Army of the Derg

The Army of the Derg was the military force of the Ethiopian state under the Derg regime, from the formation of the Derg in 1974 until the regime fell in 1991. It grew out of officers and divisions of the Imperial Ethiopian Army, drawing chiefly on four divisions: Division I, the Imperial Guard at Addis Ababa; Division II, a counter-insurgency force in Eritrea; Division III, a mechanized force at Harar; and Division IV at Addis Ababa, which oversaw the southwest. Its officers were mostly Amhara, with Tigreans, Oromos, Gurage and a few Muslims, and it reflected three social groups shaped by the student movement of the 1960s: senior officers, junior and intermediate officers, and rank-and-file soldiers with non-commissioned officers. The Derg also raised civilian militias alongside it. The army expanded rapidly during the Ethiopian Revolution, reached about 250,000 troops by 1980 and took a very large share of the national budget. After the regime fell in 1991 it was reduced and disbanded.