Man-made famine again in Ethiopia

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 22

Man-made famine again in Ethiopia

The ‘Economist* on why the world must continue to aid the starving

T7TTHIOP& IS starving again. . Fl • The rains have failed , in JLLi many'districts, and tens of thousands? of; people ; are C° n * demnedto death unless they get help. Ethiopia's last televised famine, only two years ago, haunts the memory* Decent people in the rich/democracies will want something done, and their politicians wUI not wish to stand accused of callous indifference, for lack of a few shiploads of the surplus grain that the United States and the E.E.C. want to give away. Amid self-congratulation and backbiting, the Ethiopians will probably get some of the help they need, in the wrong form and too late. What will aid do? It will strengthen the dominion of Ethiopia’s ignorant rulers. The weather is the only calamity not directly caused by Colonel Menglstu Haile Mariam and his cronies. Their Russian advisers have taught them to run vast State farms that produce no food. Imitating Stalin’s anti-kulak terror, they have shot “hoarders and saboteurs” prudent enough to store grain against a bad year, and forbidden merchants and truck-owners to make profits by shifting food to dry districts from the lucky ones where it has rained. They have driven out their relatively competent fellowcountrymen who ran the last aid effort, spumed the hopes of Ethiopia’s ethnic regions, and fostered civil war. Free foreign food will further drive down the prices paid to farmers in the districts where it rained. Next time they will grow no more than their own household needs, and take care not to keep stocks. Most Ethiopian villages are far from any road, and can be reached only by mules, most of which have been eaten, or air-

craft, which carry small loads at enormous cost Relief has to be tiapded out from central dumps fn ’Mirket towns and at crossroads: Dumped alongside will be , the. starring, the old, the very young, and the pregnant women, while the fit men follow the brittal -law of survival, and stay with their land and their live-. i tdd: . agencies know, and reluctantiyexpJoit, the power of . television images to jerk tears and cash. In the Blafra war of the late 19605, so did both Government and rebels. They used photographs of dying, children to arouse anger against those they wished to blame. In Ethiopia’s capital now, and in the rebel provinces of: the?? north; the death of the weak, the division of families, the spread of disease, have become weapons for winning friends and cursing enemies. ; What if there were no free food, no camps, no dedicated nurses and improvising administrators from Stockholm or Salford or Strasbourg? Many poor people would die in scattered .> settlements, forgotten by the : world. ; But mankind is a startlingly resilient species. People rooted in their own family places can defy outsiders’ logic, survive and rebuild communities that the cargo-cult of aid would have destroyed. Perhaps the strip of Africa from Ethiopia across the southern fringe of the Sahara desert already holds more people than its fragile soil can sustain — Its underground water drunk up, its grass and fuel-wdod consumed. People helped to survive by aid may merely face a repeated calamity in the next dry year. The Ethiopian Government thinks so, and wants to relocate the people of its arid districts to places that are potentially more

fertile. But .Western partners cannot join in. a human experiment so brutally and incompetently enforced. ?? The ? arguments for doing nothing .are -therefore endless, and intolerable. Help for' the starving may make some of them suffer more, and reinforce the grip of the Government that caused them to starve. Yet something must be done. The rich world’s charitable outburst in 1985-86 saved fewer people than its promoters wished, and did nothing to avert famine’s recurrence. But the altruism of Mr Bob Geldof and others made unselfishness fashionable for a moment, even among politicians. . This proved useful as well as ' virtuous. It launched a campaign of public discussion that enlightened many leaders in the poor countries too. For a moment they reconsidered their knee-jerk denunciations of the selfish rich, and opened their minds to reform of their own self-starving policies. Partly for that reason, ~ economic enlightenment has?’ crept across Africa, offering its?? people some chance to rescue themselves. If Africa comes to expect to be fed, it will never feed itself. A f policy of providing food into the? indefinite future — a work-house policy — would be wrong. Yet at moments of vast desperation and many deaths, the world cannot pass by on the other side. Ethiopia is the extreme case, and so must be faced. Even its benighted Government will change its mind, or be thrown out, one day. There are glimmers of hope, for those who seek hard, in Africa’s other stricken countries — Sudan, Mozambique, for a start. But without a fight against famine, there will be fewer people to hope for. Copyright—The Economist.