was consistent and invaluable. The local population shared food and resources with fighters, provided them with safe havens, and most critically, they supplied the TPLF with timely intelligence. In retrospect, it is apparent that the 1978–1985 period further strengthened the TPLF. The Derg's increasingly alienating intervention, the Front's handling of the famine and of the refugee problems, as well as the foreign connections it built through its mission in Khartoum, all enabled the movement to mobilize and better equip more fighters and prepare for a change from guerrilla to frontal battles. Also, in the mid-1980s, developments within the TPLF led to a conceptual change from a struggle for the liberation of Tigray to that of all of Ethiopia. They established their headquarters in caves in Addi Geza'iti, some 50 kilometres west of Mekelle. The Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement (EPDM), a TPLF-loyal splinter group from the EPRP, used caves in Melfa (Dogu'a Tembien). The TPLF succeeded in turning the catastrophic famine of 1984–85 to its overall advantage. In early 1985 it organized a march of over 200,000 famine victims from Tigray to Sudan to draw international attention to the plight of Tigray. Its humanitarian branch, the Relief Society of Tigray (REST), established in 1978, received large amounts of international humanitarian aid for famine victims and small-scale development projects in liberated Tigray. In 1984-1985, the TPLF redirected Western aid intended for starving civilians in order to purchase weapons. In July 1985, a congress of a few hundred selected cadres established the Marxist–Leninist League of Tigray (MLLT). The MLLT was conceived to be the nucleus of the future Marxist-Leninst vanguard party for the whole of Ethiopia. The MLLT invited the genuine revolutionaries within the ranks of Derg regime, which was then busy organizing its own communist party, the Ethiopian Workers' Party, to join it. After the congress, the TPLF and its mass organizations were ruthlessly brought under the control of the MLLT, dissenting cadres among them TPLF-co-founders Gidey and Berhu, were purged. In December 1988, the TPLF and EPDM founded the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) as the nucleus of the envisaged United Democratic Front. In spring 1989 first the MLLT and then the TPLF held a congress. Abbay was elected Chairman of both but towards the end of 1989 Meles became the chairman of both organizations. In May 1989 the EPDM established the Ethiopian Marxist-Leninist Force (EMLF). In July 1989 MLLT