Mehal Sefari

Mehal Sefari
Active	1850 - 1936
Country	Ethiopian Empire
Branch	Ethiopian Imperial Guard
Type	Infantry, Cavalry
Size	5 Combat units roughly of Brigade size
Garrison/HQ	Ankober, Addis Ababa
Patron	Emperor of Ethiopia
Engagements	First Italo-Ethiopian War Battle of Amba Alage Battle of Mekelle Battle of Adwa Second Italo-Ethiopian War

Mehal Sefari (amharic: መሃል ሠፋሪ) was the Ethiopian Imperial Guard during the reign of HIM Menelik II. The unit grew from Menelik's personal Guard, although there are oral histories that link it to the elite fighting unit of Atse Tewodros II led by Fitawrari Gebrye. As Gebrye's military unit was among the few of Tewodros that remained when most of his army left, the assumption is not unreasonable if not conclusive. The title "Mehal Sefari" however was not used by any of Tewodros' units, nor by any other previous military unit.

The Mehal Sefari's earlier roles were providing security for young Prince Menelik under the leadership of the later Dejazmach Germame. Upon the death of Atse Tewodros, 3 men — Wagshum Gobeze of Welo, Kassa Mircha of Tigre and Menelik of Shoa — were declared Atse. Kassa marched on Welo, defeated and imprisoned Gobeze, he marched south to Shewa to face Menelik who had gathered his forces and awaited him. Both rulers assumptive, Yohannes by virtue of arms left for him by the British and Menelik by blood sought reconciliation, Menelik agreeing to accept Yohannes as his Suzerain, much to the relief of the latter whose small, though well-armed forces were no match for the Shewan Army. Menelik's Army, though with fewer artillery pieces, had superiority in men, equipment and mounted cavalry. It would also have been fighting on home turf. Yohannes' spy sent to observe the Shoans is said to have come back to tell the Emperor "I thought clouds had descended on the ground, but it was the Shoans and their multitudes in their tents."

Atse Menelik took this opportunity to continue to arm and train his men, dispatching men to the South and West in poses of providing security for the Emperor of Ethiopia and an elite infantry division. It was part of the organizational structure of the Ethiopian regular army as one of the 4 divisions that comprised the regular army. The Ethiopian Imperial Host included the 40,000 men and women of the Regular Army and the approximately 100,000 men and women of the National Guard/Biherawi Tor/. The Kebur Zabagna (as it was later reconstituted under Atse Haile Selassie I) was based at Addis Ababa.

Richard Pankhurst dates the creation of the Imperial Bodyguard (then known as the Mahal Safari) to 1917, when the Regent Ras Tafari (later Emperor Haile Selassie I) assembled a unit under his direct control from men who had trained in the British army in Kenya, as well as a few who had served under the Italians in Tripoli.^[1] In 1930, the Regent invited a Belgian military mission to train and modernize the Ethiopian military, which included the Kebur Zabagna. The unit was organized in three battalions of trained regular infantry armed with rifles, machineguns and mortars; one battalion consisted of men from the earlier Mahal Safari. The Kebur Zabagna also had one heavy machine-gun company. It was commanded by Ethiopian graduates of Saint Cyr, the French military academy, at the time of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.^[2] As a unit, the Imperial Bodyguard only participated in the Battle of Maychew (31 March 1936), but afterwards many of its members joined the various groups of the Ethiopian resistance.

Following the return of Emperor Haile Selassie to Ethiopia in 1941, the Kebur Zabagna was reconstituted, and a Swedish military mission aided in its training. Men for the Kagnew Battalion, which fought in the Korean War, were drawn from the Imperial Bodyguard.^[3]

"It remained the elite force of the empire," notes historian Bahru Zewde, "until discredited in the wake of the attempted coup of 1960." That unsuccessful coup had been planned by its commander Brigadier-General Mengistu Neway, and his brother Germame Neway.^[4] In 1961, it numbered nine battalions; in 1969 some 7,000 men. In 1974, the Commander was Major-General Tafessa Lemma. The Kebur Zabagna was disbanded after the Derg consolidated their hold on Ethiopia.

Notes

1. ^ Richard Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia (Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie University Press, 1968), p. 562
2. ^ Bahru Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia, second edition (Oxford: James Currey, 2001), p. 148
3. ^ Bahru Zewde, A History, p. 186
4. ^ Paul B. Henze, Layers of Time (New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 254f.