man-made disaster?
Jean-Baptiste Naudet
Ethiopia has been fighting its neighbour, Eritrea, since May 1998. Two of the poorest countries in the world, they are now both calling on the international community to help them deal with a drought that could, they say, result in famine for millions. Is the disaster they face a natural one, or is it man-made?
Ethiopia accuses the West of waiting until there were pictures of starving children before responding to the crisis, and warns that another famine is on the horizon. Yet it has spent millions of dollars on arms that are being used in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people.
Several hundred thousand people died in the 1984/1985 famine. Faced with a new “natural calamity”, Addis Ababa has asked to be sent one million tonnes of food aid.
Meanwhile Eritrea is asking for $100- million this year to cover the food needs of 850 000 people (out of a population of three million), of whom 500 000 have been affected by the war and 350 000 by drought.
But diplomats and aid workers in the region believe the two countries are suffering more from the war than from drought. They argue that the food crisis has less to do with the lack of rainfall – which has not yet reached abnormal levels – than with the countries’ insistance on fighting over 300km2 of rocky terrain.
Moreover, according to observers in Addis Ababa, the war is indirectly but “largely” responsible for the food crisis in the south, since all the country’s material, financial and human resources have been mobilised for the conflict with Eritrea.
In Eritrea, too, observers say the food crisis, which has been put down to drought, is the result of the war, which has concentrated men on the frontline and displaced 250 000 people from farming areas into refugee camps.
Even more worrying is the possibility that international aid may be fuelling the war. Diplomatic sources in Addis Ababa describe the figures put out by the Ethiopian authorities and by the United Nations – which claim that eight million people are “threatened” with famine in Ethiopia – as “fanciful” and “exaggerated”.
A foreign observer in the Ethiopian capital says: “The massive import of wheat, which is the country’s main food source, will enable the government to bring down inflation, at a time when all its hard currency has been spent on arms purchases.”
Ethiopia stands accused, if not of inventing the food crisis, of exaggerating it in order to avoid being economically crippled by the war. Since the beginning of hostilities it has found itself virtually cut off from international financial aid. Its only hope of massive aid is to try to secure help for “a humanitarian emergency”.
But the food crisis, the drought and the “pre-famine” situation in Ogaden also seem to have been dramatised and exploited – unsuccessfully – by the international community in a bid to revive the flagging peace process at a time when fighting looks set to flare up again after massive purchases of heavy arms.
“Perhaps Ethiopia should look into the possibility of putting the fighting on hold, at least during this period of famine,” suggests Helga von Strachwitz of the German Foreign Ministry. Europe and the United States insist that aid for Ethiopia, which has been landlocked since Eritrea’s independence, should pass through the Eritrean port of Assab.
But while Von Strachwitz’s suggestion has been accepted by Eritrea, it has been rejected by Ethiopia, which refuses to allow the famine to be “politicised”. In other words it does not want the Eritrean port to be used or a ceasefire to be introduced during the humanitarian operations.
The war has been continuing during the “pre-famine” period, the press was told by the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, because “we wanted neither the war nor the drought”.
Ethiopia would like the international community to finance the enlargement of port facilities in Djibouti and the improvement of the highway that leads there. That would mean it would no longer need to rely on Assab – until such time as it seizes the port, as is claimed by many people in Asmara, who believe that to be Ethiopia’s aim in the war.