SUMMARY
EDU (Ethiopian Democratic Union) was a counter-revolutionary rebel group that fought an armed conflict seeking to oust the Ethiopian government in the late 1970s. The origin of the group was closely tied to the ousting of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974. While EDU strongly denied harboring any intentions to bring back the monarchy, many of those who came to partake in its creation had indeed been linked to the Imperial regime, and were hard hit when the new military junta – the co-called Derg – seized power. Founded in August 1975, EDU professed to be dedicated to establish a democratic state with civil rights in Ethiopia, and to fight the Derg by political, diplomatic and military means. It claimed to be a broad-based movement, and stated that it aimed to serve as an umbrella under which all opponents to the military regime could cooperate.
EDU’s main founding members were Lt-Gen Iyassu Mengesha, a former Chief of Staff of the Ethiopian Army, Lt-Gen Nega Tegegne, former Commander of the Third Division and married to Haile Selassie’s granddaughter, and Ras Mengesha Seyoum, former Governor-General of Tigray (a region in the northern part of the country) and a descendant of the Kings of Gondar, also married to one of the Emperor’s granddaughters. These three subsequently made up the triumvirate the led the movement; Iyassu Mengesha as Chairman, Nega Tegegne as Field Commander, and Mengesha Seyoum as Secretary-General. It should be noted, however, that exactly how EDU emerged as a fighting force is described in slightly different ways by different sources. While the formal establishment by the three leaders – which took place among exiled Ethiopians in London – was indeed a crucial event, a parallel process took place within Ethiopia. When the Derg seized power and deposed Mengesha Seyoum as Governor of Tigray, a strongly patriotic, albeit loosely organized group called Teranafit emerged in Tigray. The group was traditionalist, and staunchly opposed the Derg’s land reform, favoring traditional land tenure, based on kinship. It was led by local nobles and collected thousands of Tigrayan peasants in its ranks. Furthermore, the organization included many so-called shiftas, local bandits with good knowledge of the geography of northern Ethiopia. With the forming of EDU, the two groups amalgamated; EDU, in need of fighters, reached out to and supported Teranafit; and the latter, whose leaders were supporters of Ras Mengesha Seyoum, allied themselves with the exiled leadership.
Over time, EDU changed from being a mainly Tigrayan group, organized along traditional Tigray lines with nobles leading squads of men from their home districts, and moved towards becoming what it had all along claimed to be: a group with a pan-Ethiopian agenda and ethnically mixed composition. Aside from the peasantry in Tigray and Gondar, it recruited among Ethiopian refugees in Sudan and migrant workers displaced from commercial farms that had been nationalized with the rise of the Derg. Furthermore, the group was joined by numerous deserters from the former Imperial army, both high ranking officers and rank and file fighters who came over with both arms and equipment. By 1977, it was believed that EDU had at least 10 000 men under arms.
The group’s area of operation shifted over time. It began its struggle in the western part of Tigray, but was able to expand over the following years. In 1977 EDU saw significant military successes, and was able to push the army from large parts of western Gondar state, which was located west of Tigray, bordering Sudan. It also made inroads into Gojjam state, just south of Gondar, as well as Wollo, further east, and Eritrea, to the north. During this time, the group was also able to occupy a string of larger towns, and for a while the Derg seemed to view it as a genuine threat, as junta-leader Mengistu Haile Mariam went on national television and radio to warn that “unless revolutionaries responded with vigor, the counterrevolution was weeks away from seizing Addis Ababa and re-imposing the crown". This failed to happen, however, as a combination of factors (see below) caused the group to lose its military momentum in mid-1977, whereby it was forced to withdraw to western Tigray yet again.
As indicated above, at the time of the birth of EDU, Ethiopia as a whole was going through a very turbulent period. After the ousting of the Emperor in 1974, the Derg experienced bloody power rivalries. Furthermore, the separatist conflict over the status of the Eritrea province continued in the north, and in addition, five other conflicts erupted in different regions throughout the country during the late 1970s. Thus, there were ample rebel groups for EDU to coordinate and cooperate with. However, there is very little indication that such coordination took place on a larger scale. The only two armed groups with which EDU clearly had links during the armed conflict, were the separatist Eritrean group ELF, and its Afar equivalent [ALF]/#/actor/519). The cooperation with ELF was purely tactical, since EDU as a nationalist movement did not support the former’s goal of an independent Eritrea. However, there were reports of armed collaboration, with ELF for instance assisting EDU in the battles for the towns Metemma and Humera, on the Sudanese border. As for its relationship with [ALF]/#/actor/519), sources agree that the two groups had close links, but fail to elaborate further as to how this played out. In contrast to the limited support forthcoming from fellow rebel groups, EDU did receive assistance from Saudi Arabia as well as from the United States. The two state were both deeply suspicious of Soviet designs in the region and provided EDU with financial support. Furthermore, in retaliation for the Ethiopian government’s backing of the Sudanese opposition National Front, the regime in Khartoum provided EDU with light and heavy military gear, a radio station and a rear base on Sudanese soil. It also allowed EDU’s political command to move its headquarters from London to Khartoum.
By the late 1970s, EDU had started to loose strength. This was primarily due to three developments. For one, the group’s fighters lacked discipline and were renowned for drunkenness, raping and pillaging, and this eventually alienated the peasant population in Tigray, who instead shifted their allegiance to EDU’s rivals in the region, TPLF. Second, internal tensions had started to surface. In 1977, this caused a split in the movement, when as a radical group materialized, wanting to rid the movement of any connection with members of the former Imperial establishment, like Ras Mengesha Seyyum. This faction eventually broke away, and formed the short-lived EPDRP (Ethiopian People’s Democratic Revolutionary Party). Yet another internal rift occurred the same year, due to due to a bitter conflict between two of its leaders: Ras Mengesha Seyyoum and the group’s military commander, General Nega Tegegne. Since the former was the traditional royal leader of Tigray and the latter was a Shoan, this caused a rift between these two ethnicities in the movement, substantially weakening it. The third development that led to EDU loosing strength was its armed conflict with fellow rebel group TPLF. The two movements, which were both vying for the Tgirayan peasant’s support, were rivals from the start and clashes erupted already in 1976. As time passed, the power relations between them shifted, and by 1978, TPLF was capable of pushing EDU from its Tigrayan stronghold after three year of fighting. Furthermore, by late 1978 most EDU fighters had been driven across the Sudanese border. Although EDU was never completely destroyed it was severely weakened and military-wise reduced to a rump, largely operating in small pockets outside Tigray in Gondar and in Sudan, where it remained until the collapse of the Derg in 1991.
In post-Derg Ethiopia, relations between EDU and the victorious [EPRDF] (/#actor/414), largely made up of TPLF, were frosty. However, eventually part if it joined the EPRDF-led government, while another wing joined the anti-EPRDF Coalition of Ethiopian Democratic Forces.
