Mengistu Haile Mariam

Based on Wikipedia: Mengistu Haile Mariam

The Dictator Who Ended a Dynasty

In 1974, a low-ranking military officer with a chip on his shoulder helped overthrow one of the oldest royal lineages in human history. The Solomonic dynasty had ruled Ethiopia since the thirteenth century—that's roughly seven hundred years of unbroken monarchical succession, a claim to legitimacy stretching back to the biblical King Solomon himself. Mengistu Haile Mariam didn't just end this ancient bloodline. He drowned its remnants in blood.

What followed was one of the twentieth century's most brutal dictatorships, marked by mass executions, catastrophic famine, and a reign of terror that claimed somewhere between half a million and two million lives. Yet Mengistu remains alive today, living comfortably in Zimbabwe, having never faced justice for his crimes.

Born Into the Margins

Mengistu was born in 1937 in Jimma, in Ethiopia's Kaffa region, during the Italian occupation of the country. The circumstances of his birth would shape everything that followed. His family background is murky, but accounts suggest his ancestors were from the enslaved classes of Ethiopia's south—a stigma that would follow him throughout his life.

Ethiopia's highland elite had their own form of colorism and class prejudice. People with darker skin and features associated with southern ethnic groups faced discrimination. Mengistu's appearance marked him as different from the typical highland Ethiopian, and he endured derogatory comments throughout his youth. Some historians believe this gave him a profound inferiority complex that later transformed into ruthless ambition.

His father served as a corporal in Emperor Haile Selassie's army—a modest rank. His mother reportedly worked as a domestic servant in the household of a regional governor. Young Mengistu grew up partly in military camps, partly in the compound of an aristocratic family, always on the periphery of power but never truly part of it.

He was, by all accounts, a difficult teenager. His school expelled him for misbehavior. With limited options, he joined the army at a young age. It was there that his particular talents—manipulation, political maneuvering, and an uncanny ability to read people—would find their use.

The Mentor and the Mentee

An Eritrean-born general named Aman Andom spotted something in the young soldier. He promoted Mengistu to sergeant, made him an errand boy in his office, and eventually recommended him to the prestigious Holetta Military Academy. Mengistu graduated in 1957 as a second lieutenant, and General Aman became his mentor.

The relationship would prove fateful for both men, though not in the way Aman might have hoped.

Mengistu received training in the United States on three separate occasions—first in Illinois in 1964, then for eighteen months in Maryland, and finally in Kansas in 1970. According to some accounts, he experienced racial discrimination during these American sojourns, which fueled an anti-American sentiment he would later express in his embrace of Soviet communism. Whether these incidents actually occurred remains unverified, but Mengistu certainly emerged from his American experience with fluent English and no love for the West.

Back in Ethiopia, Mengistu developed a reputation as a troublemaker. General Haile Baykedagn, one of his commanders, recognized him as "an intriguer and a very dangerous young officer." The general even wrote a secret report recommending that Mengistu be closely watched and denied promotions.

Years later, Mengistu would have General Haile Baykedagn executed, along with sixty other ministers and generals.

The Revolution Eats Its Father

By 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie's government was crumbling. A devastating drought in Wollo province had caused widespread crop failures and famine, and the imperial government's incompetent response destroyed whatever legitimacy it had left. The Ethiopian public had lost confidence in a regime that seemed to care more about palace intrigue than starving peasants.

A group of low-ranking military officers and enlisted soldiers seized power. They called themselves the Derg, an Amharic word meaning "committee" or "council." Mengistu was not initially a major figure—in fact, his commander sent him to represent the Third Division precisely because he was considered a troublemaker, and getting rid of him seemed convenient.

This would prove to be a catastrophic miscalculation.

Through what one historian describes as "sheer demagoguery and political intrigues," Mengistu outmaneuvered every officer who stood in his way. Between July and September 1974, he climbed the political ladder with remarkable speed. He understood something his rivals didn't: in times of chaos, the person willing to be most ruthless usually wins.

Emperor Haile Selassie died in 1975. Persistent rumors suggest Mengistu personally smothered the old emperor with a pillowcase, though he has always denied this. What is beyond doubt is that the Derg, under Mengistu's growing influence, ordered the execution without trial of sixty-one former imperial officials on November 23, 1974. No courts. No hearings. Just firing squads.

The revolution had begun eating its own.

The Shootout That Made a Dictator

Mengistu did not formally emerge as Ethiopia's leader until February 3, 1977, following a dramatic shootout in which the Derg's chairman, Tafari Benti, was killed. The circumstances remain murky, but the outcome was clear: Mengistu had eliminated another obstacle.

His co-deputy chairman, Atnafu Abate, disagreed with Mengistu over how to handle the war in Eritrea, which was fighting for independence from Ethiopian rule. This disagreement proved fatal. Mengistu had Atnafu executed on November 13, 1977, along with forty other officers. He justified the killings by claiming Atnafu had "placed the interests of Ethiopia above the interests of socialism"—a remarkable statement that revealed where Mengistu's true loyalties lay.

The path to absolute power was now clear.

The Red Terror

What followed was one of the most horrific periods in Ethiopian history, known simply as the Red Terror. To understand it, you need to understand that Mengistu faced opposition from multiple directions simultaneously.

The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, known by its acronym EPRP, was a leftist student organization that initially shared many of the Derg's revolutionary goals. But they refused to accept military rule and began a campaign to undermine the government. They bombed public buildings, assassinated officials, and in September 1976, attempted to kill Mengistu himself.

Mengistu's response was apocalyptic.

In a public speech in April 1977, Mengistu stood before a crowd and shouted, "Death to counterrevolutionaries! Death to the EPRP!" Then he produced three bottles filled with red liquid—symbolizing the blood of imperialists and counterrevolutionaries—and smashed them dramatically on the ground. The message was unmistakable.

What followed defies easy description. Thousands of young men and women turned up dead in the streets of Addis Ababa and other cities. The killings were carried out primarily by militias attached to the kebeles—neighborhood watch committees that served as the lowest level of government surveillance and control.

The system had a particularly ghoulish twist. Families who wanted to retrieve the bodies of their murdered loved ones had to pay a tax to the kebeles. It was called "the wasted bullet."

In May 1977, the general secretary of the Save the Children Fund described the horror: "One thousand 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."

Amnesty International estimates that up to five hundred thousand people died during the Red Terror. The Ethiopian Red Terror Documentation and Research Center puts the total death toll from this period between thirty thousand and seven hundred fifty thousand.

The Machinery of Revolution

Mengistu embraced Marxism-Leninism with a convert's zeal. This wasn't mere ideology—it was a complete transformation of Ethiopian society.

All rural land was nationalized. This stripped the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the imperial family, and the nobility of their vast estates and much of their wealth in a single stroke. The church had been one of the largest landowners in the country; suddenly it owned nothing.

All foreign-owned and locally owned companies were nationalized without compensation. Banks, insurance companies, large retail businesses—all became government property. Private urban property and rental housing were seized. Collective farms replaced individual plots. Agricultural products could no longer be sold on the free market; the government controlled all distribution.

Massive bureaucracies sprang up to administer all this nationalized property. The economy, already struggling, began its long collapse.

The Soviets were delighted. Moscow saw Ethiopia as proof that a "backward society" could transform itself through revolutionary adoption of socialist principles. They poured in military aid and advisors. Cuba sent troops. By the end of the 1970s, Mengistu commanded the second-largest army in all of sub-Saharan Africa, along with a formidable air force and navy.

Wars on Every Front

Mengistu needed that military. Ethiopia faced threats from multiple directions.

In 1977, Somalia invaded Ethiopia, seeking to annex the Ogaden region—a border territory with a predominantly Somali population. The Somali army overran much of the region and came close to capturing the cities of Harar and Dire Dawa. Ethiopia seemed on the verge of losing a significant portion of its territory.

Then something remarkable happened. Somalia's erstwhile allies—the Soviet Union and Cuba—switched sides. They launched an unprecedented airlift of arms and personnel to support Ethiopia. Soviet advisors and Cuban troops helped turn the tide. The Somali invasion was repelled.

This was the Cold War playing out in the Horn of Africa, with superpowers shifting allegiances as it suited their interests. Somalia had been a Soviet client; now Ethiopia was. The human cost of these geopolitical chess moves was paid entirely by Ethiopians and Somalis.

Meanwhile, Eritrea continued its decades-long struggle for independence. The Eritrean People's Liberation Front waged a guerrilla campaign that would eventually succeed, though not until 1991. In the northern Tigray region, another rebel movement—the Tigray People's Liberation Front—was gaining strength. These conflicts would ultimately prove more consequential than the Somali invasion.

The Famine the World Watched

In 1984, the tenth anniversary of the Derg coming to power, Ethiopia experienced a catastrophe that would define it in the international imagination for a generation. A famine of almost unimaginable proportions swept across the country, killing somewhere between four hundred thousand and one million people.

The causes were multiple: drought, yes, but also civil war, government mismanagement, and deliberate policy choices. Mengistu's agricultural collectivization had disrupted traditional farming practices. His wars consumed resources that might have gone to famine relief. Some evidence suggests the government deliberately withheld food aid from regions controlled by rebel groups.

The famine became global news when BBC journalist Michael Buerk filed a report describing it as "a biblical famine... the closest thing to hell on Earth." His footage of starving children shocked Western audiences. It prompted the Live Aid concert organized by Bob Geldof—a massive musical event that raised millions for famine relief and became a cultural touchstone of the 1980s.

Yet the aid that flowed into Ethiopia did not necessarily reach those who needed it most. Much of it was controlled by Mengistu's government, which used food as a weapon of war. The government also used the famine as cover for forced resettlement programs, moving populations from rebel-controlled areas to regions where they could be more easily controlled.

The famine killed more Ethiopians than the Red Terror. It is what brought Mengistu's government the most international attention, and it is the enduring image many Westerners have of Ethiopia—starving children with distended bellies. This image, ironically, often obscured the political causes of the suffering and the regime responsible for it.

The Unraveling

By the late 1980s, Mengistu's position was deteriorating. The Soviet Union, his primary patron, was collapsing under its own contradictions. Mikhail Gorbachev had little interest in propping up distant African dictatorships. The flow of weapons and advisors began to dry up.

The rebel movements, meanwhile, were gaining ground. The Tigray People's Liberation Front had allied with other opposition groups to form the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. The Eritrean People's Liberation Front controlled most of Eritrea. Government forces were losing battle after battle.

In May 1991, with rebel forces closing in on Addis Ababa, Mengistu fled. He boarded a plane to Zimbabwe, whose president, Robert Mugabe, offered him asylum. The People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia's National Shengo—its parliament—dissolved itself and called for a transitional government.

The Ethiopian Civil War, which had raged for nearly two decades, ended abruptly with Mengistu's departure.

Exile and Impunity

Mengistu Haile Mariam still lives in Harare, Zimbabwe, more than three decades after his flight from Ethiopia. He resides in a comfortable suburb, protected by Mugabe's government and, even after Mugabe's death in 2019, by a Zimbabwean establishment unwilling to extradite him.

In 2006, an Ethiopian court found Mengistu guilty of genocide in absentia. He was sentenced to death. The verdict covered the killings of thousands of people, including Emperor Haile Selassie and numerous officials executed without trial. It was one of only a handful of times an African court has convicted a former head of state of genocide.

The verdict means nothing as long as Mengistu remains in Zimbabwe.

He has given occasional interviews from exile, defending his actions as necessary to save Ethiopia from disintegration. He denies personal responsibility for the Red Terror, claiming the Derg made collective decisions. Members of the Derg, interviewed from prison, have contradicted him, saying he conspired and was in full agreement with their decisions.

His government is estimated to be responsible for the deaths of between five hundred thousand and two million Ethiopians. The lower figure likely undercounts the famine dead; the higher figure may include deaths that cannot be directly attributed to government policy. The true number will never be known.

The Psychology of Power

What made Mengistu? Historians have puzzled over this question for decades.

One Ethiopian academic, Bahru Zewde, noted that Mengistu possessed "a special ability to size up situations and persons." Some observers charitably equated this with intelligence. Bahru was more precise: it was closer to street smarts, what Ethiopians call "aradanat"—a kind of inner-city cunning, an ability to survive and manipulate.

There was also his background—the son of a corporal and a servant, with darker skin and features that marked him as an outsider among Ethiopia's highland elite. When he finally achieved power, he gave a speech addressing this directly: "In this country, some aristocratic families automatically categorize persons with dark skin, thick lips, and kinky hair as slaves. Let it be clear to everybody that I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!"

The speech reveals something essential. This was a man who had internalized the prejudice directed against him and transformed it into rage. The aristocrats who had looked down on him would pay. And they did—in blood.

The Weight of History

Ethiopia today is a different country from the one Mengistu ruled, though not necessarily a freer one. The Tigray People's Liberation Front that helped overthrow him would itself become the dominant force in Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades, before being sidelined and eventually fighting a devastating civil war from 2020 to 2022.

Eritrea did achieve its independence in 1993, following a referendum. The decades-long war that Mengistu tried to win through force ultimately ended in partition.

The Solomonic dynasty that Mengistu ended has not been restored. The last emperor's descendants live in exile, occasionally mentioned in discussions about Ethiopian monarchy but with no realistic prospect of return to power. Seven hundred years of history ended with Mengistu—not with a noble transition, but with a pillow pressed against an old man's face, if the rumors are true.

Mengistu himself turns eighty-eight in 2025, if he is still alive. He has outlasted Haile Selassie, outlasted the Soviet Union, outlasted the Cold War that enabled his rise, outlasted his victims. He has never faced justice for his crimes, and at his age, he almost certainly never will.

The Red Terror, the famine, the executions—they have passed from living memory into history. Ethiopians born after Mengistu's fall now have children of their own. The dictator's name is a byword for brutality, but he remains a free man, living out his final years in African sunshine.

There is no tidy moral to this story. Sometimes the villains escape. Sometimes history offers no justice, only memory.