it was a force of 40,000 + tplf's forces, and they still lost, to poorly armed oromo peasants from a few areas. and of course, when it's civilians [oromos] vs a well funded, trained, and high on khat, murderous militias; there's gonna be more civilian casualties.
small struggle? pffft, it was a huge struggle and it led to several deaths, even bodies littering the streets of addis ababa, not only was it internal within the derg, but the eprp vs derg in the urban areas, then you have the army fighting on several fronts, all before they were even equipped with modern equipment that they eventually got from the society.
somali's were repelled from dire dhawa and harar, they tried already back then and lost.
and i like how you skipped past my points, because u know it's true, poor 3rd world countries like ours, can not sustain such operations for long, occupying lands and keeping them is one thing, winning the first battles in a major war is another.
it takes millions if not billions of dollars in equipment and funds, manpower, and etc to do that, something somalia would not have been able to do for long.
In the post Cold War era does the withdrawal of armies from direct rule in most countries herald an end to their role as actors in domestic politics? Is it indeed sensible to assume that political intervention by the military has been more or less permanently superceded? Drawing on the 20th...
books.google.com
you can read for yourself that, it wasn't til 1977, when mengistu executed his last rival, and was confident of his full power over the govt, sir.
i know you wanna exaggerate the power of the somalis, and the weakness of us ethiopians, but ummm...yeah