Kefagn Patriotic Front

Kefagn Patriotic Front (KPF) is a political faction in Ethiopia. KPF emerged from a group of soldiers in the army of the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam who refused to serve in the Eritrean war.

Originally known simply as "Kefagn", KPF evolved from the created to combat the incursions of the Tigray People's Liberation Front into Gondar Province. With the fall of the Mengistu regime this group declined in strength but was not eliminated. John Young recounts that in May 1993 he encountered government soldiers on the western shores of Lake Tana who had been wounded in clashes with dissidents in the area. He was told that these rebels were led by General Haile Meles, a former Derg official.

Later in 1993, General Haile was wounded, and evacuated to Sudan, where government officials protected him and refused Ethiopian demands for his extradition. He continued to be a source of controversy in Sudanese–Ethiopian relations until he was granted asylum in New Zealand in late 1999. By the time he left Sudan, the KPF was in disarray, although the transfer of most of the area west of Lake Tana to the Benishangul-Gumuz Region, served to reactivate the group. Since then the Kefagn, which had since renamed itself as the Kefagn Patriotic Front, has received some assistance from the Sudan Armed Forces.

Patriotic Front

The Patriotic Front can mean:

Fatherland Front (Austria)

The Fatherland Front (German: Vaterländische Front, VF) was the ruling political organisation of "Austrofascism". It claimed to be a nonpartisan movement, and aimed to unite all the people of Austria, overcoming political and social divisions. Established on 20 May 1933 by Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss as a one-party along the lines of Italian Fascism, it advocated Austrian nationalism and independence from Nazi Germany on the basis of protecting Austria's Catholic religious identity from what they considered a Protestant-dominated German state.

The Fatherland Front which was strongly linked with Austria's Catholic clergy, absorbed Dollfuss's Christian Social Party, the agrarian Landbund and the right-wing paramilitary Heimwehren, all of which were opposed to socialism, free-market capitalism and liberal democracy. It established an authoritarian and corporatist regime, the Federal State of Austria, which is commonly known in German as the Ständestaat ("corporate state"). According to the Fatherland Front, this form of government and society implemented the social teaching of Pope Pius XI's 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo anno. The Front banned and persecuted all its political opponents, including Communists, Social Democrats—who fought against it in a brief Civil War in February 1934—but also the Austrian Nazis who wanted Austria to join Hitler's Greater German Empire. Chancellor Dollfuss was assassinated by the Nazis in July 1934. He was succeeded as leader of the VF and Chancellor of Austria by Kurt Schuschnigg, who ruled until the invigorated Nazis forced him to resign on 11 March 1938. Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany the next day.

Patriotic Front (Zimbabwe)

The Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe was a coalition of two communist parties: the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) which had worked together to fight against white minority rule in Rhodesia.

In 1980 elections ZAPU contested as Patriotic Front whereas ZANU contested as ZANU-Patriotic Front.

In 1988 the ruling ZANU absorbed ZAPU to become Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) for good.