Tigray People's Liberation Front
The Tigray People's Liberation Front, also known as the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist, paramilitary group, and the former ruling party of Ethiopia. It was classified as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government during the Tigray War until its removal from the list in 2023. In older and less formal texts and speech it is known as Woyane or Weyané. The TPLF was founded on February 18, 1975, in Dedebit, Tigray. Within 16 years, it grew from about a dozen men to become the most powerful armed liberation movement in Ethiopia. Unlike the Eritrean or Somali liberation fronts at the time, the TPLF did not seek independence from the Ethiopian state; instead, it aimed to overthrow the central government and implement its own version of the Ethiopian revolution. From 1989 to 2018, it led a political coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. It fought a 15-year-long war against the Derg regime, which was overthrown on 28 May 1991. The TPLF, with the support of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, overthrew the government of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia on May 28, 1991, and installed a new government that remained in power for decades.
The new ruling EPRDF government, was dominated by the TPLF, who gradually consolidated control over Ethiopia's federal administrations, the ENDF, and key economic resources such as foreign aid, loans, and land leases, amassing billions. The TPLF's restructuring of Ethiopia into an ethnic federal state further fueled civil conflicts in the ensuing decades.
The TPLF lost control of the federal government in 2018. During the Tigray War that began in 2020, the National Election Board of Ethiopia terminated the party's legal status. In 2021, the Ethiopian House of Peoples' Representatives formally approved a parliamentary resolution designating the TPLF as a terrorist organization. On 2 November 2022, the African Union brokered a deal in Pretoria, South Africa, between the federal government and the TPLF to end the Tigray War. As per the peace agreement, the TPLF began disarming in January 2023.
Following the Pretoria peace agreement in 2022, the TPLF began experiencing severe internal divisions. This has seen the rise of a hardline faction within the front.
History
Origins
The TPLF is considered to be the product of the marginalization of Tigrayans within Ethiopia after Menelik II of Shewa became emperor in 1889. The Tigrayan traditional elite and peasantry had a strong regional identity and a resentment due to their own perception of the decline of Tigray. It was popularly referred to as Woyane, for evoking memories of the armed revolt of 1942–43 against the re-establishment of imperial rule after Italian occupation remained alive and provided an important reference for the new generations of educated Tigrayan nationalists.At Haile Selassie I University, Tigrayan students had formed the Political Association of Tigrayans in 1972 and the Tigrayan University Students' Association beginning in the early 1960s. These student groups evolved into a radical nationalist group that operated in Tigray after the start of the Ethiopian revolution in 1974, and began calling for Tigrayan independence, forming the Tigray Liberation Front. Meanwhile, a Marxist current emerged in TUSA that advocated national self-determination for Tigray within a revolutionary, democratic Ethiopia.
While the multinational leftist movements prioritized class struggle over national self-determination for the Ethiopian nationalities, the Marxists of the TUSA argued for self-determination as the starting point for the final socialist revolution because of the existing inequalities among the Ethiopian nationalities.
1974–1977
In February 1974, the Marxists within TUSA welcomed the Ethiopian Revolution but opposed the Derg, as they were convinced that it would neither lead a genuine socialist revolution nor correctly resolve the Ethiopian nationality question. Two days after the Derg took power, on 14 September 1974, seven leaders of this trend established the Association of Progressives of the Tigray Nation, also known as the Tigrayan National Organization. The founders were: Alemseged Mengesha, Ammaha Tsehay, Aregawi Berhe, Embay Mesfin, Fentahun Zere'atsion, Mulugeta Hagos, and Zeru Gesese. The TNO was to prepare the ground for the future armed movement in Tigray.It secretly approached both the Eritrean Liberation Front and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front for support, but the ELF already had relations with the TLF. In November 1974, the EPLF agreed to train TNO members and allowed EPLF fighters from the Tigrayan community in Eritrea, including Mehari Tekle, to join the TPLF. The first group of trainees was sent to the EPLF in January 1975.
On the night of 18 February 1975, eleven men, including Gesese Ayyele, Gidey, Asfeha, Seyoum, Agazi, and Berhu, left Enda Selassie for Sehul's home area of Dedebit, where they founded the TPLF. Welde Selassie Nega, Legese Zenawi, and others soon joined the original group, and, after the arrival of the trainees from Eritrea in June 1975, the TPLF had about 50 fighters. It then elected a formal leadership consisting of Sehul, Muse, and the seven TNO founders. Berhu was appointed political commissar. Sehul played a crucial role in helping the nascent TPLF establish itself among the local peasantry.
The TPLF embraced a Marxist vision focused on 'radical decentralization' of the Ethiopian state. In contrast to the Eritrean and Somali liberation movements, the TPLF sought not independence, but the overthrow of the central government to establish its own revolutionary framework for Ethiopia.
Although a few successful raids bolstered its military credibility, the TPLF grew to only about 120 fighters in early 1976, but a rapidly growing clandestine network of supporters in the cities and a support base among the peasants provided vital supplies and information. On February 18, 1976, a conference of fighters elected a new leadership: Berhu, Muse, Abbay, Agazi, Seyoum, Gidey, and Sebhat. Meles became head of the political cadre school.
The first three years of its existence were marked by a constant struggle for survival, unstable cooperation with Eritrean forces, and power struggles against the other Tigrayan fronts: in 1975, the TPLF liquidated the TLF; in 1976–78, it fought the Ethiopian Democratic Union in Shire; and in 1978, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party in East Tigray. The front also suffered heavy losses from Derg offensives in the region.
Although the TPLF, the ELF, and the EPLF cooperated during the 1976 and 1978 Derg offensives in Tigray and Eritrea, no stable alliance emerged. The ELF resented the liquidation of the TLF and considered the relationship between the EPLF and the TPLF a serious threat. Since 1977, there had been conflict between ELF and the TPLF over the issue of Eritrean settlers in western Tigray, who were organized at ELF and rejected the TPLF's land reform. Relations with the EPLF also did not develop smoothly. Its material support was much less than the TPLF had anticipated. Politically, the EPLF favored the multinational EPRP over the ethno regionalist TPLF with its separatist agenda at the time.
1978–1990
After the Derg's victory in the Ogaden War in February 1978 and Mengistu Haile Mariam's new support from the Soviets permitted the substantial growth of his forces, the TPLF's momentum seemed to slow. During the TPLFs early years, the Derg was primarily focused on the Eritrean and Somali insurgencies, allowing it to avoid the full force of the Ethiopian military as its numbers grew to 20,000 strong.In February 1979, the TPLF held its first regular congress. It declared its struggle the Second Woyane and changed its Tigrinya name to Həzbawi Wäyyanä Harənnät Təgray. It adopted a new political program calling for self-determination within a democratic Ethiopia, with independence an option only if unity proved impossible. Gaining and maintaining the support of the local population was at the core of the TPLF's strategy in the 1970s and 1980s. TPLF leaders knew that the goodwill of the population would sustain their movement and ultimately lead them to victory over the Derg. Consequently, any fighter caught mistreating locals was punished or even executed by TPLF authorities. As a result, local support for the TPLF was consistent and invaluable. The local population shared food and resources with the fighters, provided them with safe havens, and, most importantly, provided the TPLF with up-to-date information.
In retrospect, it is evident that the 1978-1985 period further strengthened the TPLF. The increasingly alienating intervention of the Derg, the front's handling of famine and refugee problems, and the foreign connections it built through its mission in Khartoum, enabled the movement to mobilize and better equip more fighters to prepare for the shift from guerrilla to frontal attack. Moreover, developments within the TPLF in the mid-1980s led to a conceptual shift from a struggle for the liberation of Tigray to that of all Ethiopia.
They established their headquarters in caves in Addi Geza'iti, some 50 kilometers west of Mekelle. The Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement, a TPLF-loyal splinter group from the EPRP, used caves in Melfa.
File:Signboard for Melfa headquarters.jpg|thumb|A signboard for the EPDM/ANLF headquarters in Melfa during the Ethiopian Civil War.
The TPLF managed to use the catastrophic famine of 1983-85 to its advantage. In early 1985, it organized a march of over 200,000 famine victims from Tigray to Sudan to draw international attention to the plight in Tigray. Its humanitarian arm, the Relief Society of Tigray, founded in 1978, received large amounts of international humanitarian aid for famine victims and small-scale development projects in liberated Tigray.
In 1984–1985, the TPLF diverted Western aid money intended for starving civilians to purchase weapons.
A power struggle in the leadership saw future Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi rise to power during 1985. In July 1985, the Marxist–Leninist League of Tigray was founded at a congress of a few hundred selected cadres. The MLLT was to be the nucleus of the future Marxist–Leninist vanguard party for all Ethiopia. The MLLT invited the genuine revolutionaries in the ranks of the Derg regime, which was busy organizing its own communist party, the Ethiopian Workers' Party, to join it.
In December 1988, the TPLF and EPDM formed the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front as the core of the planned United Democratic Front. In the spring of 1989, first the MLLT and then the TPLF held a congress. Abbay was elected chairman of both organizations, but toward the end of 1989 Meles became chairman of both. In May 1989, the EPDM formed the Ethiopian Marxist–Leninist Force.
In July 1989, MLLT and EMLF formed the Union of Ethiopian Proletarian Organizations. In April 1990, the TPLF formed the Ethiopian Democratic Officers Movement from politically re-educated captured Ethiopian officers to undermine the Free Officers Movement, which had been formed in 1987 by exiled Ethiopian officers in opposition to the Derg. In May 1990, Oromo members of the EPDM and politically re-educated Oromo prisoners of war founded the Oromo Peoples' Democratic Organization to deny the Oromo Liberation Front's claim to be the exclusive representative of the Ethiopian Oromo.
In November 1990, a Marxist–Leninist Oromo movement was established within the OPDO. Also in 1990, the TPLF formed the Afar Democratic Union to undermine the Afar movements. It had already helped build liberation fronts in Gambella and Benshangul before 1985.
In early 1988, the EPLF and the TPLF went on the offensive. The evolving situation in both Eritrea and Tigray, as well as the changing international context after the breakup of the Soviet bloc, prompted the TPLF and EPLF to put aside their differences and resume military cooperation. in 1989, the EPRDF formed a shadow government in Ethiopia to administer the liberated areas under its control.