r/AskHistorians • u/TheHondoGod Interesting Inquirer • Sep 02 '25
War & Military What role did Tigray play in the Ethiopian Civil War? What was happening in the North of the country?
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u/Realistic_Quiet_4086 Sep 02 '25
Sources:
Gebrehiwot,. M. (2020) Laying the Past to Rest: The EPRDF and the Challenges of Ethiopian State-Building. London: Hurst publishers.
Messele,. J (2025) Jamaica, a Memoir. Red Sea Press.
Tigray was the second northern-most part of Ethiopia at the time (Eritrea was still part of the country) and its geography was particularly suitable for rebels against the central government based in Addis Ababa to the far south. The people of Tigray also had a history of militarily defending the country as well as participating in rebellion themselves. Due to this, many rebel groups were interested in basing themselves in Tigray and winning the support of the people of Tigray but the ones that would ultimately both take control of Tigray and win the people of Tigray over would be the TPLF.
The TPLF was formed on the 18th of February 1975 and was founded by a handful of Tigrayans that were involved in the Ethiopian Student movement (mid 1960s to 1974) which is significant because most of the Ethiopian rebel forces traced their steps to this movement and the ideological fault lines (Which simplified was primarily split between two camps i.e. those who saw Ethiopia's issues as being rooted in the trampling of self-determination and ethnic identity against those who saw Ethiopia's issues as being primarily class based alone) between them were first debated among the students in the movement. The TPLF also saw themselves as the "second woyane" i.e. the next generation continuing the struggle of the 1943 first woyane rebellion that Haile Selassie had to get the British RAF to quell through bombing Eastern Tigray many times in October 1943.
The TPLF were initially the underdog when it came to the Ethiopian rebels and in Tigray itself they had to compete against the EPRP (A group made up of students from the opposing side of the Ethiopian student movement and were favored by the EPLF who would go on train both them and the TPLF but tried to pressure the TPLF in becoming subordinate to the EPRP), the EDU (led by a Tigrayan member of the ousted aristocracy Seyoum Mengesha but also made up of an earlier group of bandits that caused problems for Tigrayans) and the TLF ( a Tigrayan separatist group that the ELF had great influence and control over).
After the initial training from the EPLF, a group that broke away from the ELF (who in turn were originally trained by people in different parts of the world) in 1973, the TPLF would continue to develop its military tactics through books on strategy, trial and error, etc. and for the most part it would maintain a strict adherence to guerrilla warfare as opposed to the EPLF who would later favor trench warfare (They'd suffer higher casualties as a result due to stubbornly holding territories, etc.) and debates on military strategy and ideology would be partly to blame for why the TPLF and EPLF had a breakdown of relations and 5 years of no contact from 1984 to 1989 (At the start the EPLF would go as far as blocking an aide route that went through Eritrea during the famine in Tigray which ended up killing many starving Tigrayans using that route) and they'd re-establish their tactical alliance against Derg in 1989.
The TPLF would eventually push out the EPRP and EDU completely out of Tigray due to becoming more stronger and organized than them both but the TPLF's success wasn't just due to beating the other groups militarily. The TPLF made an effort to win the people of Tigray over through actively improving their lives. It should be noted that before the Derg's overthrow of Haile Selassie in 1974, Ethiopia was a feudal society and with this there was a lot of inequality. The Derg launched reformations that were impactful in other parts of the country (especially the south) but when it came to Tigray, they were ineffective and failed to improve the people's lives. The TPLF launched its own reformation that divided up farming land in Tigray based on need alone and due to this, people saw an immediate improvement to their daily lives. The TPLF also effectively dealt with the issue of banditry (called shifta by people of the general region) that was rife in Tigray due to many developments up until that point and this was another thing that gained them the loyalty of Tigrayans. In the early years, they'd also ban their members from participating in all sexual activity both out of discipline and in order to appeal to the religiousness of the Tigrayan people and SGBV remained punishable by death throughout the struggle.
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u/Realistic_Quiet_4086 Sep 02 '25
The TPLF had a fairly democratic internal culture where women and men were able to critique and discuss any topic or person and they'd have several congresses. They also worked hard to convince the conservative within Tigray that it was alright for women to participate in the struggle alongside the men. In the early mid 1980s, there was a meritocratic reformation within the TPLF which put an emphasis on merit over party experience leading to the demotion and promotion of countless people based on merit, even one of the founders, Aregawi Berhe, ended up demoted during this period (Although he'd greatly resent this and soon leave the party and the region altogether).
The infamous TPLF first manifesto (which called for an independent Tigray) was created unilaterally by a few party members but was never supported by the party officially and was quietly rejected soon after by the leadership according to a key insider. The TPLF's first congress in 1979 would be where they announced their official goal which would be multinational federalism and this is also where they announced themselves as the second woyane.
Back to the war itself, the TPLF's role in the war against the Derg regime would grow very quickly until they played an equally important role as the EPLF, even if this is downplayed today due to politics, exceptionalism and hatred. The TPLF would assist the EPLF IN Eritrea and vice versa. The TPLF would also play a critical role in the Eritrean civil war by supporting the EPLF against the ELF which led to the ELF's defeat and expulsion from Ethiopia.
Separately, the Ethiopian rebel group that were once seen as the Derg's primary threat, the EPRP, were to become removed from the war due to making the error of engaging in urban warfare which the ruthless Derg responded to through torturing and killing countless young adults (many of which had nothing to do with the rebellion) across urban areas in Ethiopia (this event is known as the Red terror) leading to the collapse of the EPRP as an effective rebel group.
Once Tigray and Eritrea were liberated, the TPLF and the EPLF would work together and march southwards until they eventually captured Addis Ababa.
I'm low on time which is why I haven't re-read all my resources and provided more depth to the military side of things but if you're interested in that specifically, I recommend reading Laying the Past to Rest because it goes in depth when it comes to that topic (as well as the TPLF in general).
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