Asrat Desta

Lieutenant Colonel Asrat Desta was a career Army Infantry Officer. He was born to a family of three at a place called Tereko,Bulga in the province of Shoa, Ethiopia presently Amhara region approximately 70 kilometers north of Addis Ababa (capital city of Ethiopia).

As his father was a governor of the district, according to the old Ethiopian tradition, a private tutor was employed for him at an early age. He started receiving proper instruction and guidance in learning how to read and write geez (classic Amharic) and modern Amharic, religion and moral. Also, he participated in some of traditional sports, such as: gena and horseback riding. Gena is a hockey-like game among youngsters in the country side.

Although he was on the right track as far as his education was concerned, it was unfortunate for him to lose his father at the very early part of his life. Nevertheless, as his mom was a very strong woman, and since he was the only son in the family, she became determined to educate him. She sent him to a traditional boarding school for the first time. Continuing his schooling, he went to government schools in two places: first in Addis Abeba and then to a provincial town called Asella and again in Addis Ababa. After completing his elementary and secondary education in these two places, he decided to join the Army as a cadet. So in September 1956, he went to the H.S.I. (Haile Selassie the 1st) Military Training Center (44 kilometers), west of Addis Abeba, from which he graduated as a second lietenant in June 1957. Upon his graduation from the cadet school he was assigned to the H.S.I. (Haile Selassie the 1st) Military Academy (Harar, eastern Ethiopia), as one of the first instructors.

However, in November of the same year he was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, to attend the basics Infantry Officer’s course and then to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for Armor Motor Officer’s Course. In fact, that was his first experience of traveling abroad, for which he had a very special memory.

Upon his return his home he continued to be an instructor at the Academy where he served for five solid years. In addition to his instructorship assignment he has also served as a cadet platoon and company commander and also as MTO. In his capacity as an MTO he has had the opportunity and privilege of being Chief-instructor for Driving and Maintenance instructions of the cadets.

Col. Asrat Desta later assigned to the 3rd Ethiopian Tekel Brigade in the Congo (The Republic of Zaire), in September 1962. Col. Asrat considered the assignment was the most exiting moment in his career the reason was he was wearing two hats. He was acting as a Training and Operations Officer and as a senior instructor for the 3rd Eth-Armored Unimog Squadron; and, secondly he was also a troop leader of the same squadron, thereby carrying the double responsibility of training and command as an acting Captain in Rank.

After his return from the Congo, he was posted at the Ground Forces Headquarters in the Personnel Division in Addis Abeba. Out of all his earlier assignments, it was this assignment that gave him an ample opportunity to go to college.

From September 1963 to July 1964 he went to the University College of Addis Abeba, H.S.I. (Haile Selassie the 1st University) as a Liberal Arts student. At the time he was studying in college, an additional educational opportunity came to him toward the end of 1964 when he won a scholarship award from Linfield College, in Oregon, USA.

During his juniors year Col. Asrat was on the college president’s honor list for attaining a GPA above 3.75. In 1968, after graduating from Linfield College with a B.A. degree in Sociology and Political Science, as a split major, he returned to his country and became an assistant Armed Forces Information Officer in the Chief of Staff’s Office at the Defense Headquarters in Addis Abeba, to which, subsequently, he became the head of that Department, a post which he held for the past one and half years, until the time he came to Fort Benning. In those four years his experiences has increased in dimension as the result of the opportunity of traveling all over the major African, South European, Middle East cities, and also Delhi and Karachi on official business.

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Lieutenant Colonel Asrat Desta (died 3 February 1977) was a member of the Derg, the military junta that ruled Ethiopia during the Ethiopian Revolution.

Following the Derg's assumption of power over Ethiopia in 1974, Asrat, who was a Major at the time, became the chairman of the Derg's information and public affairs committee. He was an avowed Marxist-Leninist, once stating, "We are doing what Lenin did. You cannot build socialism without Red Terror."

A member of the faction opposed to Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, at a February 1977 meeting between Mengistu and his opponents, who included not only Asrat but chairman General Tafari Benti and a number of leading members of the Derg, gunfire erupted leaving both Asrat and General Tafari, as well as six other leaders of the Derg dead. Mengistu afterwards broadcast on Radio Ethiopia that Asrat and his dead compatriots had attempted a "fascist coup d'etat in the capital identical to what had taken place in Chile", and labeling them "fifth columnists" of the Ethiopian Democratic Union and Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party rebel groups.