined Arms Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Returning after his training, he was expected to command the Ordnance Sub-division in Harar. Years later, Mengistu would murder General Haile Baykedagn along with the 60 ministers and generals.
While studying in the United States, Mengistu experienced racial discrimination, which led him to a later strong anti-American sentiment. He equated racism in the United States with the class discrimination in Ethiopia. When he took power, and attended the meeting of Derg members at the Fourth Division headquarters in Addis Ababa, Mengistu exclaimed with emotion:
In this country, some aristocratic families automatically categorize persons with dark skin, thick lips, and kinky hair as "Barias" (Amharic for slave)... let it be clear to everybody that I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!
Bahru Zewde notes that Mengistu was distinguished by a "special ability to size up situations and persons". Although Bahru notes that some observers "rather charitably" equated this ability with intelligence, the academic believes this skill is more akin to "street smarts": "it is rather closer to the mark to see it as inner-city smartness (or what in local parlance would be called aradanat)."
Emperor Haile Selassie's government, having lost the confidence of the Ethiopian public following a drought and crop failures in Wello province, was overthrown in the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. As a result, power came into the hands of a committee of low ranking officers and enlisted soldiers led by Atnafu Abate, which came to be known as the Derg.
Mengistu was originally one of the lesser members, officially sent to represent the Third Division because his commander, General Nega Tegnegn, considered him a trouble-maker and wanted to get rid of him. But between July and September 1974, Mengistu was a member of the Derg, though he preferred to act through more public members like his former mentor, general Aman Andom, and later Tafari Benti. Mengistu and Atnafu Abate were the deputy chairmen of Derg from March 1975 to February 1977.
Haile Selassie was strangled in 1975. It is rumoured that Mengistu smothered the Emperor using a pillow case, but Mengistu has denied these rumours. Though several groups were involved in the overthrow, the Derg succeeded to power. There is no doubt that the Derg under Mengistu's leadership ordered the execution without trial of 61 ex-officials of the Imperial government on 23 November 1974, and later of numerous other former nobles and officials including the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abuna Theophilos, in 1977. Mengistu himself has acknowledged that the Derg ordered these deaths, but refuses to accept personal responsibility. Members of the Derg have contradicted him in interviews given from prison, saying he conspired and was in full agreement with their decisions.
Mengistu did not emerge as the leader of the Derg until after the 3 February 1977 shootout, in which Tafari Banti was killed. The vice chairman of the Derg, Atnafu Abate, although with some support at this time, clashed with Mengistu over the issue of how to handle the war in Eritrea and lost, leading to his execution with 40 other officers, clearing the way for Mengistu to become the complete master of the situation. He formally assumed power as head of state, and justified his execution of Abate (on 13 November of that year) by claiming that he had "placed the interests of Ethiopia above the interests of socialism" and undertaken other "counter-revolutionary" activities. Under Mengistu, Ethiopia received aid from the Soviet Union, other members of the Warsaw Pact, and Cuba.
Resistance against the Derg ensued, led primarily by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP). Mengistu cracked down on the EPRP and other revolutionary student organizations in what would become called the "Red Terror". The Derg subsequently turned against the socialist student movement MEISON (Amharic: መላ ኢትዮጵያ ሶሺያሊስት ንቅናቄ), a major supporter against the EPRP, in what would be called the "White Terror".
The EPRP's efforts to discredit and undermine the Derg and its MEISON collaborators escalated in the fall of 1976. It targeted public buildings and other symbols of state authority for bombings and assassinated numerous Abyot Seded and MEISON members, as well as public officials at all levels. The Derg, which countered with its own counter-terrorism campaign, labeled the EPRP's tactics the White Terror. Mengistu asserted that all "progressives" were given "freedom of action" in helping root out the revolution's enemies, and his wrath was particularly directed toward the EPRP. Peasants, workers, public officials, and even students thought to be loyal to the Mengistu regime were provided with arms to accomplish this task.
In a public speech in 1976, Mengitsu shouted "Death to counterrevolutionaries! Death to the EPRP!" and then produced three bottles filled with a red liquid that symbolized the blood of the imperialists and the counterrevolutionaries and smashed them to the ground to show what the revolution would do to its enemies. Thousands of young men and women turned up dead in the streets of the capital and other cities in the following two years. They were systematically murdered mainly by militia attached to the "Kebeles," the neighborhood watch committees which served during Mengistu's reign as the lowest level local government and security surveillance units. Families had to pay the Kebeles a tax known as "the wasted bullet" to obtain the bodies of their loved ones. In May 1977 the Swedish general secretary of the Save the Children Fund stated that "1,000 children have been killed, and their bodies are left in the streets and are being eaten by wild hyenas . . . You can see the heaped-up bodies of murdered children, most of them aged eleven to thirteen, lying in the gutter, as you drive out of Addis Ababa."
Military gains made by the monarchist Ethiopian Democratic Union 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 Somali Democratic Republic invaded Ethiopia having overrun the Ogaden region, and was on the verge of capturing Harar 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 government 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, as well as a formidable airforce and navy.
Amnesty International estimates that up to 50,000 people were killed during the Ethiopian Red Terror.
