Ethiopia Twin Plagues of War and Famine

By Michael S. Serrill

The problems begin at Massawa, the Red Sea port where hundreds of dock workers labor night and day to unload grain and other food destined for Ethiopia's hungry millions. Cranes are in short supply, as are trailers to store the grain. While wheat from the U.S. and Canada usually comes in bags, much of the grain from Europe does not and thus takes longer to unload. Grain sometimes arrives soaked with water; a recent shipment of milk powder was contaminated by oil.

Beyond Massawa, the problems multiply. With truck convoys that deliver the food to regional distribution centers frequently harassed by antigovernment rebels, the government's only solution to the problem is to close the roads -- and no food gets through. Airlifting is far more reliable: the giant C-130s can fly across the bone-white moonscape from Massawa to the interior city of Mekele in just half an hour. The unloading crews at the airstrip are a sight to behold. "Move it, move it, go ahead forward, go ahead forward, time is passing, time is passing," chanted a group of 15 barefoot men two weeks ago as they quickly emptied a transport of 22 tons of grain contributed by the European Community. Still, there is no guarantee that the supplies will ever reach their final destinations.

Two wars continue in Ethiopia: one against drought and famine, the other between government forces and well-armed insurgents. Long-suffering Ethiopians are the losers in both. In recent weeks rebels in the northern provinces of Eritrea and Tigre, where close to 3 million people are at risk of dying from starvation, have escalated their campaign against the government by ambushing food convoys, attacking grain-distribution centers, mining roads, firing on transport planes, and rocketing airfields. By last week the civil war had virtually halted the relief program in Tigre. Regional warehouses are mostly empty because roads are too dangerous for trucks to navigate or have been closed by the government. Says an official of the International Committee of the Red Cross: "In a month or two, we will be in a serious famine situation. It will be really dramatic."

The irony of Ethiopia's latest major food crisis is that only a few weeks ago international relief officials were optimistic. "This must be one of the best organized relief efforts ever," says David Morton, operations director of the U.N.'s World Food Program in Ethiopia. More than three-quarters of the 1.3 million tons of cereals needed in 1988 is already in the international pipeline bound for the east African nation; supplies are assured through October. Many countries have responded to the call for help with generous donations, including the U.S. with 250,000 tons, and the Soviet Union, Ethiopia's chief ally and a net grain importer, also with 250,000 tons.

This year's relief effort contrasts sharply with that mounted after Ethiopia's last drought, in 1984-85, when an estimated 1 million perished because a massive aid program was not begun in time. During that famine, Ethiopia's rebel groups left food convoys relatively untouched, but they abandoned their hands-off policy last October, when the Eritrean People's Liberation Front attacked a U.N. convoy on its way to Mekele and destroyed 23 trucks. Since then 106 more vehicles, most of them operated by Ethiopia's own relief agency, have been waylaid by guerrillas. Last week the vital road from Massawa to Asmara, capital of Eritrea, was under siege again, despite the fact that the rebels were heavily outnumbered by Ethiopian troops armed with Soviet-built MiG-23 fighter bombers and Czech-made T-55 tanks.

Relief officials estimate that 80% to 85% of northern Ethiopia is controlled by insurgents. Many areas can be reached only by air through services operated by the U.N., Caritas and the European Community. But airlifting is expensive -- one plane can cost as much as $800,000 a month -- and of limited use because it does not get the food into the remote villages where it is most needed. Says a Red Cross spokesman: "The solution is not the airlift, but | open roads. Not even air-dropping is feasible with the current military situation."

The war heated up in December, just as food stocks were running out in drought-affected areas. Eritrean rebels, who have been fighting the Ethiopian government since their province was annexed in 1962, launched their biggest offensive since 1985 and were joined in the assault by the Tigre People's Liberation Front, which has been in revolt since 1974. The army of President Mengistu Haile Mariam counterattacked three weeks ago, but to little avail. In the clashes that followed, Tigrean rebels overran several towns along the Asmara-Mekele road, including Wukro, a major food-distribution center. The rebels retreated, but as of last week no food convoys were able to get through. Said a Red Cross worker: "You have as many as 10,000 people gathering at Wukro, and we have nothing to give them."

Under international pressure, the Mengistu government is taking steps to make Ethiopia better able to feed itself. In recent years farmers who were not put out of business by drought did not bother to grow surplus crops because they were forced to sell their grain to the government at low prices. Last January, Addis Ababa raised those rates by about 8% and announced that farmers had to sell only half of their surplus harvest to the government. The Mengistu regime has also throttled back on plans to resettle hundreds of thousands of peasants from the arid north to the more fertile south.

The government's attempts at agricultural reform have been sidetracked by the increasingly vicious civil war. Western analysts in Addis Ababa compare the military situation to that in Afghanistan: well-motivated rebels fighting an army of conscripts who are poorly fed and poorly paid. "The army is just not fighting back," says a Western diplomat in Addis Ababa. Mengistu himself has been making frequent trips to the north to oversee military operations. But the rebels are said to be gaining ground daily while relief officials watch their distribution lines crumble. Brother Gregory Flynn, who works for the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat, put it this way: "We have trucks, we have planes, we have the food pledges. We have the structure in place, but people will starve because of the war."

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Rome and James Wilde/Massawa