Ethiopia is one of the oldest countries in the world, with a history that can be traced back to around 1000 BC. Never colonised, the country was ruled by successive emperors until 1974, when Haile Sellasie, the last emperor, was ousted. The last decade and a half of his reign had been marred by popular protests over unequal distribution of land and the lack of development. This was underscored by repeated crop failure and subsequent famines. Ethiopia's population consists of around 70 different ethnic groups and there is a long history of separatist sentiments among many of them. Subsequently, apart from popular protest, Hailie Sellasie also faced an armed uprising in the Eritrea region. In 1974 the emperor was overthrown in a military coup and replaced by a pro-Soviet Marxist-Leninist military junta, the "Derg", led by Mengistu Haile Mariam. The Derg established a one-party communist state and launched the so-called Red Terror to eliminate all adversaries. However, throughout the country resistance grew and between 1976 and 1991 the Derg faced an intrastate conflict. Numerous disparate groups, some with the goal to overthrow the government and others primarily fighting for independence, joined forces against the common enemy. In mid-1991 Mengistu fled the country and the main rebel group who had succeeded in ousting him, EPRDF (Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front), seized power. EPRDF had cooperated with the Eritrean separatists in the intrastate conflict and when their joint goal was achieved Eritrea initiated preparations for independence. After a referendum in 1993, Eritrea gained formal independence from Ethiopia.
The new EPRDF government was dominated by the TPLF (Tigray People's Liberation Front), based in the Tigray region. With Tigrayans only making up around 10 % of the country's total population and with ethnicity being highly politizised, EPRDF was forced to find ways to secure its dominant position also in other regions of the country. While a new, more de-centralised constitution was written, the peoples of the outer regions were soon disillusioned by the new government, complaining that the new constitution was mere cosmetics, trying to conciel that the real power still remained in Tigray. Against this backdrop conflicts re-erupted in the regions of Afar, Oromyia and Ogaden.
Ethiopia has also been involved in conflicts with neighbouring states. At different points through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the country fought Somalia over the Ethiopian Ogaden region. In 1998 an interstate conflict erupted with neighbouring Eritrea over the two countries' common border. Relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea had deteriorated after Eritrea gained independence and when a border quarrel broke out with Eritrean troops entering an area previously under Ethiopian control, the two states failed to resolve the dispute and it was allowed to escalate to an all out conventional war. The interstate conflict ended in 2000, but the question of the demarcation of the border remained problematic for a long time.
In the realm of secondary warring support, Ethiopia sent troops in aid of the Somali government in its fight against the SICS (Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia) from 2006.
Both in the context of the intrastate conflicts and in the context of the political process, the country has seen the use of one-sided violence. Furthermore, Ethiopia has been the scene of numerous non-state conflicts between different ethnic groups, some occurring between pastoralist communities and others pitting pastoralists against agriculturalists. Common for most of these conflicts have been that they have worsened as a result of continued draughts in the region.
Since 1946, Ethiopia has experienced the interstate, intrastate, non-state and one-sided categories of UCDP organised violence.

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