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Ethiopia

Uncomfortable Truths

TPLF
" The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) is a political party in Ethiopia, established on 18

February 1975 in Dedebit, northwestern Tigray, according to official records. As a strategy,
TPLF used guerilla tactics as it saw those as befitting to a Marxist-Leninist political
organization. Within 16 years, it had grown from about a dozen men into the most powerful

armed liberation movement in Ethiopia. It led a coalition of movements named the Ethiopian
People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) from 1989 to 2018. With the help of its

former ally, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), EPRDF overthrew the dictatorship of
the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) and established a new government on 28
May 1991 that ruled Ethiopia until its refusal to merge into the Prosperity Party in 2019.

***
The TPLF is, in a way, the product of the marginalization of Tigray within Ethiopia after Menelik
II of Shewa had become emperor in 1889. The Tigrayan traditional elite and peasantry had a
strong regional identity and deeply resented the decline of Tigray. Memories of the armed

revolt of 1942-43 (the "first [qädamay] wäyyanä") against the re-establishment of imperial rule
after Italian colonialism remained alive and provided an important reference for the new

generations of educated Tigrayan nationalists.
***
At Haile Selassie I University (Addis Ababa University), from the early 1960s onwards, Tigrayan
students created the Political Association of Tigrayans (PAT) in 1972 and the Tigrayan

University Students' Association (TUSA). PAT developed into a radical nationalist group calling
for the independence of Tigray, establishing the Tigray Liberation Front (TLF) in 1974. In TUSA
emerged a Marxist trend favoring national self-determination for Tigray within a revolutionary

transformed democratic Ethiopia. Whereas the multinational left movements prioritized class
struggle over the national self-determination of the Ethiopian nationalities, the Marxists of

TUSA argued for self-determination as the launching pad for the ultimate socialist revolution,
due to the existing inequalities among Ethiopian nationalities.
***
In February 1974, the Marxists within TUSA welcomed the Ethiopian Revolution but opposed
the Derg (the military junta that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987) as they were convinced that

it would neither lead a genuine socialist revolution nor correctly resolve the Ethiopian
nationality question. Three days after the Derg took power, on 14 September 1974, seven

leaders of this trend established the Association of Progressives of the Tigray Nation.
***