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The kingdom of D’mt was established, collecting treasures like ivory, tortoiseshell, gold, silver, and slaves. It deteriorated because trade routes were diverted, allowing city-states to form in their place.
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Christianity had begun to spread through merchant settlements created for trading purposes.
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The city-states created from D'mt had unified as Aksum, becoming a prominent trading power.
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Through a major church on Lake Hayk, the Agua people, who had been oppressed by the Aksumite, were assimilated into Christianity. This allowed them to transfer the empire's seat to the region of Lasta southward creating the Zagwe dynasty.
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Nobleman Yekuno Amlak killed the king. A faction of monastic churchmen condoned his actions and legitimized his descent from Solomon
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Islamic preaching converted people at the edges of Ethiopian rule, and Muslim sultanates on Ethiopia's south border would fall under the hegemony of Ifat at the end of the 13th century
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Ethiopian emperor Amda Tseyon waged wars northward to the red sea, and towards unincorporated areas in the south and east, against the Muslim state of Ifat. Amada and his successors would spread Solomonicinfluence as far as Seylac (also known as Zelia) on the Gulf of Aden.
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Ifat suffered a military defeat from Emperor Zara Yaqob, losing hegemony over Muslim states to another Muslim state, Adal.
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Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ghāzī, also known as Sahib al-Fath or Aḥmad Grāñ, gained leadership of Adal, teaching modern Ottoman tactics and leading a jihad (holy war) against Ethiopia. He quickly took areas on the periphery of Solomonic rule.
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Emperor Lebna Denegel was defeated at the battle of Shimbra Kure,
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Emperor Galadewos caught and killed Ahmad near Lake Tana, the Muslim army then broke, leaving north-central Ethiopia.
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Western missionaries, who followed Portuguese musketeers who also went to Ethiopia, tried to convert Ethiopia to the Western church. Jesuit Pedro Páez managed to persuade Emperor Susenyos to accept the doctrine of the dual nature of Christ and to notify the pope of his submission. The royal court accepted the decision, but the provincial nobles, the church, and the people at large rejected it.
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The Oromo people, who had spread from the upper basin of the Genalē (Jubba) River, had spread wide enough through Ethiopia that Emperor Sarsa Dengel limited his government to what is now Eritrea, the northern regions of Tigray and Gonder, and parts of Gojam, Shewa, and Welo, along with areas that included the bulk of the Christian Semitic-speaking agriculturalists
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Susenyos was forced to abdicate for his son, Fasilides. Fasilides established a new capital at Gonder, it would later become a prosperous educational, religious, and arts center.
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Ethnic, regional, and religious factionalism to its collapse, starting the Zamana Masafent, the Age of Princes. During the Age of Princes, regional princes gained control over power that the central court once held, and fighting occurred between the two. Developments still continued, Oromo states formed southwest of the Shewa, and the Gonga people developed their own states in the Kefa highlands.
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Claiming Solomonic descent, a regional kingdom established itself in the northern Shewa. Shewa's self-proclaimed king, Sahle Selassie, and his successors expanded southward.
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Sahle and his successors had gained control of most of Shewa to the Awash River, and even as far as Guragē
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Kassa Hailu, a highwayman who had built a small army and monopolized the lowland's revenues from trade and smuggling, defeated Ras Ali (Prince Ali), the last of a succession of Oromo lords who were central to the Age of the Princes.
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After the defeat of the ruler of northern Ethiopia, Kassa was given the title of Emperor Tewodros II. Later, he marched south and forced the submission of Shewa, consolidating the power of formerly separate states.
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Earlier in 1862, Tewodros offered Britain’s Queen Victoria an alliance to destroy Islam but was ignored. In 1868, Tewodros imprisoned the British envoy and other Europeans. Sir Robert Napier would successfully defeat the small Ethiopian army, forcing Tewodros to commit suicide in order to avoid capture.
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A Tigrayan Kassa reigned as Yohannes IV, removing two Egyptian armies from parts of Eritrea, and wringing submission from Shale Miriam, Shewa's king. Yohannes had a historic amount of power, being the first Ethiopian emperor to wield authority from Tigray south to Guragē in 300 years. Additionally, Yohannes incorporated Harer into his kingdom.
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Italian troops arrived in Mitisiwa, and Rome also tried to bribe Sahle Miriam with rifles, but the king rejeced
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After marching into Sudan in response to Mahdist attacks on Gonder, Yohannes was shot and killed at Metama. Sahle Miriam became emperor, reigning as Menilek II
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Menilek signed a treaty of amity and commerce, relinquishing rule over Eritrea to Italy. The Italian version of this treaty placed Rome as the medium for Ethiopia's foreign relations, while the Ethiopian version was noncommittal. However, both versions stated the Ethiopian version would prevail if there were differences between the two. Menilek initially reached for a diplomated resolution to fix the mistranslation.
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Menilek sent expeditions south and east for gold, ivory, musk, coffee, hides, and slaves; in order to trade for modern weapons and munitions.
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Ethiopia expanded to its present size, fortifying itself with key river systems, highlands, and various low-lying zones around the state’s central core. The new capital of Addis Ababa was modernized with profits from the periphery of Ethiopia, adding schools, hospitals, and communication networks; additionally adding a railway between Addis Ababa and Djibouti, creating a pathway for exploitation of the country’s produce by foreign merchants' cooperation with the ruling elites.
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Menilek moved his army into Tigray in order to remove Rome's power over Eritrea. At the Battle of Adwa, 35,000 Roman and 14,500 Italian troops quickly fell to the Ethiopian army of roughly 100,000.
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The Ethiopian emperor signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa, which abrogated the Treaty of Wichale.
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Upon Menileks death, his grandson, Iyasu took power, seeking to build a society without religious and ethnic divisions. He removed many of Menilek’s governors and integrated Muslims into the administration, upsetting Ethiopia’s Christian ruling class.
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During World War I, Iyasu dallied with Islam and Central Powers in order to regain Eritrea and free himself from Shewan aristocrats. After the Allied powers formally protested, the Shewan aristocrats met and accused Iyasu of apostasy and subversion. Iyasu was deposed. Iyasu was replaced by Zauditu, Menilek’s daughter, though as Zauditu was a woman, Ras Tafari, a cousin of Menilek, served as Zauditu’s regent and heir apparent.
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Ras Tafari created an entrance for Ethiopia into the League of Nations, reasoning collective security. He also hired foreign advisers for key advisers and set about abolishing slavery.
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The economy was prosperous, with a focus on coffee export. Local countryside officials built roads, improved communications, and fostered traders and entrepreneurs. Zauditu crowned Tafari king, Tafari would force foreigners to take local partners and maintain control over concessions in order to keep Ethiopians in charge of the economy.
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Zauditu died, and Tafari took the title of emperor, becoming Haile Selassie (Power of the Trinity)
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Haile Selassie created a constitution that placed his power to a delegate, itself to an indirectly elected bicameral parliament, among other modern institutions. Between 1931 - 34, the emperor started road, school, hospital, communication, administration, and public service projects. Due to the emperor’s success, and to prevent Ethiopia from opposing Italian actions in the Horn of Africa, Benito Mussolini initiated a preemptive strike.
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Italian forces crossed the frontier, subsequently causing the emperor to mobilize against them. In the seven-month war, Italy used air power and poison gas to destroy Haile Selassie's poorly equipped armies.
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Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Italian Somaliland formed Italian East Africa, receiving various public programs from Italy, concentrating on highways and agricultural and industrial development.
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The emperor was forced into exile
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When Italy joined the European war, the United kingdom recognized Haile Selassie as a full ally. They brought the emperor to help train a British-led Ethiopian army, which would move to Gojam on January 20, 1941, forcing a quick surrender from an enemy.
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Against British occupation authorities, the emperor would return to Addis Ababa, organizing his own government.
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Haile Selassie submitted a memorandum at a meeting with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with a focus on recovering Eritrea
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A union was created between Ethiopia and Eritrea
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The emperor revised the constitution to allow the parliament to authorize finances and taxes, investigate ministers, disapprove imperial decrees, and instituted an elected lower house of parliament along with an independent judiciary, completing a separation of powers. The revision also contained a catalog of human rights and mandated a bureaucratic responsibility to the people.
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With the emperor abroad, military and security members attempted a coup d’état, describing the country’s social and economic problems, before the coup collapsed.
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Haile Selassie tried to organize a new government, one that depended on landowning military, aristocracy, and oligarchy. Students and progressives eventually began to oppose the regime as he failed to create significant land reform, later losing even more trust by entangling the monarchy in intractable conflicts in Eritrea and Somalia.
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In Ethiopia’s Ogaden, Somali nationalists rebelled after Somalia’s independence in 1960. Somalia joined the fights, but Ethiopia’s army and air force quickly clobbered its enemies, Somalia would then ally itself with the Soviet Union, consequently requiring Ethiopia to increase its arms spending and request more U.S. assistance.
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In 1960 an Eritrea insurrection had begun, consisting mainly of Muslim pastoralists in western lowlands. This later brought in highland Christians, alienated by the government’s dissolution of the federation and mandate of Amharic in schools.
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Coincidentally, radical student movements outlined Haile Selassie as an agent of U.S. imperialism and his landowning oligarchs as the enemy of the people, wanting to limit property size and rights. The idea of having the right to secede was discussed among some students.
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A third of Ethiopia’s 45,000 soldiers had to be assigned to Eritrea, along with others for different rebellions.
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Due to impoverishment or in response to the country’s social and economic problems, junior officers and senior noncommissioned officers mutinied. At the time, drought and famine in the north only worsened the government’s standing; they had created a scandal by attempting to deny its existence.
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Representatives of the mutineers declared themselves as the Coording Committee of the Armed Forces, Police, and Territorial Army, also known as the Derg. Major Mengistu Haile Mariam of Harer’s 3rd Division was elected chairman. The Derg managed to arrest Haile Selassie’s partners and underlings, also dismantling the monarchy’s institutions.
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After campaigning from the Derg, the now senile emperor was removed. In his place, the Provisional Military Administrative Council, or PMAC was formed. Controlled by the Derg, Lieutenant General Aman Andom was chairman and head of state, and Mengistu sat as the first vice-chair
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Bloody Saturday, a mass execution of leaders, including Andom, resulting from a power struggle, Andom was replaced by Brigadier General Teferi Banti.
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The new government issued a Declaration of Socialism, adopting ideology from Marxist parties. A competing Marxist party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party, or EPRP, started an urban guerrilla war to move away from the current military rulers and move toward civilian rule, resulting in anarchy.
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To change Ethiopia into a command economy, Mengistu initiated land reform, placing ownership of all land in the control of the state and giving the peasantry no more than 25 acres for farming, along with other nationalization efforts. In place of a judiciary system and to implement the reforms, peasants’ associations were organized in the countryside and precinct organizations.
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With the death of other members in a battle between the PMAC and rivals, Mengistu took total power as chairman and head of state. After EPRP attacks against Derg affiliates called the White Terror, Mengistu returned with a violent campaign, monikered the Red Terror, killing armed opponents in the EPRP, and others, even civilians. Thousands were harmed, including some of Ethiopia’s best-educated young people. As many as 100,000 were killed, and thousands of others were tortured or imprisoned.
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Somalia made moves into Ogaden, being labeled by the U.S.S.R. as the aggressor, who would move arms shipments to Ethiopia. Ethiopia also received training and troops for a People’s Militia.
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Somalia withdrew its troops and Mendistu would displace Eritrean nationalists from Eritrea using his troops.
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The government covered up the developing famine to celebrate its 10th anniversary and the founding of the Workers’ Party. After the famine put 1/6th of Ethiopia’s population at risk of starving, Western countries gave surplus grain to end the crisis by mid-1985
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Farmers failed to effectively farm crops as the maximum 25-acre plots were too tiny. The government tried to make peasants’ associations sell grain at below-market prices, to feed Ethiopia’s cities and farmers, but alienated the peasants instead. At the same time, farmers had no incentive to produce crops, much less after the government’s price mandate. With increasingly intense droughts happening yearly, starting in 1980 and peaking in 1984, with rainfall failing, famine followed.
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To place the population in less drought prevalent areas, the regime moved over 600,000 farming families west and south. However, they lacked the resources for required necessities like housing or medical treatment, similar to a different villagization plan to concentrate the population to improve amenities, which would lack the resources to provide such amenities till as late as 1990.
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The Workers’ Party of Ethiopia was created with Mengistu as secretary-general.
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A new parliament inaugurated the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, with Mengistu as president.
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The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, or EPLF, managed to break through the Ethiopian lines and waged successful wars against the demoralized government troops.
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The EPLF started coordinating attacks with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, which was fighting for the autonomy of Tigray and to change Ethiopia into be made of ethnically autonomous regions.
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A lack of weaponry, caused by the Soviet Union not shipping any more, led the government to evacuate Tigray. The TPLF would then create the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement, composed mostly of Amharic people, and then the two would form the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, or EPRDF. The EPRDF would advance into Gonder and Welo provinces. Finally cementing the fact that the government had lost control of Tigray and Eritrea, the EPLF would hold Massawa the next year.
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Because TPLF interrupted the Addis Ababa-Gonder road, placing Gojam at risk, Mengistu finally declared that many of the regime's socialist measures would be ending. Peasants moved back to their old homes, away from new villages, reallotting land, and capital goods. This resulted in cases of administrators being killed as the people ignored government officials, weakening the regime in the countryside. Additionally, the Oromo Liberation Front, OLF, which had been inactive, resumed action.
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By this time, EPRDF controlled Tigray, Welo, Gonder, Gojam, and roughly half of Shewa. Later on May 28, EPRDF pushed Mengistu to Zimbabwe, taking power.
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Led by Meles Zenawi, a Tigrayan, the new government claimed it would democratize Ethiopia using its ethnic heterogeneity. Now to be a voluntary federation, the EPRDF, the OLF, and other groups agreed to institute a transitional government to write a new constitution and host new elections, along with a national charter that recognized an ethnic division of political power, and the right of nationalities to secede from Ethiopian.
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The government collaborated with donor governments and the World Bank to create a structural adjustment program. The effects of the program devalued the Ethiopian currency, reduced government intervention in the economy, dictated redundancies in the civil service, and streamlined the process for foreign companies to invest in Ethiopia.
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The new government started creating its foundations by sectioning into units of ethnically homogeneous regions. However, there was blatant suppression of groups, mainly anti-EPRDF groups or forces. The OLF would leave the government over the poor conduction of regional elections in June 1992
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Eritrea was granted legal independence.
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The country held its first multiparty elections, though they were boycotted by opposition groups in protest of harassment, arrests, and other actions from the EPRDF government. Negasso Gidada became president and Meles became prime minister.
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The third constitution in 40 years was promulgated, creating the principles of regionalism and ethnic autonomy, and giving power to regional states. Additionally, it constitutionalized the principle of national ownership of land.
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A war between Eritrea and Ethiopia started over 250 square miles of land nearby Badme, spreading to Zela Ambesa and Eritrean port city Assab.
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A cease-fire was signed, prompting a UN mission to monitor the cease-fire and the buffer zone while waiting for the border to be demarcated. Later in December, a peace agreement would be signed in Algeria, though tensions would continue. UNMEE, United Nations Mission in Eritrea and Ethiopia, troops continued to monitor the truce and Ethiopian withdrawal.
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The EPRDF’s TPLF faction split because of anti-corruption policies and Meles’s more liberal economic policies. TPLF members that were opposed to Meles were removed and held under house arrest, President Negasso also was removed from the leadership position of his party, the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization, as he sided with the TPLF group, though he stayed as federal president until the end of his term, succeeded by Girma Wolde-Giorgis.
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The Ethiopian government, unsatisfied with the proposed demarcation, discussions over the area would continue for years.
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Opposition parties gained more seats in the legislature from elections. The accusations and reports of voter intimidation and other problems delayed the announcement of the results for eight weeks. Later, accusations of fraud created protests in Addis Ababa, resulting in 36 dead, hundreds hurt, and 3,000 arrested, more rioting would occur in November. Some opposition candidates rejected their seats due to the suspicious circumstances of the elections. Still, EPRDF remained in power.
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Mengistu was tried in absentia and found guilty, the next year he was given a life sentence.
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EPRDF reached an agreement with the prime two opposition parties, who then took their seats in legislature.
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Mengistu was resentenced to death after an appeal from the prosecution.
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UNMEE troops left without the demarcation over Badme decided
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General elections were held peacefully, the EPRDF securing the majority of seats, and Meles remaining prime minister.
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After an extended absence from publicity, Meles died from an undisclosed illness. Hailemariam Desalegn, the deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, succeeded him.
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The government’s harsh treatment of activists and journalists, and other reasons caused protests, and security forces responded with lethal force. The government would declare a state of emergency in October, rescinding the order in August 2017
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The government released thousands of prisoners, including persons who were arrested for speaking against the government. Additionally, it announced the closing of an infamous detention center and the resignation of its prime minister Hailemariam, who would wait until a new prime minister would be appointed. The day after the prime minister announced his resignation, the government declared another state of emergency intended to last for 6 months.
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Journalists that were recently released once again were arrested for gathering in violation of the state of emergency and being in possession of a prohibited, older version of Ethiopia’s flag.
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Chosen by EPRDF and part of the Oromo ethnic group, Abiy Ahmed was elected as prime minister by the lower legislative house and sworn in. Abiy is the first Oromo prime minister and said to work towards fighting corruption, improving democratic processes, growing the economy, and resolving the conflict with Eritrea. Along with other things, Abiy announced the government would allow privatization of some state-owned industries such as airlines and telecommunications.
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Again, the government released political prisoners like journalists and opposition leader Andargachew Tsige. At the same time, the government removed Ginbot 7, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, and the OLF from its terrorist organizations list. The ONLF, who had been fighting with the government, declared a cease-fire and signed a peace agreement.
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The government lifted the state of emergency before the predicted end and accepted the 2002 demarcation of the Badme border, reopening borders and reestablishing diplomacy, trade, communications, and transportation.
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With the Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, Abiy announced the state of war had ended between the two countries.
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Abiy formed a new cabinet, reducing the size from 28 members to 20, and appointing women to half the positions. In the same month, President Mulatu resigned in the same action as Hailemariam, allowing for a new president to be elected by lawmakers. Sahle-Work Zewde later succeeded Hailemariam on October 25, becoming the first woman to serve as president.
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In the TPLF, resentment grew over losing its dominant position in politics and officials and officers to corruption crackdowns. The replacement of the EPRDF with the Prosperity Party, and the delay of the general elections due to COVID-19 only added to the resentment.
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Tigray and the government began fighting, Abiy would reveal that Eritrean troops were involved half a year later. Abiy declared victory after federal troops took the region's capital of Mekele, though the fighting continued. Roughly two million Tigrayans were displaced, and the fighting had caused famine conditions.
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Once again, fighting escalated with Tigrayan forces focusing on Mekele, eventually pushing federal troops and government officials to withdraw on June 28. The federal government would go on to declare a unilateral cease-fire, but fighting continued regardless. Later in August, the TPLF and Oromo Liberation Army, or OLA, who had splintered from the OLF, formed an Alliance.