In The History of a Difficult Child, the Asmelash family turns to the radio for news about Ethiopia's revolutionary government, the Derg, which formed in 1974: they listen to reports about the famine in northern Ethiopia, charges by Human Rights International of human rights abuses by Chairman Mengistu, and, as the years pass, updates about progress that guerrilla groups make against the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE; the new name for the Derg beginning in 1987).

Mengistu's PDRE was felled by a combination of separatist guerilla groups, all waging warfare against the government with the goal of independence. One of the most crucial was the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). At the time, Eritrea was a purportedly autonomous state within Ethiopia (the two states together were known as the Ethiopian–Eritrean Federation). An Eritrean independence movement had been organizing since the 1960s, even before the Derg took power. By 1977, the EPLF seemed close ...