Surrender or Starve by Kaplan
Ref: Robert Kaplan (2003). Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea. Vintage Departures.
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Summary
The legacy of mass destruction combined with neglect triggered the 1984 famine, which most of the media would ascribe to “drought.”
In the early 1980s, disastrous agricultural policies, drought, and two major government offensives against guerrillas in Eritrea and Tigre—which devastated the land, the peasant farmers who worked it, and the livestock—resulted in the worst famine since the 1932–1933 famine in the Ukraine.
Ethiopia was reenacting the experience of Soviet Russia in the years following the overthrow of the czar, when the new communist rulers battled a host of rebel armies in order to maintain a reactionary nineteenth-century empire. Famine, as in USSR, was a partial consequence of this historic struggle.
During the famine, in the extreme north of Ethiopia, >150,000 Ethiopian army troops were battling 35,000 Eritrean guerrillas in a war that has witnessed the largest infusion of Soviet arms in all of Africa. In the neighboring province of Tigre, 15,000 self-declared Marxist rebels were fighting an insurgency against the government, which responded by burning crops and bombing village markets from the air.
An awful truth that many in the US were afraid to face: that although God may cause drought, famine in Africa is caused by the power relationships among Africans. All the relief assistance in the world cannot change the values by which Sudanese and Ethiopians live. This is why although >1M died, nothing changed. The Ethiopian death machine rolled on. Not one truly significant agricultural reform took place. In fact, the same production methods responsible for the 1984 famine have since been expanded through resettlement and villagization.
“Usually, it is said that periodic droughts cause bad crops and therefore starvation. But it is the elites of starving countries that propagate this idea. It is a false idea. The unjust or mistaken allocation of funds or national property is the most frequent source of hunger.”-Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Emperor.
The famine holocaust in Ethiopia—although resembling what transpired in Biafra in the 1960s and Cambodia in the 1970s—actually is derivative of the Stalinist experiment in the Ukraine in the 1930s.
In the 1980s, the 19c Ethiopian empire of the Amharas was cracking up, and the Amhara regime, fortified by Marxist ideology, was using famine as a means to pressure the rebellious Tigreans and Eritreans into submission.
While the technical wizardry of TV was able to make the US public feel starvation, the media, by and large, failed to make the public understand it. Even newspapers, which should have been less visually oriented, became fixated with the drama of mass starvation, while the historical and political context in which the famine belonged went largely unexplored. The US public was left only with images: of charming, suffering people, whose awesome physical beauty was being graphically savaged by what appeared to be an act of God. Drought, according to those first, memorable media reports, was the villain, and if anyone was to blame, it was the overfed West.
The famous Ethiopian Famine in the Horn of Africa in the mid 1980s had three parts to it. Acts One and Two were northern Ethiopia and western Sudan. Act Three, which in this case was the denouement of the drama, was the south of Sudan.
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---Ethiopia---
Ethiopia (‘Land of Burned Faces’-Greek): A modernizing and controlled, praetorian police state, with a single Tribe or ethnic group on top, supported by the most brutal and sophisticated means of repression.
Ethiopia is a thugocracy: thugs run it, and only what they think and feel counts.
Ethiopia’s highland northerners, who, like the Jews and Arabs, are said to descend from Shem, the eldest of the sons of Noah while Ethiopia’s Oromos, linguistically at least, trace their roots back to Ham, the youngest of Noah's progeny.
Along with the Thais, the North Yemenis, and the Afghans, the Ethiopian Amharas never have been truly colonized.
According to tradition, the line of Ethiopian kings that ended with Haile Selassie was started by the Yemenite Queen of Sheba and the Hebrew King Solomon.
During the middle and late 1970s, Ethiopia was a big story around the world. Haile Selassie was overthrown, a bloody revolution ensued, the USSR moved in, the US moved out, Somalia invaded, the province of Tigre rose in revolt, and the guerrilla movement in Eritrea mushroomed overnight.
Ethiopian Famine
1984-1985: A Famine, partly caused by and used as a tool of warfare by the Amharic Ethiopian government, kills >1M peasants in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian famine was a manipulated consequence of war and ethnic strife in Ethiopia.
Outside of the main towns, most of Eritrea and Tigre were in the hands of antigovernment guerrillas: the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Tigre People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
According to a confidential report by a Western relief agency, the “dedicated and efficient” RRC was virtually starving the worst famine regions in Wollo, while at the same time pouring food into embattled, militarily vital areas of Tigre and Eritrea and stockpiling it outside Addis Ababa.
The famine was good business for the Dergue. A port fee of $12.60 was charged for each ton of donated grain. This replaced coffee as Ethiopia's biggest hard currency earner. The US paid $5M just to have its first 400,000 tons pass customs inspection.
“To extend its economic control over agriculture, the (Ethiopian) government has reimposed taxation, established a government marketing agency, fixed prices, experimented with production quotas imposed on peasant associations, and interfered increasingly with private grain trade. Not surprisingly, these measures have reduced the peasants' incentives to produce.”-Hoben on the 1984 Ethiopian Famine.
While famine ravaged the north of Ethiopia, in the central province of Shoa outside Addis Ababa, grain was going unpicked because farmers didn't want to sell at the official price.
When asked why agricultural production had declined … 25% said that drought had reduced production but that it had not caused significant declines. Some 30% reported that uncompensated, forced labor, required by government or local officials, did not allow them enough time to cultivate their fields. Most said their herds had decreased because they were forced to sell animals to pay taxes … and because local officials stole their animals.
Ethiopia Villagization
Villagization: An awkward translation from Amharic that means something strikingly similar to collectivization, as originated by the Soviets after the Bolshevik Revolution.
The famine created a pool of millions of peasants, who whatever their political leanings, now had no choice but to rely on the government for help. The government now had a legitimate excuse to relocate those it thought to be hostile, as well as the wherewithal to do it, partly because of relief supplies pouring in from the West.
Although every available statistic pointed to the failure of made-in-Moscow agricultural philosophy, the Dergue pushed ahead with Soviet-modeled policy and went one step further by beginning the resettlement of peasants from the north to the south against their will. In the eyes of the Dergue, incontrovertible data are mere obstacles to be overcome by the force of ideology.
The basic outline of the fate of millions of peasants, mostly Moslem Oromos, under villagization was not in dispute. The army would move into a group of villages, requisition the crops and livestock, and force the inhabitants to tear down their huts piece by piece. Then the peasants were made to walk, with the remnants of their homes on their backs, to a new, central location that had been selected by the party cadres. The new site almost always would lack a mosque, a school, and an adequate, nearby water source. But it would come equipped with a guard tower, a red flag, and a banner of the Workers' Party of Ethiopia.
The peasants were divided into work brigades of 25, called a guad. 20 guads equaled a tabia (center in Amharic) of 500 people. An amba (village) usually consisted of about 7K people, or 14 tabias. Each amba was commanded by 70 militia troops, who in turn were under the power of 14 armed cadres from the Workers' Party of Ethiopia.
The famine appeared only to stiffen the Dergue’s resolve. The resettlement of Tigreans and the villagization of Oromos were accelerated, and a July 1985 offensive against guerrillas in Eritrea resulted in the heaviest fighting there of the decade. Consequently, although the drought had ended by mid 1985, the structural food deficit kept growing.
The Dergue denied that the program was not voluntary or that it was motivated by any factor besides the humanitarian desire to relocate drought-stricken peasants to more fertile areas in the W and SW of the country.
“All those interviewed insisted that they had been captured by government troops and forced to resettle. …10% of all those interviewed reported that they witnessed people being killed who tried to escape.” >40% said they were beaten. >85% said they had been separated from at least one member of their immediate families; 70% were separated from all members of their immediate families.
In Oromo, Western grain deliveries played a direct part in the resettlement process. It also explains why hundreds of thousands of northern peasants, mostly Tigreans, ran away from the food that US relief workers were donating in Nov, 1984, rather than toward it, and trekked for weeks on foot to Sudan instead.
The figure of “50K-100K” dead during villagization set the aid communities in Khartoum and Addis Ababa ablaze. It was a higher death rate than that at the emergency feeding camps on the Sudanese border at the height of the famine, and most of the Ethiopians who perished in Sudan were children and old people—of which there were very few in the resettlement program.
For a long time, human rights groups were saying nothing about resettlement because a lot of democratic governments were assisting the Ethiopian Marxist regime.
The criteria the government used in the resettlement selection process had more to do with a peasant's potential for assisting guerrillas than with his or her need for fertile land.
Not only did the resettlement program destroy the livelihoods of peasants in the north, but the program destroyed those in the south, too. Many of the new sites in fact had been successfully farmed for years before the indigenous inhabitants had their land expropriated by the state to make way for the new arrivals. The rationale for this seemingly irrational act was military and political: most of the sites were located along access routes used by the Oromo Liberation Front in its war against the government.
Not only would the Tigrean rebels in the north be deprived of their base of peasant support, but so would the Oromo rebels in the south. Moving people around became another way to prosecute a war.
Forced collectivization thus was marketed successfully as famine relief.
Oromo Villagization
During the mid 1980s, the declared intent of the Ethiopian government was to move all the Oromos into village clusters, where Oromo labor could be better organized and the authorities more easily could provide the Oromos with essential services.
~3M Oromo were “villagized,” according to the Dergue.
Wollo Villagization
Thousands of other women and children were being cut off from intensive feeding programs in Wollo in order to pressure people to volunteer for resettlement.
Those taken from Wollo, while having experienced severe food shortages and absence of rainfall, cited government policies of confiscating surpluses critical to survival in a transitional zone as the underlying causes of their plight.
Tigrayan Villagization
According to interviews conducted by Khartoum-based relief officials, several hundred Tigrean women and children escaped from resettlement camps only to be taken into captivity by the SPLA. The women and girl children were raped repeatedly, while the boys were forced to become fighters.
“Of the Tigreans I interviewed who had escaped from resettlement camps, only 14%… had had no harvest in the last year and can be regarded as drought victims or famine victims. Of the rest, many had had an average harvest prior to being resettled, and some even had had a good harvest.”-Niggli.
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---Tigray---
Ethiopia, as an imperial concept, grew up out of Tigre. Axum, in the northwest of the province, was the legendary birthplace of Ethiopia's first emperor, Menelik I, son of the Hebrew king Solomon and the queen of Sheba. Only a century ago, a Tigrean emperor, Yohannes IV, ruled all of Ethiopia from Makelle before Addis Ababa was built by the Amharas. Now it was the same old story: the Amharas—who prevailed in the Dergue—were fighting the Tigreans, who resented the domination.
Marxist pretensions notwithstanding, the TPLF land reform program, the guerrillas' emphasis on women's rights, the creation of a rural health service, the building of schools to augment a literacy campaign, and other infrastructure improvements undertaken by the TPLF in the countryside are exactly the kinds of things that USAID encourages every government in Africa to do.
Tigray’s population of 4M is equally split between the Tigrinya-speaking Christians of the highlands and the Tigre-speaking Moslems of the coast and western plains. (Tigrinya and Tigre are closely related Semitic languages, but are almost mutually unintelligible. The language of Tigre should not be confused with the province of Tigre, where Tigrinya is spoken.)
Tigrayan Famine
For many, if not most, of Tigre's 5M inhabitants, the food that the international community was donating in late 1984 and early 1985 may as well not have been given because it was delivered to the wrong address—that of the Ethiopian government, which was not so much governing Tigre as fighting a war with it.
Before and during the famine, the Dergue burned crops, razed markets, and poisoned drinking wells in the midst of a drought in order to “deny the enemy valuable resources and cover.”
Having escaped to Sudan, the Tigreans entered a new kind of hell; >1M of Sudan’s 22M people were refugees, and the Khartoum government—destitute from civil war, drought, and its own corruption and mismanagement—was unable to offer the Tigreans anything except the assurance that they wouldn't be sent back across the border to Ethiopia. The refugees thus were dependent upon the mercy of international organizations, mainly the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
More than 90% of Tigray are peasant farmers, who have overworked the soil merely to eke out a living from it. The result has been five famines in the past 30y alone.
Tigrayan- Ethiopian Civil War
The TPLF, with an estimated 15,000K soldiers and no heavy equipment, was waging a classic insurgency campaign
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---Eritrea---
Eritrea (Erythra Thalassa- ‘Red Sea’; Greek): A nation of ~3.5M inhabitants (early 2000’s), almost half of whom are illiterate; a place where women run shops, restaurants, and hotels, where handicapped people have shiny new crutches and wheelchairs, and where, unlike in so many Third World countries, people drive slowly and attend driving school, where scrap metal junkyards are restricted to the urban outskirts, where receipts are given for every transaction, and where there are no electricity blackouts because of sloppy maintenance and badly managed energy resources. Foreign diplomats in Asmara praise the country's lack of corruption coupled with its good implementation of aid projects. While rural health clinics in much of Africa have empty shelves and missing, unaccounted-for supplies, in Eritrea clinic managers pull out a ledger and document where the medicine went.
Eritrea boasts deep-water port facilities at Massawa and Assab, strategically placed at the mouth of the Red Sea.
With fighting terrorism a permanent strategic priority of the US, a stable and disciplined Eritrea makes it the perfect base for projecting American power and helping Israel in an increasingly unstable region. That, in turn, will foster the kind of Singaporean-type development Eritrea appears suited for.
An immense fish farm near the port of Massawa testifies to Eritrea's ability to effectively utilize foreign aid and know-how. The 600 hA complex channels salt water from the Red Sea, purifies it, then uses it to raise shrimp in scores of circular cement tanks. The high-nutrient excess of that process is for breeding tilapia, normally a freshwater fish. The remaining waste water is pumped into asparagus and mangrove fields and artificially created wetlands.
Villages are commonly owned, and governed through councils, or baitos, of elders.
Rather than concentrate everything in Asmara, the Italians developed Massawa and other towns so as to prevent the overcentralization that now plagues other Third World countries. To stem urban migration into Asmara and thus preserve this legacy, the Eritrean government has tried to improve life in rural areas: a reason why Asmara has no shantytowns surrounding it breeding political extremism.
Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF): Eritrea National defense force; known in Tigrinya as the Hizbawi Ginbar Harnet Etra.
In Eritrea, women are in frontline combat units, drive tanks and aim artillery, and perform tasks such as repairing automobile motors (30% of the wounded in Eritrea’s war with Ethiopia reportedly were women).
Eritrean Famine
While everywhere else in famine-stricken Africa the scientific know-how and initiative are provided by US and European technicians, in Eritrea it is different: undernourished children are being fed with a dietary supplement invented in 1984 by Eritrean nutritionist, Dr. Azieb Fessahaye, consisting of 55% wheat or durra, 20% finely ground chick peas, 10% sugar, 10% milk powder, and 5% egg powder.
Eritrean-Ethiopian Civil War
Monument in downtown Asmara—not of an individual, or even of a generic guerrilla fighter, but of a giant pair of sandals, shedas, in the native Tigrinya language. The rubber sandals, which the Eritreans produced themselves from recycled tire rubber, were worn by every Eritrean fighter: the ultimate necessity in a stony desert war zone.
Following the defeat of fascist Italy in World War II and the dissolution of its East African empire, the new United Nations voted to incorporate Eritrea into Ethiopia. The Eritreans, unhappy with this decision, revolted finally in 1961. For thirteen years Eritrean guerrillas fought an Ethiopia backed by the United States. In 1974, when Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was over-thrown—leading to a Marxist regime headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam—Eritrean guerrilla activity did not cease, and from then on the Eritreans fought an Ethiopia backed this time by the Soviet Union.
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---Somalia---
Somalia, a steamy, barely populated hellhole, never could be anything but a strategic bit of real estate suitable for a naval base or a landing strip.
During the 1978-1979 Somalian Invasion of Ethiopia, the US Carter administration took the easy way out: preaching the Western version of morality from the sidelines while the Soviets, by trial and error, were muscling their way toward control over tens of millions of people. Carter's strategy emphasized human rights and diplomacy. The Kremlin interpreted this as just plain weakness. The USSR moved >$1B in arms to take over a country while the US did nothing except stand on ceremony.
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---Sudan---
Khartoum: Sudan’s capital founded in 1821 and later designed by the British in the shape of a Union Jack.
Sudanese Famine
By 1987, Darfur peasants were in an even more pathetic position vis-à-vis their own government than they were at the start of the famine in late 1984. From then on, the most humane thing the US could do for Sudan was to work with the Egyptians to replace the democratically elected regime of incompetent, insensitive landowners with a more efficient group of politically moderate soldiers, who, because they would be more dependent on US support, might be forced to help peasants in a manner that Western donors recommended.
The government-held towns of Juba, the capital of Equatoria Province, Malakal, the capital of Upper Nile Province, and Wau, the capital of Bahr el Ghazal, were to be reached by flights from Khartoum.
Sudanese Civil War
Particular targets of the SAF were villages occupied by Garang's Dinka tribe, which accounted for 40% of S. Sudan's population.
Dinka villages were burned to the ground by SAF and their allies. Khartoum had fallen back on the British colonial method of arming local tribe’s hostile to the Dinka, specifically the Messariya, Baggara, Murle, and Acholi.
Messariya: A tribe of Southern Sudan of Arab herders and nomads known for its military prowess and armed by Sudan during the Sudanese Civil War to fight SPLA leader Garang’s Dinka tribe.
Baggara: A tribe of Southern Sudan of Arab herders and nomads known for its military prowess and armed by Sudan during the Sudanese Civil War to fight SPLA leader Garang’s Dinka tribe.
The Ethiopian air force had been dropping weapons and other supplies behind SPLA lines inside Sudan.
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---S. Sudan---
Sudd: The world's most formidable swamp located in S. Sudan.
In the 19c, Mohammed Ali and later Egyptian khedives gradually annexed S. Sudan to their Sudan holdings in a crazed attempt to control the headwaters of the Nile and expand their empire. The British, employing their usual divide-and-rule tactics—but also motivated by an instinctive realization that for the non-Moslem, African south to “work” it would have to be separated from the Arab north—did everything in their power to keep the south free of northern influence.
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Foreign Aid
Aid is simply not effective in the face of regimes that do not have to ensure the well-being of their subjects in order to stay in power.
Experience demonstrates that relief aid to a politically powerless sector of a Third World population cannot compete in terms of influence with military and other kinds of assistance to the politically powerful.
Calling certain kinds of humanitarian assistance “strategic” gives rise to confusion. “Strategic” connotes a sinister intent because the word alludes to military, even nuclear, conflict. “Strategic” also implies a certain willingness to accept in the abstract that places like Ethiopia or Sudan, to say nothing of places like Iran, will be required for the defense of the Western world, an abstraction that many in the US do not accept. It needs to be emphasized that what is “strategic” is also “humanitarian” and is often the most effective form of long-range humanitarian assistance.
Carter’s human rights policy, in which abstract moral precepts become a barrier to the kind of action necessary to save a population from being swallowed whole by the shadow of totalitarianism. Much of what has transpired in the past decade in the Horn of Africa can be traced to that folly of good intentions.
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Misc Quotes
“Idealism shorn of any element of realism is immoral.”
“Realism, to be wholly realistic, requires a dose of idealism and optimism or else policy becomes immobilized.”
“If you don't have an issue that you can fully justify and explain in ten or fifteen seconds before a TV camera, then you don't have an issue.-US DoS Rep.
“In every place where Soviet communism has been instituted, the cost in human suffering has been immense, with famine often the result—whether it be in the Ukraine, Cambodia, or N. Ethiopia.”
“Democracy may be wonderful in the abstract, but for sprawling, largely illiterate countries fractured by tribal divisions it means stagnation, chaos, and death.”
“What value can democracy possibly have in a culture where civic responsibility does not extend beyond the bounds of tribe and kinship?”
“The argument that the West has an advantage in the Third World because it presents a more viable model for economic development is nonsense because the Eastern bloc provides a more viable model for political control, which is what ruling elites are interested in.”
“Don't morally equate the rights of Falun Gong with those of hundreds of millions of Chinese who have seen their lives dramatically improve.”
“Progress, as so often happens, is inverted by ideology.”
“It is largely because peasants have no power that famines occur in the first place.”
“The urban elites who run African nations know that peasants do not start coups. Coups are started by disgruntled city dwellers. One-way African politicians keep city dwellers satisfied is by providing them with cheap bread obtained from peasant farmers who are forced to sell their grain at artificially low prices.”
“To extend its economic control over agriculture, the (Ethiopian) government has reimposed taxation, established a government marketing agency, fixed prices, experimented with production quotas imposed on peasant associations, and interfered increasingly with private grain trade. Not surprisingly, these measures have reduced the peasants' incentives to produce.”-Hoben on the 1984 Ethiopian Famine.
“In a country where millions were starving, there was no sign of anyone begging or hustling to survive. I began to wonder. The price of coming into town must be higher than the price of staying away. If the price of staying away in the barren, dying parts of the country is near-certain death, the price of coming into the city must be even more terrible, even more certain.”-An Article in the New Rep by Chris Matthews (21 Jan, 1985).
“Paper will put up with anything that is written on it.”-Stalin.
“But we have not yet institutionalized social discipline, so that the possibility of chaos is still here. Remember, we have nine language groups and two religions. No one in Africa has succeeded in copying a Western political system, which took the West hundreds of years to develop. Throughout Africa you have either political or criminal violence. Therefore, we will have to manage the creation of political parties, so that they don't become means of religious and ethnic division like in the Ivory Coast or Nigeria.”
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”-Edmund Burke.
“The people of Akron, Ohio, care more about the people of Darfur than do the people in Khartoum.”-US W. Diplomat.
“US policy was based on and constricted by moral precepts that Soviet and African rulers only preached.”
“In the struggle against totalitarianism, bread alone is never enough.”
“Regardless of a country's size and place on the map, in the final analysis it can be judged only by the talent of the people who live in it.”
“Guilty of a false comparison, but of a particularly U.S., and even more particularly liberal, tendency of ascribing the lessons learned from one's own experience to that of another nation.”
“Half measures can never guarantee anything.”
“As the Israelis have demonstrated, bravery derives from self-assurance, from the knowledge that whatever the risks, in the event of danger your superiors will go to the limit to save you.”
“Being an Amhara is … belonging to a superior category of human beings.”-Selassie?
“A guerrilla army swims in the sea of the people.”-Mao Zedong.
“The only thing worse than an African government that says it is going to hold elections and doesn't is one that says it is going to hold elections and actually does!”-Unk Diplomat.
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People
Sisyphus (6c BCE?): The mythical king of Corinth, laboring in the hot African sun rolling a rock up the hill, knowing in advance that it was going to roll back on him.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945): Italian dictator and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party (PNF). He was PM of Italy from the march on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 1943, as well as “Duce” of Italian fascism from the establishment of the Italian Fasces of Combat in 1919 until his summary execution in 1945 by Italian partisans. Mussolini’s fascist Italian army had invaded the primitive land of Ethiopia with tanks and poison gas.
Haile Selassie (1892-1975): Born Täfäri Mäkonnän, was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930-1974. He rose to power as Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia for Empress Zewditu from 1916. Selassie is widely considered a defining figure in modern Ethiopian history, and the key figure of Rastafari, a Jamaican religious movement that emerged shortly after he became emperor. He was a member of the Solomonic dynasty, which claims to trace lineage to Emperor Menelik I, believed to be the son of Hebrew King Solomon and Makeda, the Yemeni Queen of Sheba.
The truth about Haile Selassie is that, like the little, medal-bedecked man on the television screen, he really was an emperor, and like any absolute monarch, he required a large dose of cruelty to keep his throne and the empire that went with it.
Orde Wingate (1903-1944): A Senior British Military Officer during WWII active in the Sudan and Burma theaters of WWII.
Sadiq al-Mahdi (1935-2020): Sudanese political and religious figure who was PM of Sudan from 1966-1967 and again from 1986-1989. HE was head of the National Umma Party and Imam of the Ansar, a Sufi Order, that pledges allegiance to Muhammad Ahmad (1844-1885), who claimed to be the Mahdi, the messianic savior of Islam.
Sadiq certainly seemed to have an aura about him, and he sometimes spoke with poetic elegance: “democracy in Sudan is a lone bird surrounded by vultures interested in its flesh.”
He was very much the quintessential Arab politician—a man who used flowery speech to maneuver around difficult and complex issues without confronting them head-on.
Like every Arab ruler, Sadiq never seemed to doubt the primacy of his own ethnic and religious group over others in the nation.
Sadiq dealt with Gaddafi the same way he did with all the Western diplomats, financial experts, and relief officials who came into his midst: he whispered sweet things in Gaddafi's ears and did nothing.
Mengistu (1937- Present): Ethiopian politician and former army officer who was the head of state of Ethiopia from 1977-1991 and General Secretary of the Worker’s Party of Ethiopia from 1984-1991. He was the chairman of the Dergue, the socialist military junta that governed Ethiopia, from 1977-1987, and the President of the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) from 1987-1991.
Mengistu was of the most lethal class of dictator: the kind not distracted by greed.
John Garang (1945-2005): Sudanese politician and revolutionary leader. From 1983-2005, Garang led the SPLA after the 2nd Sudanese Civil War, the comprehensive peace agreement of 2005 was signed, and he briefly served as First VP of Sudan for 3 weeks until his death in a helicopter crash. Garang was a major influence on the movement that led to the foundation of S. Sudan.
Isaias Afewerki (1946- Present): Eritrean President; the veritable founder of Eritrea who led a guerrilla movement that wrested independence from Ethiopia in 1991 after a 30y low-intensity war.
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Resources
Cultural Survival: https://www.culturalsurvival.org/; Reports on endangered ethnic groups in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, criticizing right-wing and left-wing governments alike, judging a countries human rights record and need for development assistance. Based in Cambridge and formed in 1972 by a group of Harvard University social scientists.
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Terminology
Arabia Felix (‘Fortuante Arabia’): The Roman name for Yemen on account of its wealth.
Bab al Mandeb: ‘The Gate of Lament’; the narrow strait separating Arabia from Coastal East Africa.
Belg: Light spring rains (Amharic).
Chloroquine: Malaria medication; composed of four raw materials- talc, starch, cab-o-sil, and Mg- sterrate.
Falashas (‘Strangers’): Ethiopian jews.
Khawaja: White Foreigner (Sudanese Arabic).
Reagan Doctrine: POTUS Reagan’s program of arming third world anticommunist insurgencies.
RRC: Formed by the Dergue in the mid-1970s as a separate, governmental authority for dealing with food shortages and related matters.
Qat: A narcotic leaf whose affect is similar to marijuana.
Teff: Ethiopia's staple grain.
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Chronology
1998-2000: Eritrean–Ethiopian Civil War; with tanks and fighter jets engaged in desert combat, ~19K Eritreans and ~60K Ethiopians are killed. The War ends thanks to a US brokered ceasefire.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1996: Eritrea drafts a constitution, although it’s never implemented.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1991: Eritrean and Tigrayan guerillas, fighting on separate fronts, defeat Mengistu, with Eritrean tanks rolling triumphantly into the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. In the minds of the Eritreans, they fought and won a three-decade struggle against a state 10x as populous, with no help from either of the superpowers or the rest of the outside world.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Spring, 1987: Chadian forces, assisted by France, eject Gaddafi from the N. of Chad.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
22 Feb, 1987: Ethiopia formally becomes a Marxist state as the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Four Marxist ideologues—Alemu Abebe, Shewandagan Belete, Shimelis Mazengia, and Fassika Sidelel—nicknamed the Gang of Four, emerge as Mengistu's top advisers.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Oct, 1986: A short burst of TV coverage accompanying the non-lift-off of Operation Rainbow constitutes the very last mini-event of the great 1980s famine in NE Africa.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Mid- 1986: A 10K barrel per day refinery opens in N. Yemen.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
13-24 Jan, 1986: ‘The events of 86’; a failed coup in S. Yemen develops into an 11-day Civil War as a result of ideological differences and later, tribal tensions, between Abdul Fattah Ismail’s ruling Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) and Ali Nasir Muhammad’s PDRY party. As a result of the 11-day war, thousands die and Muhammad’s PDRY faction is defeated and exiled to N. Yemen (Wiki).
Apr, 1986: Sudanese Democratic elections; Umma (Nation) Party leader Sadiq al Mahdi, grandson of the fabled Mahdi, whose Ansar warriors had ejected the British from Sudan in 1885, is elected Sudanese PM.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
0000-0300, 8 Feb, 1986: The TPLF storms the prison at Mekelle, freeing 1800 prisoners. The break was preceded by two diversionary attacks, one on the Mekelle airfield and the other on a main road leading out of town, drawing off 2x BNs of ENDF.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1985-1986: ~5M people are forcibly uprooted through Ethiopian villagization, with another 27M scheduled for the same fate by the mid 1990s.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Jan, 1986: 50K Moslem Oromo’s escape villagization, fleeing across the border into NW Somalia, where they were held temporarily in a squalid refugee camp, located a few miles from the Ethiopian frontier, called Tug Wajale B.
Dec, 1985: MSF publishes a report titled “Mass Deportation in Ethiopia,” alleging that with a death rate of 20%, ~300K people were likely to die in Ethiopian resettlement programs, of which ~100K already had died. The report noted that “one of the most massive violations of human rights” was “being carried out with funds and gifts from international aid.” MSF is expelled from Ethiopia.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1985: Ethiopia’s Dergue institutes Villagization (collectivization), aiming to systematize and regulate village life and rural agriculture (Wiki).
Aug, 1985: A Libyan convoy storms into El Fasher, Sudan, where it remains for ~1y.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
6 Apr, 1985: Sudan Military Coup; a group of Sudanese military officers led Field Marshall Abdel Rahman Swar al-Dahab overthrows Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiry. A transitional military council is established, and the Dem. Rep. of Sudan is restored as the Rep. of Sudan; Nimeiry goes into exile in Egypt (Wiki).
Following the coup, everyone assumed that the SPLA would call a truce because the overthrow of Nimeiri was what its leader, John Garang, had been demanding. But Garang, a US- educated Dinka tribesman, obviously was not going to be satisfied with one group of northern Arabs replacing another in the presidential palace in Khartoum. Garang, whose African southerners for years had been supported by Gaddafi against the pro- US Nimeiri, called the new regime “the hyena with new clothes” and went on fighting. The civil war, rather than dying down, dramatically intensified. Sudan’s military council responded by marching a 4K man unit of SAF N. from Juba, the capital of Equatoria Province, to capture the SPLA stronghold of Bor. The operation was a “total, utter failure.”-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Jul, 1984: Oil is discovered in N. Yemen by the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1984-1985: The Great Ethiopian Famine, partly caused by and used as a tool of warfare by the Amharic Ethiopian government, kills >1M peasants.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Summer, 1985: Donated dried milk, which had been stockpiling since the spring due to lack of trucks, is finally transported from Port Sudan to Ethiopia. However, by the time the trucks begin to arrive, the first substantial rains in several years made the unpaved roads into Eritrea and Tigre impassable until late September. Then the Sudanese government got nervous about the entire project because it was bound to anger the Ethiopians at a time when Sudan was trying to get Mengistu to reduce his support for the African southerners fighting a secessionist war against Moslem Arab Khartoum.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Late Oct, 1984: US TV Media begins reporting on the Ethiopian Famine.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Sep, 1984: The Ethiopian Dergue spends ~$200M on celebrations marking the 10th anniversary of the Ethiopian revolution. In the background, hundreds of thousands begin to starve to death in the northern provinces of Gondar, Wollo, Tigre, and Eritrea.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.Sep, 1983: ‘The September Laws’; Islamic Sharia Law is instituted in Sudan. Banks could no longer charge interest and anyone convicted of stealing the equivalent of $50 could have his right hand amputated at the wrist. Even non-Moslem foreigners could be whipped in public for being in possession of alcohol. Nimeiri sought to apply the Sharia statutes in the non-Moslem south as well as in the north. This and his inexplicable decision to abrogate the 1972 autonomy agreement with the non-Moslem south helps ignite a renewal of the civil war in 1984.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1983-2005: The Second Sudanese Civil War; largely a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972) (Wiki), the SPLA in S. Sudan led by John Garang fight a guerilla war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) following the institution of Sharia Law across Christian Southern Sudan.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
15 Aug, 1986: The SPLA bans all flights over S. Sudan, claiming that the government was using the Red Cross as a cover to resupply its army. To press the point, on the next day, the rebels shot down a Sudan Airways plane after takeoff from Malakal, about 425 miles south of Khartoum, using a Soviet SAM-7. All 60 civilian passengers on board are killed. The Khartoum authorities ground all flights into the region. Now no food could get in by air either.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1 Jun, 1986: 12 Kenyan truck drivers transporting food into S Sudan from the Ugandan border town of Nimule are ambushed, presumably by SPLA rebels. The drivers are bound by ropes to their steering wheels, and then grenades are lobbed at the trucks. This puts a virtual halt to the WFP’s overland relief operation. Only 600 of the 90,000 tons is delivered.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.1980: The US boycotts the Moscow Olympics.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Sep, 1983: ‘The September Laws’; Islamic Sharia Law is instituted in Sudan. Banks could no longer charge interest and anyone convicted of stealing the equivalent of $50 could have his right hand amputated at the wrist. Even non-Moslem foreigners could be whipped in public for being in possession of alcohol. Nimeiri sought to apply the Sharia statutes in the non-Moslem south as well as in the north. This and his inexplicable decision to abrogate the 1972 autonomy agreement with the non-Moslem south helps ignite a renewal of the civil war in 1984.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1979: N. Yemen leader Col. Ali Abdullah Salleh turns down a $300M aid package from Saudi Arabia in favor of a USSR Modernization program comprised of $1B in arms to support a 35K man N. Yemeni military.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1978: Sudanese President Nimeiri grants amnesty to all his political enemies, allowing them to return home from exile abroad.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1977-1978: The Somalia- Ethiopia War; Somali forces are repulsed from the Ogaden after the USSR pulls support to Somalia and provides it to Ethiopia during the conflict.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
9 Mar, 1978: Ethiopian forces retake Jigjiga. Somali forces retreat across the border.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Mid Feb, 1978: Ethiopia, fortified by Cuban armor, counterattacks, outflanking Somali forces in the Ogaden.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Nov, 1977- Mar, 1978: The USSR delivers >$1B worth of arms to Ethiopia.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
13 Nov, 1977: Somalia expels their Soviet advisers and breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba. The Soviets began airlifting thousands of Cuban troops to Ethiopia.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Aug, 1977: While Somali troops are on the verge of overrunning Jigjiga, 80km inside Ethiopia; the US rescinds arms support so long as Somali troops were illegally occupying Ethiopian territory. The USSR brings in Cuban and South Yemeni troops to slow the Somali advance while at the same time resuming arms supplies to Somalia and inviting Somalia General Siad to Moscow. The Moscow meeting is a failure. The Somali leader, under pressure from his own conquering army and WSLF guerrillas, could not simply withdraw to accommodate Soviet strategy in Ethiopia.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Jun, 1977: Somali forces invade Ethiopia’s Ogaden to support WSLF guerrillas. Despite clandestine Israeli assistance and new Soviet equipment, the Dergue, occupied with fighting in Tigre and Eritrea, was not strong enough to stop the Somali advance.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Apr, 1977: The Declaration of the Foundation for Relationships and Cooperation is signed in Moscow by Ethiopian President Mengistu, laying the groundwork for a ~$385M Soviet arms transfers, the largest ever in the Third World. Within days, Cuban soldiers are sent to Ethiopia directly from Somalia, and tanks and APCs began arriving from S. Yemen.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
3 Feb, 1977: Mengistu Haile Mariam becomes chairman of the Dergue (Wiki).
2 Feb, 1977: Ethiopian Dergue leader Mengistu has General Banti and his colleagues murdered inside the palace. The Dergue, having destroyed the EPRP, turns against MEISON.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Early, 1977: POTUS Carter cuts off all arms deliveries to Ethiopia, removing all further restraints from Mengistu and the Eastern bloc.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Dec, 1976: The USSR offers $385M in military aid to the Ethiopian Dergue while trying to reassure the Somalis at the same time.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
23 Dec, 1976- 22 Mar, 1978: Ethiopia’s Red Terror (Qey Shibir); an attempt to consolidate Dergue rule in Ethiopia and Eritrea results in the deaths of ~30K. Of the 120 members of the original Dergue, only a small fraction remained alive.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
May, 1977: Height of Ethiopia’s Red Terror; using newly provided Soviet arms, soldiers brought into Addis Ababa by convoy kill hundreds of demonstrating students, including children.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Early, 1976: The Dergue’s MEISON cadres begin conducting house to house searches, killing anyone suspected of belonging to the EPRP.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1975: Sudan failed coup; Sadiq al Mahdi leads a failed coup attempt against Sudanese leader Nimeiri. Al Mahdi’s 98 Libyan backed mercenaries are executed and al Mahdi is later pardoned.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1975: Morocco annexes the Spanish Sahara.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
27 Aug, 1975: Death of Halie Selassie, presumed to have been suffocated to death by Mengistu using a pillow.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Feb, 1975: The TPLF declares war on the Ethiopian Dergue.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Dec, 1974: Ethiopian students are dispatched to the countryside, ostensibly to revolutionize the masses. The relocation of the students, many of whom were members of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary party (EPRP), allows the Dergue to consolidate its power in the cities by forming its own left-wing party, the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement (‘MEISON’- Amharic). The Dergue then sets MEISON against the EPRP.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Nov, 1974: Dergue leader Mengistu eliminates his chief rival, General Aman Michael Andom, by having him gunned down in the street after a dispute about the conduct of the war in Eritrea.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
12 Sep, 1974: Deposition of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie; driven away from his palace in the back seat of a green VW and taken to the basement of ENDF’s 4th DIV HQ.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Jun, 1974: The Dergue holds its founding meeting; Mengistu is chosen as one of its leaders. The Dergue works behind the scenes to unite the faction-ridden armed forces.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Early 1974: Ethiopia’s “Creeping Coup”; taxi drivers in Addis Ababa, protesting a rise in gasoline prices, strike. A general strike of all workers follows in March. At the same time, an army mutiny, sparked by a government defeat in Eritrea, takes place. In Negelle, S. Ethiopia, junior officers arrest their superiors, forcing the generals to eat the same miserable food and dirty water as did the enlisted men. Out of this and other barracks' rebellions came the Dergue (‘committee’- Amharic), a coordinating body of educated junior officers, with representatives from units throughout the country.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1973- 1974: A famine in Tigre and Wollo kills ~200K peasants. This famine took place in the north; an area that the Amhara emperor had a strategic interest in keeping underdeveloped, on account of Amhara historical conflicts with the Eritreans and Tigreans. A feudal landowning system, an absence of investment, crippling taxation, and drought are listed as causes of the famine.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1972-1973: A famine in Ethiopia kills ~200K in Tigray and Wollo.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Early 1970s: Formation of the Tigre Liberation Front (TLF) by Ras Mangasha Seyum, a descendant of Emperor Yohannes IV, to oppose the Dergue in Addis Ababa. As the Ethiopian revolution progresses, the TLF itself becomes radicalized, adopts a Marxist program, and changes its name to the Tigre People's Liberation Front (TPLF).-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
May, 1969: Sudan Military Coup; Jaafar Nimeiri takes power over Sudan in a coup, ushering in a period of relative stability after five changes of government and two general elections in 5y.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1967: A Yemeni radical guerrilla movement ousts the British from S. Yemen and unify what had been no more than an assemblage of separate little protectorate states rimming Aden.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1962: The US offers Somalia ~$10M in security assistance. The Somalis decline in favor of a $32M offer from the USSR, who sought to make Ethiopia and Somalia part of a larger alliance that would include Marxist South Yemen and hopefully, someday, North Yemen and Djibouti as well, thus effectively choking off the West at its Red Sea oil windpipe.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1961-1987?: The First Ethiopian-Eritrean civil war is fought between the Ethiopian Amharic government and the Eritrean guerilla groups, the ELF and, later, the EPLF.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1987: The EPLF launches sporadic attacks on famine relief convoys in heavily contested areas of Eritrea.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Nov, 1985: The Dergue assaults Nafka with ~25K troops and >$1B in Soviet weaponry, resulting in ~14K ENDF casualties.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Aug-Sep, 1985: The ENDF reoccupy Barentu, capturing Tessenei, between Barentu and the Sudanese border. Having chopped off the EPLF's W. territorial flank, the Dergue strikes E, rolling up the Red Sea coast.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Jul-Aug, 1985: The EPLF capture the strategic hilltop settlement of Barentu in W. Eritrea, a major weapons store for the Dergue. During the next 7w, the EPLF take more equipment back to its base area than had been captured in years, including 15x T-55 tanks and dozens of trucks and artillery pieces. The Dergue moves ~30K troops into the area as part of a redeployment of 2x DVs from the Ogaden and make ~13 attempts to retake the town. The ENDF suffers ~2K casualties. The Dergue resorts to bombing from the air, forcing the EPLF to withdraw on 25 Aug.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Dec, 1984: EPLF and TPLF armies deliver 300K starving Eritrean/Tigrayan refugees to the Sudanese Border, finally making the international community aware of the famine's other half.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Early, 1984: The EPLF capture the town of Tessenei on Eritrea's W. border with Sudan, overrunning all government positions eastward up to the Red Sea, and gaining the port of Mersa Teklai.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1983: The ENDF launch a second invasion of Eritrea, which ends in disaster. Much of the fighting occurs during and after the harvest season; the ENDF employ scorched-earth tactics, seizing grain, burning grain stores and fodder supplies, removing oil presses and mills, restricting the seasonal migration of nomads, which leads to the loss of livestock, and destroying entire villages.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Feb, 1982: Ethiopian Operation Red Star; a massive USSR assistance program enables the ENDF to launch its largest offensive ever against the EPLF. 15x Ethiopian divisions with ~100K troops and Soviet Mi-24 HIND helicopter gunships deploy into Eritrea. The offensive is a total failure. The EPLF holds all its major positions, and as many as 40K Ethiopian soldiers- close to half the invasion force- are killed or wounded. Thousands are taken prisoner, and large quantities of weapons are captured.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1980-1981: The ENDF conduct a failed offensive against the TPLF. The ENDF use aerial bombardments with cluster bombs, incendiary bombs and napalm that leaves dry fields ablaze. Further plots are burned by government forces wishing to … put a squeeze on civilian food supplies.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1980: ELF-EPLF Civil War; the EPLF launch an offensive against the ELF in Barka region, W. Eritrea, defeating the ELF. Its remaining troops are driven over the border into Sudan, where they are disarmed.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1979: The EPLF deliberately gives up territory in S. Eritrea, including the town of Keren near Asmara, to consolidate a base in the N. Sahel district around Nafka. ELF troops begin deserting to the EPLF.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Late 1978- 1979: War sweeps across Eritrea; thousands of civilians are killed, crops are burned, and tens of thousands are forced across the Sudanese border into refugee camps. Nerve gas and AP mines disguised as children's toys are reportedly used.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
End, 1977: ~85% of Eritrea is in ELF/EPFL hands while Somalia advances far into the Ogaden. Amid these offensives, the incoming POTUS Carter Admin suspends all military aid to the Dergue because of its poor human rights record. Mengistu seeks support from Moscow and the USSR pulls support from Somalia and Eritrea and begins heavily arming Ethiopia while Cuba provides advisers, who had previously been assisting the Eritreans. Both Eritrean and Somali offensives grind to a halt.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Mid 1977: The ELF and EPLF, each with ~16K soldiers, launch a counterattack on the ENDF. The EPLF capture Nafka and the Dergue is driven out of every main town except Asmara, which is put under siege. At the same time, the Somalian Army invades the Ogaden, forcing the Dergue to fight on two fronts.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
May, 1976: Ethiopia’s Dergue conscripts 40K Christian peasants for an assault on Eritrean guerrilla positions. The peasants are told they would be fighting “a holy crusade against the Arab infidels.” But the new army is cut down by the guerrillas before it had the chance to attack. The ELF/EPLF launch a counter-offensive in response.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
23 Nov, 1974: Ethiopian Dergue President Mengistu orders the death of General Aman Michael Andom, an “Ethiopianized” Eritrean who had been negotiating with the Eritrean guerrillas on the Dergue's behalf because he was believed to be close to achieving a historic peace settlement. The effects of Andom's death is quick and devastating; whole units of locally recruited government police in Eritrea desert to the guerrillas and students return to their villages to join the ELF and the EPLF.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1972-1975: A Civil War is fought between the ELF and the EPLF breaks out, motivated by religious animosities; waged in the shadows of the greater Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict, ~6K men are killed before the ELF-EPLF agree to a stalemate.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1970: Formation of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) with forces commanded by Christian Isaias Afewerki while foreign relations were led by ELF Moslem renegade Osman Salih Sabbe, whose job it was to keep money flowing in from Arab capitals. The EPLF emerged, in part, as a nonsectarian alternative to the Moslem-dominated ELF.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1962: Despite an ongoing Ethiopian-Eritrean Civil War; Eritrea is formally annexed to Ethiopia as its 14th province.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Sep, 1961: The Ethiopian-Eritrean War begins after the government of Haile Selassie abrogates a UN sponsored autonomy agreement with Eritrea.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
Selassie never respected the UN autonomy agreement. The territory's independent institutions gradually were subverted, political parties banned, and Tigrinya, the official language of Eritrea, was suppressed and replaced by Amharic. In 1961, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) is formed, which begins mounting hit-and-run attacks using antiquated Italian weapons.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
14 Dec, 1960: Failed Ethiopian Coup; the council of the revolution consisting of 4 conspirators led by brothers Germame Neway and BGEN Mengistu Neway, commander of the Kebur Zabagna (‘Imperial bodyguard’), lead a failed attempt to overthrow Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, while he was on a state visit to Brazil. Although the Neway brothers take control of much of Addis, popular support stiffens against them and ~300 are killed. Germame commits suicide and Mengistu is later hanged (Wiki).
1959: A famine in Ethiopia kills ~90K in Tigray.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1953: The US begins construction of the Kagnew communications and intel complex outside Asmara and on a naval facility at Massawa.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1952: A UN mandates makes Eritrea a semiautonomous territory under the sovereignty of Ethiopia and Haile Selassie.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1941: British forces defeat Italian forces on battlefields NW of Asmara, expelling Italy from Ethiopia and Eritrea. The British occupy Eritrea until Sep, 1952.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1936-1941: Italian forces occupy Addis Ababa.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1934: The official division of Yemen; the British in Aden are forced to recognize the imam’s sovereignty north of a line that is the present-day boundary between North and South Yemen.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1921: The nascent Bolshevik regime in the USSR is shaken by a great famine that its own ruthless policy of crop requisition had caused.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
May, 1916: An Anglo-Egyptian force of >2K troops backed by airplanes defeats the Fur tribespeople of Sultan Al Dinar. Darfur thus becomes the westernmost province of British-controlled Sudan, rather than the easternmost province of Chad. Afterward, the British give the local tribal chief complete control of internal affairs.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1 Mar, 1896: The Battle of Adowa; Emperor Menelik leads a 100K man army N through Tigre as far as Adowa, where he defeats an Italian force, heavily supported by Eritrean soldiers, that is poised to expand Italy's colonial claim beyond Eritrea. 1,000 Eritreans are captured by Menelik, who orders their right hands and left feet cut off. This marks the first time that an African army has ever defeated a European army.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1889: Construction of Addis Ababa (‘New Flower’- Amharic), conceived as an Amhara fortress, begins under Emperor Menelik II. As the first Amhara emperor, Menelik wanted to shift the focal point of the empire from Tigre to the highlands of Shoa on the plain besides Mount Entoto. But at an altitude of 8,000 feet, the scarcity of wood presents a problem until 1900 when the fast-growing eucalyptus tree is imported from Australia.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1889: The Treaty of Ucciali is signed by Ethiopian Emperor Menelik (the Amhara King), under which he recognizes Italian rule over Eritrea. The treaty demarcates the regional boundaries as they exist today.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1889: Rise of Menelik, the Amhara Negus of Shoa, the most dominant of the warlords, as Emperor Menelik II, succeeding the Tigrean Yohannes IV, who had died in battle with the Sudanese.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1885: Mahdi’s Ansar Warriors eject the British from Sudan, killing British General Charles Gordon in the process.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1885: Italian forces, with British support, occupy Massawa, and begin an invasion of the Eritrean/Ethiopian highlands.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1875: Egyptian forces, with British support, take control of Coastal East Africa, displacing the Turks. Egypt is unsuccessful at penetrating the Eritrean interior due to stiff local resistance. The British turn to Italy in the hopes of using their imperial ambitions to conquer coastal East Africa in order to keep the French out.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1869: The Suez Canal opens.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1839: The British first occupy Aden and establish a coal-bunkering port for ships sailing to and from India. Aden booms.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
1557: The Ottoman Turks first occupy Massawa.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
15c: The ruling Ethiopian Amhara’s (later known as Abyssinians) establish a tenuous hold over Eritrea.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
~9c: Demise of the Kingdom of Axum, due to internal dissension, the migration of Beja nomads from Sudan, and the rise of Islam.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
~1c: Establishment of Axum as the first great Ethiopian kingdom, by colonists from Yemen (NatGeo). Axum's maritime trade was conducted through the ancient Eritrean port of Adulis, near modern-day Massawa.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan.
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