The Ethiopian Unity Patriots Front was founded by ethnic Nuer ex-officials of Mengistu Haile Mariam's Derg regime. The rebel group's chairman, Thowath Pal Chay, was a ranking member of the Derg. He had served as Illubabor Province's governor in the 1980s, the province's security chief from 1981 to 1985, as Workers' Party secretary between 1985 and 1987, and as First Secretary for Western Ethiopia as well as member of both the National Security Defense Council and the National Assembly from 1987. At the time, he forged links with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), a separatist rebel group active in neighboring Sudan. When Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime collapsed in 1991 as result of the Ethiopian Civil War, Pal fled abroad. He eventually settled in Kenya, and gathered several other former officials of the Derg to organize a rebellion against the new Ethiopian government under Meles Zenawi. The EUPF began its struggle around 1993.