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CONFLICTED

Ethiopia Pt.3: The Shadow of the Derg

CONFLICTED

Message Heard

Religion & Spirituality, History

4.71.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Conflicted comes to the end of our Ethiopia series with an episode beginning at the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, and charting the country's tumultuous course through the late 20th century. This was a time characterised by a brutality the country had not witnessed before, as the Communist military dictatorship, known as the Derg, wreaked havoc on the country. Ethiopia in the 70s and 80s was one dominated by horrifying episodes of mass death – from the Red Terror which engulfed the country in 1977 to 1978, to the terrible famine in the 1980s which caught the world’s attention, birthing Live Aid and songs from Western Musicians to raise money, which would come to be so common (if later criticised) in the decades to come. It was also an era of Cold War intrigue, with Ethiopia thrust into wider geopolitical games involving the US and the USSR – even Cuba! – as well as warring with its neighbours and, eventually, with its own dictatorship.  Thomas and Aimen bring our discussion of the fascinating and fraught land of Ethiopia to a close with a tour de force, as they discuss all this and more, also setting up the context for the Tigray war which took place in Ethiopia in 2020 - 2022, with devastating consequences. And if you want to find out more about the Tigray War, we recently completed an episode for our Conflicted Community with journalist Martin Plaut, to explain the specifics of the conflict. New Conflicted Season 5 episodes will be coming every two weeks, but if you want to have your Conflicted fix every single week, then you’ll have to join our Conflicted Community. Subscribers will get bonus episodes every other week, and can also join our Conflicted Community chatroom, where you can interact with fellow dearest listeners, discuss episodes past and future, get exclusive messages from Thomas and Aimen, ask future Q&A questions and so much more. All the information you need to sign up to the Conflicted Community is on this link: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/  Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

For exclusive bonus episodes of Conflicted, including interviews with renowned thinkers about the Muslim world, access to our Discord chat hub and ad-free listening, become a dearest listener now by signing up to the conflicted community.

0:17.7

The link to join is in our show notes or just go to conflicted.

0:21.7

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1:00.9

Hello, dear listeners. Welcome back to Conflicted with me, Thomas Small.

1:04.6

And Eamondine, straight from my hospital bed back home.

1:07.4

Still alive, Eamon, still alive.

1:07.9

Absolutely.

1:14.3

Now, Aman, it's been a minute since our last episode of our three-part history of Ethiopia. Let's give a little recap.

1:16.1

We began, of course, with some deep history, the Quranic and biblical tales of ancient Abyssinia,

1:22.0

through to the first king of kings Menelik the first, and the Solomonic dynasty which dominated Ethiopia for so long, keeping

1:30.3

them free from imperialism, which engulfed much of Africa in the 19th century.

1:35.3

Yes, then we looked at the various attacks on Ethiopia from the Mahdhdhists in Sudan, from Italy

1:42.3

in the 20th century, including fascist Mussolini's forces, and then, of course,

1:47.0

the man who ruled the country himself throughout the 20th century.

1:51.0

Our old friend, our dear Rastafari, later would be known as Emperor Haley Salasi.

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