THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Friday, December 28, 1984
17
'85 CADILLAC CPE DEVILLE
famine relief the highest possi-
ble priority treatment. It costs
$140 to deliver each ton of food.
What is more, Ethiopia does
not qualify for U.S. develop-
ment aid under the Hicken-
looper law, which bars such
assistance to nations.owing out-
standing debts to American
companies. Since the 1974 revo-
lution, Ethiopia has owed U.S.
companies $25 million. Private-
ly, U.S. sources we spoke to
pressed surprise as to why the
Mengistu government had not
settled these debts, which were
unlikely to cost them more than
$10 million after negotiation, at
which point the country could
probably qualify for many more
tens of millions of dollars in
development aid.
Meanwhile a $1 billion aid
package for Africa has been pro-
posed by U.S. Congressmen.
Yet spokesmen for various
religious, private and Red Cross
societies told us that the extent
of the disaster in Ethiopia is on
a far more intense scale than
elsewhere.
"When you see Welo," Phyllis
Dobbins of Save the Children
told us, "you can't believe that
anything will ever grow there
again." Ken Hackett of the
Catholic Relief Service told us
that the disaster in Ethiopia "is
so much worse than in Chad,
Mozambique, Kenya, Upper
Volta — it is on another scale,
another spectrum. The situation
at Korem which the world has
been seeing is just the tip of a
huge iceberg." Twenty four sub-
Saharan countries are reported
to be affected by the famine at
this point.
The arrival of supplies in
Korem, which has consistently
received the most publicity. had
succeeded in cutting the death
0 rate
there by two thirds, from
100 per day to about 30. But as
news of food supplies spread,
more and more people began the
long trek to relief camps. There
are now over 100 such camps,
not all as large as those at
Korem, Mali and Batti, but all
growing. No one is certain how
many more people are too weak
to make the long walk to camps
and are dying in remote rural
areas.
When aid started arriving in
large quantities, the facilities at
the port of Assad were found to
be inadequate and the govern-
ment was accused of gross neg-
ligence. An American consulting
firm was able to help quadruple
the offloading capacity to about
4,000 tons of food per day, an
amount now considered suffi-
cient to handle the expected
food flow, according to U.N. of-
ficials. One estimate is that 1.2
million metric tons of food will
be required in 1985.
Disputes have arisen over the
amount and distribution of food
supplies. While relief workers
consistently told us that sup-
plies were running out at such
major relief installations as
Korem, diplomats and interna-
tional organizations said, they
had food offloaded and it ought
to be in stock for distribution.
Disputes have also arisen over
properly crediting donor na-
tions. Of the 370,000 metric tons
of food now promised to Ethio-
pia, 210,000 tons so far, are
slated to come from the United
States. The Soviet allies of the
Ethiopians have pledged and de-
livered only a minscule amount
of food, but have donated
trucks. In the early days of Oc-
tober, American grain was load-
ed onto Russian trucks at ports
and the Ethiopian media created
their Soviet allies with the
rescue effort, eliminating men-
tion of the United States. In
ranking nations in order of their
contributions, the Ethiopians
also fail to credit the U.S. with
aid which has been channeled
through private and interna-
tional organizations, further dis-
paraging the American contri-
bution.
Congressman Ackerman and
The Jewish province
If it doesn't rain in the
Gondar province of Ethiopia
by February, the remaining
Jews who live there will face
the direct effects of the
drought and famine by April
at the latest. Already the im-
pact of the acute famine to
the northeast is being felt.
Grain prices in Gondar have
risen 140 per cent in just the
past few months. Farmland,
poor and overworked in the
best of times, is cracked and
dry now, with deep fissures
carving through the sparse
crop of Teff, the staple grain,
which is now growing. Ribs
of many livestock stand out
prominently.
Some of the Jews' relatives
from the Eritrea and Tigray
provinces, which are taking
the brunt of the famine, have
come south to Gondar. Most
have joined the army of
refugees — as many as 600,000
by some estimates — who
have reportedly walked west
over the mountains to the
neighboring Sudan. Camp
conditions there are horrify-
ing by all accounts, having
deteriorated far beyond the
control of United Nations
agencies charged with refu-
gee relief. Control of food
distribution by competing re-
volutionary movements com-
plicates matters.
In one small Falasha vil-
lage in Gondar, we saw a
skeletal boy'who had walked
from there to the Sudan, then
had managed to walk back
home again a week earlier.
The emaciated teenager was
already looking better when
we saw him, villagers told us.
E.A.S.
others on the Congressional in-
spection team reported that
there has been a distinct im-
provement in the atmosphere,
and that for the first time public
thanks had been extended by
Ethiopian officials to the United
States for its generosity.
Charges and countercharges
of blame and responsibility have
been leveled by and against the
Ethiopian and the U.S. govern-
ments during the stepped-up
media focus on the famine dur-
ing recent months. Sorting out
facts and figures from propa-
ganda and posturing is no easy
task.
From the Ethiopians has
come the charge that the Rea-
gan Administration heartlessly
delayed committing massive re-
lief that only the U.S. is in a
position to offer. The President
was accused of playing politics
with starvation because of his
reluctance to deal with Mengis-
tu's Communist regime, which
has been firmly allied with the
Soviet Union.
At the same time, it is well
known that Mengistu was clear-
ly warned by international agen-
cies as early as three years ago
that his famine of unprecedent-
ed dimensions was imminent.
The Ethiopian leader, however,
chose to spend $2 billion of his
resources to purchase military
equipment from the Soviets,
who don't extend credit even to
their closest allies. Mengistu, it
must be recalled, faces three in-
creasingly successful insurgent
movements in his northeast pro-
vinces, as well as from Somalia.
The Soviets, incidentally, have
extended aid both to Mengistu
and to the revolutionary move-
ments, which also identify
themselves as Marxist.
Mengistu also horrified west-
ern observers when he spent a
reported $200 million on a lavish
celebration of the tenth anniver-
sary of his 1974 revolution over-
throwing the autocratic rule of
the Emperor Haile Selassie. Not
until that celebration was com-
plete did Mengistu allow access
to the famine region by western
media.
The fact that Haile Selassie's
feudal dynasty was overthrown
only after 250,000 of his people
had perished in what was until
now the most ruinous famine of
the century has not been lost on
the current government. Relief
officials assured us that the
government now seemed totally
committed to the relief effort,
diverting resources from other
development projects to cope
with it as best as they can.
The first western government
to extend dramatic aid to Ethio-
pia was Britain, which parachut-
ed rescue workers and emergen-
cy supplies directly into Korem
right after the BBC had aired its
initial five minutes of graphic
footage of the starvation. This
film was shown around the
world soon afterward and eli-
cited an outpouring of sym-
pathy, supplies, money and
grain.
In fact, spokesmen from other
African nations also suffering
the effects of the drought and
Continued on next page
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