Ethiopian Civil War
1974 CE.
Shown on the map at 9.000°, 40.000°.
The Ethiopian Civil War was a civil war in Ethiopia and present-day Eritrea, fought between the Ethiopian military junta known as the Derg and Ethiopian-Eritrean anti-government rebels from 12 September 1974 to 28 May 1991. The Derg overthrew the Ethiopian Empire and Emperor Haile Selassie in a coup d'état on 12 September 1974, establishing Ethiopia as a Marxist–Leninist state under a military junta and provisional government. Various nationalist opposition groups of ideological affiliations ranging from Communist to anti-Communist, often drawn from a specific ethnic background, carried out armed resistance to the Soviet-backed Derg. Groups like the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) had already been fighting against the Ethiopian Empire in the northern Eritrean War of Independence and southern Ogaden insurgency. The Derg used large scale counterinsurgency military campaigns and the Qey Shibir (Red Terror) to repress the rebels. Other rebel fronts such as the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) also increasingly grew in strength over the 1970s.
Text from the Wikipedia article Ethiopian Civil War, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.