Ethiopia won that war at a huge cost but the prime minister outmanoeuvred or sidelined his critics within the party, and emerged more powerful than before. Mr Meles was marked forever by his years in a guerrilla movement, when sloppiness or lack of discipline could lead to the death of comrades and the failure of a mission.
He himself was austere and hardworking, kept a very tight grip on even minor details of government and dealt ruthlessly with any signs of dissent within the leadership. The couple had three children and lived, by all accounts modestly, in a small house inside the old imperial compound in the centre of the capital, Addis Ababa.
He was known to enjoy playing tennis but did not take holidays and almost never smiled. The one time when he was seen relaxed and smiling - at the country's millennium celebrations - wearing Ethiopia's comfortable traditional dress and dancing with his wife, everyone talked about it for days.
Under his leadership, a closed and secretive country gradually opened to the outside world. Despite his own Marxist roots, he welcomed outside investment. Big foreign companies are coming in - especially in the agricultural sector - and skyscrapers are rising above the capital. State- or party-owned companies dominate the economy while land is still owned "by the people", making it impossible for farmers to buy or sell their farms.
And Ethiopia is still a tightly controlled society, retaining the old system of Kebeles - local committees which oversee almost every aspect of daily life. For a time Mr Meles was an international favourite, the preferred face of a "New Africa", praised for his emphasis on grassroots rural development and his government's relative lack of corruption. He was also formidably intelligent, an extremely articulate speaker and a welcome ally in the US war on terrorism. It is free to read online — please support us so we can keep it that way.
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