People who live in big American cities are familiar with this sight. Drive or walk into a busy intersection and a group of aggressive beggars will assault your senses: they will stand too close as if to say: "I am here. Smell me, feel me, touch me, see me, hear me. I am here." They will demand money, in some cases they will specify how much. Don't give at all or give too little, you will be harangued. "I am a war veteran. ... I am a single father. ... I just got laid off. ... "

Some are genuine hard luck stories who will tug at your heartstrings. When the cost of living is so high that people are one paycheck away from being homeless, it would be callous and heartless to dismiss all claims as bogus. Some are mentally or physically disabled and do not belong in the street but are there, nonetheless, because they somehow passed the test of not being a danger to themselves or society at large. All require our empathy. But there is one group that doesn't require our sympathy: it is the hustler who sees begging as a preferable alternative to working. The difficulty is that the average pedestrian is incapable of making the distinction between the real and the fake.

If you look at pictures of starving Ethiopians--especially children--and you don't recoil in horror and you don't wish that the world would stop everything just to feed its children, then you better go and have a checkup on your humanity. It is truly heart wrenching. Even if you are totally cynical and heartless, you should remember that Eritrea is in the same geographic vicinity and may find itself, despite our best efforts, in similar predicament months if not weeks from now.

Sympathy and understanding, however, does not mean that we should be afraid to ask the tough questions: what was the Ethiopian Government's responsibility in this mess? Could the problem have been mitigated? Does Ethiopia owe its citizens nothing more than alerting the world and alerting the world early of the impending doom?

One of the tricks of aggressive panhandlers is to intimidate you into not asking why they ended up the way they are, anyway. It is considered downright rude, if not immoral, to ask an obviously inebriated, brown-bag carrying wino what he intends to do with the one dollar he is asking of you. "Excuse me I is that toooo much to ask?" he may retort. Dare to ask him why he allowed himself to be in a position he is and he might say, "as if I had a choice! How heartless can you be I you know what? I don't even need your f...ing dollar!"

The leadership of the Ethiopian Government has adopted the aggressive panhandler's attitude. The brown bag it is holding doesn't carry a cheap bottle of wine; it has rare and expensive armaments. It has taken to berating the "white man" (the last refuge of African tyrants) for all its sins. The imperialist white man is guilty of not responding early to Ethiopia's appeals for help. The colonialist white man is condescending for daring to suggest that Ethiopia allocate its resources a bit more wisely. That perhaps you don't need to spend all your money on guns when you can invest in trucks and roads to transport grain. The white man is guilty of being gullible for suggesting that Ethiopia use an Eritrean port.

All of this manipulation comes easily and naturally to the Ethiopian Government. After all, it has made a career out of blaming the West for the sins of the League of Nations (over 60 years ago) for not being sufficiently supportive of Ethiopia when it was attacked by fascist Italy. (Of course, that Ethiopia was liberated from fascist Italy by people with names like Wingate is rarely mentioned.) Meanwhile, the same Ethiopian Government asks for forgiveness and debt relief from the world on the basis that the crimes of Mengistu Hailemariam, its immediate predecessor, have nothing to do with it.

There are two responses to this type of aggressive panhandler. There are those who argue that we should always be generous because by attaching strings and asking tough questions, we may end up denying charity to a deserving victim. Usually, these type of people work for a humanitarian associations, faith-based charities, or some other altruistic organization and guilt-ridden (and commissioned) NGOs. With their limited exposure to the West, the Ethiopian Government may believe that the policy-makers of the world are one and the same as those who distribute the "Gift From The United States" sacks. Why shouldn't they? An American who used to coordinate the distribution of "Gift From The United States" sacks in TPLF-held territories in the 1980s now sits and occupies the loftiest Africa-policy coordination seat at the US National Security Agency in the White House. (Not coincidentally, this is why the Ethio-Eritrean conflict drags on indefinitely) This is why Ethiopia's Foreign Minister, like the wino with a brown bag bottle, can wag his finger and harangue the donors incoherently.

But the Ethiopian Foreign Minister is a few decades behind the times. The Foreign Minister may not be aware of the second response to aggressive panhandling and Ethiopians in Diaspora may prove helpful in advising them of the new reality. The donor nations are now governed by jaded, post-welfare-society political parties. Reflecting the opinions of their over-taxed and exhausted constituencies, the governments of the West now espouse "tough love" policies and, when it comes to Africa, the emphasis is on tough and little on love. The West may not say this openly but it is tired of the leaders Africa has produced since the 1960s: the Mobutus, the Mugabes and the Mengistus, the John Does and the Turabis. The corrupt, the venal and the brutal. The minute it saw a change from this in Meles and Isaias, it heaped praise on them, only to find the two African renaissance leaders, turn on each other.

Fine, Africa may say; we are just as tired of their leaders, too, so stop lecturing us. And we are not the only ones tired of the West; Asia is tired, China, India, Pakistan, Russia, South America, everyone is tired of Western hegemony. Fine, the West might say. Then don't come begging. Stop your tin cup diplomacy and your incessant give me, help me, save me and we may treat you as equal partners. Meanwhile, we will give aid, but with strings attached. In-kind contribution, but no cash. If they give you cash, they will tell you how to spend it. But not before they ask you a million questions.

Questions like what assurances do we have that, instead of feeding your children, you won't go on a spending spree? How do we know that we are not encouraging self-destructive behavior and dependency and we won't see the same haunting pictures a few years from now?

The truth is the world does not know. But as long as the bully with the brown sack full of war toys is holding a precious child in his other arm, the world is compelled to help and send the sacks of grain. And that is why the panhandler can afford to be so aggressive. But there is a price for this and people who are fond of overusing "humiliating defeat" may look up what it means to not being able to feed yourself and to be reduced to begging. Then, if they have any pride left, they will abandon their futile war of aggression.