TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/85/85capts.7

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                                                                                May 20, 1985

ETHIOPIA

The Politics of Famine


A ruthless regime compounds the plight of the starving


The saga of Ibnet camp grew more and more curious as the days
went by. First, foreign relief workers watched with incredulity
as Ethiopian officials abruptly ordered some 30,000
famine-weakened residents out of the refugee camp, burned down
their huts and told them to begin walking back to their homes,
many a two-week trek away. Then an official in Addis Ababa, the
capital, dismissed the accounts of a forced evacuation as
fabrications. Eventually the Foreign Ministry issued a
splenetic communique calling the stories "a shockingly big lie:
that betrayed the tendency of "high-ranking officials of the
Reagen [sic] Administration to go berserk once again on their
usually familiar anti-Ethiopian campaign of denigration,
disinformation and falsehood."  Finally, last week, Ethiopia's
Soviet-backed leader, Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam,
conceded that the mass exodus had indeed taken place--at the
command of a misguided local official. The offender would be
punished, he said, and the refugees welcomed back to Ibnet.

Almost forgotten amid the word games was the plight of the
evicted and of the 8 million others in drought- and
famine-plagued Ethiopia whose lives are hanging by a thread.
The Ibnet episode highlighted the ways in which political issues
have complicated and sometimes obscured a humanitarian problem.
It also deepened the unease of Western governments and relief
agencies faced with a leadership in Addis Ababa that accepts
their aid while reviling their principles: "There is a growing
awareness in the relief community of just how ruthless the
Mengistu government is," said Chris Cartter of Boston- based
Grassroots International, one of the relief groups operating in
East Africa. "The question is what to do about it."

The issue has gained urgency in recent weeks as the Mengistu
government has mounted a major military offensive against the
guerrillas of the Tigre People's Liberation Front. The attack,
according to diplomats in Addis Ababa, may be aimed at severing
the pipeline that brings in supplies, including some military
hardware, from Sudan to the northern rebel-held regions of
Ethiopia. But the offensive has also hampered relief convoys
that have been secretly ferrying food from Sudan to at least
160,000 starving people. Because many aid trucks are avoiding
the most dangerous areas, villagers in the Central Highlands,
where the famine is particularly acute, are now cut off from
regular food supplies. "There is a stalemate," says Terry Norr,
a vice president of Mercy Corps International, another U.S.
relief organization. "The military cannot win because it is not
strong enough, and the rebels cannot win because of the
government's support from the Soviets. The noncombatants are
caught between two sides of a vice."

The latest outbreak of fighting also promises to swell the
stream of refugees fleeing into Sudan, which is itself suffering
through a wasting famine. Almost 850,000 Ethiopians have
crowded into Sudanese camps where, often, there is little
shelter or food or water to be found. There is, however, peace.
Mohammed Ali, a gaunt 60-year-old Ethiopian farmer, led his
wife and five children on a ten-day walk to Sudan's Wad Sherife
camp. At the end of the road he found scant sustenance. "I
miss my village," Ali told TIME's Philip Finnegan, "but I am
glad I came. I am afraid of the war. Even if I am hungry here,
I don't hear the bombs and the fighting."

The Mengistu government has also antagonized Western governments
and aid groups with its grand scheme of moving 2 million
Ethiopians, as soon as possible and however possible, from the
ravaged farmlands of the north to the more fertile and sparsely
populated regions of the southwest. In principle, the program
makes a fair amount of sense. In practice, however, some of the
350,000 already resettled have fled their new homes, claiming
that they were relocated against their will. Sometimes, they
report, they were cultivating their fields when they were
suddenly seized and flown south in Soviet transport aircraft;
in the process, many families were torn apart. To make matters
worse, resettled farmers frequently have not been provided with
draft animals or farming tools or seeds. All the while, the
resettlement project uses up funds and transport desperately
needed to supply the hungry. "Tremendous resources are directed
to resettlement," says a Western relief official in Addis Ababa,
"at the expense of all those other people needing famine
relief."

The forced resettlement scheme has further agitated
Washington's already mixed feelings about assisting the citizens
of an unfriendly government. "We don't like the regime," says
a senior State Department official. "It's an abomination. But
we must deal with the emergency."  Not long ago, indeed, the
U.S., which has been the most generous donor of famine
assistance (more than $300 million since last October), lifted
restrictions on development aid to Ethiopia.

Last week, Mengistu made some promising moves. He ordered
increased daily processing of supplies at Assab, Ethiopia's
largest port, where 100,000 tons of grain have been stockpiled
and are going to waste. He also announced that 70% of the
country's commercial trucks would be made available for
shuttling relief goods from Assab to the parched heartlands.

Yet is in the final sad irony of Ethiopia's predicament that,
after a decade of drought, relief workers are, for the moment,
praying for little rain. Early last week, torrential downpours
damaged  5% of the supplies stranded at Assab. Worse still,
heavy rains expected in many areas within the next two months
will render roads muddy and impassable for relief trucks. Above
all, they will increase the likelihood that both contagious
diseases and death by exposure could sweep through the crowded
camps.

--By Pico Iyer.  Reported by Edward W. Desmond/New York and
Alastair Matheson/Addis   Ababa