Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam

Ethiopia’s framework is more centralised (a legacy of the dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Derg Marxist-Leninist regime of 1974-1991 backed by the Soviet Union) and only offers incentives for a limited time...

He is not a veteran of the armed struggle but entered politics after the fall of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Derg in 1991; as Vice-President of the SNNPR in 2000-2002 and President in 2002-2005 he showed considerable toughness in keeping the ethnic political balance in a region of 56 ethnic groups...

Addis Ababa's ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front may not wish to remind the public that in the long struggle against Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam Meles's Tigray People's Liberation Front and Issayas Afeworki's Eritrean People's Liberation Front depended on enthusiastic foreign journalists to spread the word and help to attract the military and financial support abroad which in turn helped the fronts to overthrow the Derg in 1991...

In 1991 the SPLA was expelled from Ethiopia after the overthrow of President Mengistu Haile Mariam...

With the overthrow of Mengistu Haile Mariam’s regime in 1991 he took the Foreign Affairs portfolio in the new EPRDF-led government...

Excoriated by Western liberals (but admired by ‘realist’ diplomats) Meles neither excites nor appals many Ethiopians; nor is he seen as especially authoritarian compared to his predecessors Derg leader Mengistu Haile Mariam and Emperor Haile Selassie...

Born in 1955 in Adwa northern Ethiopia Meles studied for two years at the medical faculty of Addis Ababa University before joining the Tigray People’s Liberation Front an armed group that fought the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1975...

'The generation that moved the mountains' as the war veterans that defeated Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime are known may be growing tired...

When two of China's then staunchest African supporters - Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam and Mozambique's Joaquim Chissano - visited Beijing Deng warned them: 'Don't follow socialism'...

In 1991 when the EPRDF overthrew Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam's brutal regime in Addis Ababa an allied Anyuak party the Gambella People's Liberation Movement (later GPL Party) took over in Gambella...