Mengistu Haile Mariam

Mengistu Haile Mariam (መንግሥቱ ኀይለ ማርያም, pronunciation: ; born 21 May 1937) is an Ethiopian former politician and former army officer who was the head of state of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991 and General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Ethiopia from 1984 to 1991.

Mengistu Haile Mariam was born on 21 May 1937 in Jimma during the Italian occupation.

Mengistu was the son of a former slave under the service of the aristocratic Shewan landowner Afenegus Eshete Geda, who encountered Mengistu's father, Haile Mariam Wolde Ayana, while on a hunting expedition in the district of Gimira and Maji then under the governorship of Dejazmatch Taye Gulilat.

After the Italians invaded Ethiopia, they abolished slavery, freeing Haile Mariam.

The Italians then recruited Haile Mariam as an askari soldier and sent him to Jimma.

Here, Mengistu's mother who was of Konso origin met Haile Mariam and the two got married.

The marriage resulted with the birth of Mengistu's elder sister, and then Mengistu himself.

After the Italians were defeated and expelled from the country in 1941, the couple moved to Debre Markos where Haile Mariam joined Haile Selassie's fledgling army and received the rank of corporal.

Corporal Haile Mariam was then transferred to the ammunition's production unit of the imperial army in Addis Ababa.

Mengistu was raised in the household of Dejazmatch Kebede Tesemma (the former governor of Gojjam), where Mengistu's mother worked as a domestic servant.

In Debre Markos, Mengistu attended the Negus Tekle Haimanot School where he was known to be a problematic teenager and not serious with his studies, he was later expelled from high school for misbehavior.

Mengistu then joined the army at a very young age.

As an ambitious young soldier, 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.

Aman then recommended him to the Holetta Military Academy, one of the two important military academies of Ethiopia.

After Mengistu graduated from the Holetta Military Academy in 1957, he received the rank of Second Lieutenant.

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 an ordnance officer in the Third Division.

He was subsequently sent to the US for the first time in 1964 to the Savanna Army Depot in Illinois for an Ordnance testing course for six months.

Aman was abruptly transferred to Addis Ababa.

The imperial regime found him too popular with the soldiers especially after his commendable military exploits in the engagement against the Somali army at Tog Wuchale during the 1964 war.

Prime Minister Aklilu Habte Wold removed the general affectionately known to his men as "the desert lion" from army duties and assigned him as a senator, a job he hated very much as he recounted to his author, but could not refuse without arousing the Emperor's ire.

Aman's replacement was General Haile Baikedagn, who found Mengistu an intriguer and a very dangerous young officer.

General Haile had actually written a secret report to his superiors to put a close watch on Mengistu and not give him a raise in the military ranks.

A few years before his second departure for training to the US he was in conflict with the then Third 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 an 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 in 1970, this time as a student at the Combined Arms Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

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 dictator of Ethiopia, attempting to modernize the feudal economy of Ethiopia through Marxist-Leninist-inspired policies such as nationalization and land redistribution.

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.

His bloody consolidation of power in 1977–1978 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 at between 30,000 and 750,000.

Internal rebellion, government repression, and economic mismanagement characterized Mengistu's presidency, the Red Terror period being a battle for dominance between the Derg, the EPRP, and their rival the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement (MEISON), which had initially aligned itself with the Derg.

While this internal conflict was being fought, Ethiopia was threatened by both the Somali invasion and the guerrilla campaign of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, who demanded independence for Eritrea, then a province of Ethiopia.

The Ogaden War of 1977–1978 with Somalia, fought over a disputed border region (Ogaden), was notable for the prominent role of Mengistu's Soviet and Cuban allies in securing an Ethiopian victory.

The catastrophic famine of 1983–1985 is what brought his government the most international attention.

Mengistu's government is estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 500,000 to 2,000,000 Ethiopians, mostly during the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia.

Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe in May 1991 after the PDRE National Shengo 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.