The 90,000-man march proved Mengistu's theory wrong

Collapsing Empires Stories · Sep 11, 2026 · 15m

A 90,000-man army marches into Eritrea to test a counterinsurgency theory - and a regime stakes its survival on that gamble. Who will it save?

The 90,000-man march proved Mengistu's theory wrong

In this episode, we lay out the campaign that Mengistu Haile Mariam launched in early 1978 and the long insurgency that forced the Derg to make a fateful decision. We describe the forces, the preceding decades of resistance, and ask how sending such a mass of soldiers could fail to secure legitimacy.

Person: Mengistu Haile Mariam

Event: 90,000 soldiers marched north in early 1978

Topic: Eritrean…