Ethiopia Forgets Its Famine to Concentrate on Civil War

Day after day on the front pages here, farmers from drought-stricken northern Ethiopia speak of a grave threat to the very existence of this 3,000-year-old nation.

But they do not mention the famine that imperils up to 7 million Ethiopians. Instead, they talk of a 27-year-old civil war, which until two months ago the government dismissed publicly as an isolated case of rogue bandits.

“Like our forefathers who stood for Ethiopia’s unity, we the children stand and fight,” declared Izra Haile, a bearded white-haired peasant featured recently in the government’s Amharic-language daily, Addis Zemen.

Izra was pictured holding an AK-47 rifle across his chest and standing on the parched farm he was protecting from those bent on secession from the motherland. “If there is no country, there is nothing,” he was quoted as saying.

Nearly overnight, civil war has supplanted famine as the top priority of the Marxist leaders in Ethiopia, leaving the large Western-sponsored famine relief operation stunned and apprehensive about the coming months.

Foreign aid workers have been ordered out of the northern regions of Eritrea and Tigre, where separatist groups have won important battles against the Soviet-equipped Ethiopian army. Conscripts are being rounded up by the tens of thousands, a stiff war tax has been imposed on the citizenry and a state of emergency has been declared in the north.

“Everything to the war front,” has become the country’s motto.

But as Ethiopia galvanizes for all-out war, Western relief officials estimate that 1 million to 2 million people are now out of reach of food aid. They live in the growing no man’s land between government- and rebel-held territory in the rugged, mountainous north, where crops failed last year. It has been at least two months since food was distributed to those peasants.

Many relief officials and diplomats believe that movements of people are probably unavoidable in the coming weeks, and contingency plans are under way to establish feeding camps for 150,000. In the famine of 1984-85, more than a million people abandoned their farms and villages in a desperate search for food; hundreds of thousands died in such camps, too far gone to be saved by food.

Food Distribution Hampered

Food distribution in the north, where 3 million victims of the drought live, has been hampered by the escalating war since last fall. Rebels have attacked relief trucks, roads have been frequently closed and aid operations have been forced to remain within shrinking areas still under Ethiopian army control.

The international relief effort was paralyzed in April, however, with Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam’s rare acknowledgement of “grim battles” in the north and his call for the country to rally for war.

Government troops retreated to the two major towns in those provinces, and travel by all foreigners--diplomats, aid officials and journalists--was banned, depriving international donors of the independent monitoring they need to make sure relief goods are not misused.

“For three years, famine was a very clear concern and priority of this government. But that has gone by the boards,” said David MacDonald, Canada’s ambassador to Ethiopia. “No one should doubt the Ethiopian people’s commitment to keeping this country together. To give up Eritrea, the front door of the country, is not something that is easily contemplated.”

About 70 foreign relief workers were sent home from Eritrea and Tigre “for their own safety,” the government said, and it asked foreign aid agencies to “temporarily” turn their operations and food stocks over to Ethiopians.

The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross pulled its 30 Swiss delegates out of the north but refused to hand the operations to its local, quasi-governmental affiliate. Instead, the Red Cross locked up nearly 100 trucks, supplies and 53,000 tons of food.

The Red Cross charter requires that its delegates personally monitor relief operations. “What credibility would we have if we told people all our food was being distributed properly? They know we’re not there to watch it,” said Vincent Bernard, a Red Cross official in Addis Ababa. In a fit of pique, the government this month also ordered Red Cross representatives out of Gondar province, where they were distributing food for 210,000 people, leaving a void in the relief network there.

Ethiopian officials say that when the civil strife in the north dies down, they will allow foreigners to return. In the meantime, the government says, it can handle food distribution there without any outside help.

“We trusted them; now they have to trust us,” said Teklu Tabor, a senior government information official. “After all, who cares for Ethiopian people more than Ethiopian people?”

But of several dozen relief officials and diplomats interviewed in Addis Ababa in recent days, few thought the government capable of shouldering the entire relief effort in the north. And the ban on foreigners in the north may stretch for months; military analysts say the government may not launch its major offensive until October.

President Reagan and others have expressed fear that the Ethiopian government kicked foreign relief workers out of the north and installed military governors and martial law so that the army could do what it wanted without worrying about witnesses and international condemnation.

Doctors, Nurses Leave

About half the foreigners who left the north were doctors and nurses. Medecins Sans Frontieres-Belgium withdrew 15 doctors and nurses. They waited for permission to return for more than a month, but most eventually took new assignments in other countries.

Action Internationale Contre la Faim, a French organization formed to fight famine, pulled out four nurses, two doctors and eight technicians from Eritrea, where they were preparing to build two 120-bed mobile hospitals and dig wells for drinking water.

“We’re the friendly hand being extended to Ethiopia, but we’re not being allowed to work,” said Philippe Bories, head of the group’s mission here.

The loss of the Red Cross, which specializes in work in contested areas of the world, was the biggest blow here. Red Cross food distributions had been reaching about 25% of the drought-affected people in the north.

Few Agencies Operating

Now the only agencies operating in the north are Catholic Relief Services, a U.S.-based organization that sponsors a coalition of Ethiopian church relief workers, and the government’s Relief and Rehablitation Commission. The government maintains that its commission is handling 47% of food distribution in the north; Western officials believe that the figure is closer to 10%.

Catholic Relief, which has always used missionaries and Ethiopians to distribute food in the north, is trying to expand its relief network to take up the slack. (Although the separatist groups have small relief organizations, most Western analysts doubt that they would be able to feed significant numbers.)

The United Nations, the European Communities and the United States, among others, provide food, transportation and supplies for the relief effort. Actual food distribution is done through agencies such as Catholic Relief, and the donors monitor the system.

“We used to have triple monitoring--U.N. field workers, the expatriate staff of private relief agencies and our own people,” said James Cheek, charge d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy here. “Now, they have put out all three of the eyes we had for independent observation.”

“We want to give our food to Ethiopia; we won’t play politics with it,” Cheek added. “But the key question is accountability. Right now, we have no way to independently verify that the food is going where it’s supposed to, and we’re not going to turn it over blindly.”

At the moment, food is pouring into Ethiopia. But getting it from the ports to the people has been a serious problem.

Three Hercules C-130 transport planes have continued to fly grain into Eritrea’s capital, Asmara, and Tigre’s capital, Makale. But more than 200 privately owned trucks disappeared into the war effort for most of April, and U.N. World Food Program vehicles were idled until the government allowed four U.N. officials back into the north.

Ships Can’t Unload

Several dozen private trucks recently returned to relief service, and food is again moving in the north. But the truck shortage, and the lack of open roads, left a back-up at the ports. Ships arriving now at Assab, on the Red Sea, must wait at anchor for four weeks before unloading their grain stocks.

Rebel advances and the government’s retreat this year have cost relief agencies nine of 36 food distribution centers in Eritrea. The situation is worse in landlocked Tigre, where only five of 16 distribution centers are open.

One of the most successful centers was in Wukro, north of Makale, where the Red Cross and Catholic Relief dispensed food and cooking oil to 500,000 people a month and doctors from Medecins Sans Frontieres-Belgium treated malnutrition at a local hospital. But Wukro now is in rebel hands, and the relief workers have left. Ethiopia’s air force bombed Wukro a few weeks ago, killing at least 20 people.

The government claims that the modified relief effort in the north is missing only about 300,000 drought-affected people, while most Westerners here put the number as high as 2.4 million.

Some of the disparity is in population figures; no one knows for sure how many people are at risk. The government has estimated that 5 million people are at risk; a U.S. team estimated 6.4 million.

However, even some Western relief officials have begun to doubt the higher figures because there have yet to be mass movements of people in search of food.

“They didn’t have any rain. They didn’t have any crops to speak of. I really don’t know where this food is coming from that keeps them alive,” said Patrick Johns, director of Catholic Relief Services in Ethiopia. “There are certainly people in areas we haven’t been able to get to for a month and a half. But maybe there are just not that many people there.”

So far, 71,000 people have gathered in Makale, but most are living with residents of the city. About 40,000 people who fled their homes in Eritrea because of the war are living in camps around Asmara.

Some Ethiopians may have saved food from relief distributions or from the good harvest in 1986, but most relief officials still expect large, sudden movements eventually. It is a bad time for people to leave their farms, though, because rains already have begun to fall in Eritrea and the fields need tending.

The northern highlands are a crucial region for Ethiopia. Eritrea has the country’s only access to the sea, and over the centuries Ethiopia’s invaders, including Turks, Egyptians and Italians, have come through Eritrea.

Aksum, in northern Tigre and currently in rebel hands, was the birthplace of Ethiopian civilization, and the northern provinces were the heart of ancient Ethiopia. The current capital, Addis Ababa, about 300 miles south, has been around for only 100 years or so.

That long cultural heritage is what sets Ethiopia apart from most of the rest of Africa. As one government official put it not long ago: “When you have 3,000 years of history, you develop . . . not necessarily superiority, but dependability.”

Corruption Rare in Ethiopia

While both petty and massive corruption marble the bureaucracies of most other countries on the continent, it is rare here. Ethiopia has one of the lowest average incomes, per person, in the world. Yet unlike debt-riddled Africa, Ethiopia does not borrow more than it can repay, and the World Bank considers it one of its most reliable Third World customers.

Emperor Haile Selassie, a strong U.S. ally, fought the secessionists in Eritrea until he was overthrown by Marxist military officers in 1974. Those officers have fought just as hard as their imperial predecessors to retain Ethiopia’s northern territory.

The two principal rebel groups are the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, a left-wing group that has fought both Western- and Eastern-supported governments in Addis Ababa since 1961 for the right to secede from Ethiopia, and the Tigre People’s Liberation Front, a Marxist organization that since 1974 has sought greater autonomy for Tigre. Both are said to receive support from various Arab countries.

Ethiopia’s recent military buildup has included accelerated deliveries of arms from the Soviet Union, which has pumped nearly $3 billion in military assistance into this country in the past decade. Ethiopia also staged an early round of the draft, calling 60,000 young men and recalling about 60,000 reservists.

With more than 300,000 troops, Ethiopia’s army is the largest in Africa. By comparison, the principal Eritrean rebel group has about 50,000 troops, and the main Tigre rebel group has fewer than 20,000. But the morale of Ethiopia’s army is said to be extremely low, and the guerrillas have scored several important victories so far this year.

It was those losses that prompted the Ethiopian government to turn its attention away from famine, for the time being at least.

A Western diplomat recently asked a government official: “But what about the 2 million Ethiopians” living beyond the reach of food aid?

“You’re worried about the 2 million,” the official said. “What about the 47 million who will all lose if the country breaks up?”