Ethiopia Pt.3: The Shadow of the Derg

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
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