Every ten or fifteen years, a major famine strikes Ethiopia. And every time the world is called upon to come and to help save lives. The world extends its generosity unfailingly. Yet the problem persists. For anyone who has taken the time to study the problem, it is obvious that the twin problems behind the catastrophe are always the same: bad weather and bad governments. Ethiopians can't do much about bad weather. It is be beyond their control. But bad governments? That is another story. The governments may be incurably bad, but even then, as bad as they have been, they have had an uncanny ability to do what it takes to survive long enough to do a lot of damage to their people and to the country. They have been extraordinarily skillful in extracting resources from the donor community to stay in power. For example, Emperor Haile Selassie and the Derg were good at playing Cold War politics to their benefit, if not the country's. The TPLF has been better at playing the game than both of its predecessors combined played. It has exploited the misfortunes of its distressed population to attract resources from the donor community to permit the ruling ethnic group to maintain a tight rein over the country.

The TPLF regime has been extremely skillful in orchestrating its people's distress to attract funding to augment its national budget, and to cover its current account deficits. In this it has had the support of the local UN agencies and Non Governmental Organizations, as partners with the government in what can loosely be referred as the Emergency Relief Lobby. The UN Team's endorsement of the request for US$190 million initially put forward by the Ethiopian government's disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission is a case in point. The package was initially put together by an organ of the Ethiopian government to provide budgetary support for the government's activities disguised as relief emergency to gain sympathetic support from the donor community. The UN agencies and the NGOs know for sure that Ethiopia has been routinely diverting relief supplies for the war effort. They know for sure that for one of the world's poorest countries, Ethiopia has been spending hugely to maintain a huge arsenal of tanks, heavy armory, artillery, and the largest army in sub Saharan Africa--all these at a per capita income of US$110. The NGOs know, as do their home countries' Addis Ababa based embassies that external assistance meant for development has been going to build Ethiopia's army. Even when the international community began to object to the diversion of resources by withholding or delaying loans and grants, the NGOs and the UN agencies have colluded with the Ethiopian government to repackage Ethiopia's financial needs in the form of emergency relief assistance. This is the only way to read the UN's latest appeal.

Recently the World Bank has advised Ethiopia that the Bank would not approve any new projects until Ethiopia signed the OAU peace proposal. One of the affected projects is the Health Sector Development Program for which Ethiopia had sought US$100 million credit from the International Development Association, the first installment in a five year program. The health needs in Ethiopia are painfully clear. Too many Ethiopians die every year from preventable childhood and maternal illnesses. Ethiopia spends US$1.70 per capita on health, probably the lowest in the world. Thus Ethiopia needs the IDA credit very badly, but if the trade off is signing the OAU peace proposal it once championed, it appears that the minority government would rather risk meeting the health needs of the majority of Ethiopians than give in on Tigray's territorial ambitions. For example while 587, 000 Ethiopians have access to primary health care currently, the IDA credit would have expanded access almost ten fold, to 5, 000,000 over a five year period, and for all Ethiopians by 2017. While health stations cover 44,509 Ethiopians at present, the IDA credit, the TPLF is spurning, would have expanded coverage to 255,000 Ethiopians over the same period. Under the full life of the health project, Amhara region was slated to receive 18 percent of the funding, and Oromia, 23 percent. Tigray's share was seven percent. Simply put, the territorial ambition of a ruling group that comes from six percent of Ethiopia's population has decided to sacrifice the health needs of the other 94 percent.

The IDA funding the minority controlled government is at risk of losing because of its intransigence on the peace process, the TPLF is trying to replace the funding through the back door, in the form of emergency relief assistance. Some of the program objectives in the IDA application reappear in the emergency relief application. Furthermore since money is fungible the minority government hopes that if the emergency relief funding comes through, Ethiopia would easily be able to transfer other funds to pay for the deficits and foreign currency shortages it has been experiencing since the war started. What is interesting is not that Ethiopia has been trying to get around the World Bank, rather UN agencies would attempt to help Ethiopia bust the modest restrictions the World bank and the International Monetary Fund have put in place until Ethiopia agrees to make peace.

The United Nations Country Team based in Addis Ababa has called on the donor countries to contribute US$190 million to provide food and non food relief assistance to 8 million Ethiopians, and 250,000 refugees, mostly Somalis. The request has three objectives: to meet the needs of victims of natural disaster; those internally displaced because of the war; and the needs of refugees. The appeal on behalf of Somali refugees is most ironic. Over the last several years repeated incursions, and the last year outright invasion by units of the Ethiopian army has emptied swaths of Somalia border communities of their populations. In effect the Somali refugees in Ethiopia were created by Ethiopian military occupation of their land. Now Ethiopia wants the donor community to pay US$57 million to help rehabilitate and possibly repatriate Somali refugees Ethiopia made homeless in the first place.

The US$190 million appeal is dotted with projects that fall generally under development categories. The cost is inflated with the addition of transportation and other cost, which often means whatever TPLF companies, would charge to deliver food to the areas in need. For example it takes just one day to deliver food to areas in Tigray and Wollo if the World Food Program were to insist on the closest port of entry for the food shipment. The TPLF , however, rather not use the most efficient port of entry, but rather take the port that maybe as long as ten days away from the destination. As long as the WFP will pay the exorbitant transportation cost, the TPLF has no incentive to use the most cost-effective transportation. TPLF owned truck companies make huge profit since they are paid by Metric Ton/Kilometer. Thus out of the US$190 million the UN has requested about US$156 million is marked for food, transportation, and other costs. The transportation and "other" costs component will eventually end up in TPLF's pocket. The remaining US$34 million is dotted with spending plans on projects the government would have had to pay either out of its normal budget or from project funding Ethiopian had been expecting but is not getting. But the intention is clear. The TPLF government is trying to repackage projects the World bank and a few other donors have declined to fund until Ethiopia agreed to the OAU proposal as emergency needs to make them veto proof.

The UN Team characterized the crisis facing Ethiopia as a hold over from last year, which in turn was averted "through rapid response from donors." The Team warned that "if adequate assistance is slow in arriving, the crisis certainly will not only return, but will be much larger in magnitude and severity and certainly more costly and difficult to mitigate." Lurking behind the warning but not stated in the document was the morbid reminder of the 1985 famine, which took the lives of one million Ethiopians. The donors were in effect being asked not to let 1985 happen again.

Equally left unsaid was last year's curious timing of the request for emergency food aid on behalf of 7 million Ethiopians the U.N said were at risk of starvation, and Ethiopia's massive recruitment, training, deployment of troops, that preceded the ferocious battles at Badme and Tserona. The casualties from the Badme/Tserona confrontations run into the tens of thousands from both sides, creating the need for emergency aid the current UN appeal is meant to address. It appears that the UN Team has simply dusted off last year's appeal except the size of the population at risk to have been raised from 7 to 8 million Ethiopians. And true to form, and thwarting all peace efforts, Ethiopian troops are on the verge of another attack on Eritrean positions, setting the stage for another round of casualties that will probably be the basis for future UN appeals for emergency assistance to Ethiopia.

We are in another "February-March" which means Ethiopia will unleash another human wave attack against well-fortified Eritrean positions. The casualties will be horrific. They always are. But as in the past the minority government will minimize the enormity of the human loss, and very few of the Addis Ababa based NGOs or UN agencies will say much. What Ethiopia needs now is a lot of food for its one million strong army, food it cannot cover from its treasury. As in the past, it is looking towards friendly UN agencies and NGOs to make the case for more emergency food aid, knowing full well the food will go to feed the soldiers. According to the UN's latest report of Ethiopia's latest calamity, Ethiopia urgently needs 250,000 Metric Tons of food for 2.3 million people during the April-December 2000 period. Although the majority of the populations in distress are victims of drought, 349,837 of these are said to be internally displaced because of the border conflict. Of these, 272, 000 are in Tigray for whom the UN is requesting 46,452 Metric Tons of food aid. Tigray accounts for six percent of the country's total population, and 12 percent of those in distress, but 18 percent of the total food aid is scheduled to go there. Parenthetically, the bulk of Ethiopia one million strong army is stationed in Tigray.

Very few of the internally displaced were moved out of their areas because of Eritrean shelling. Rather they were moved by Ethiopian authorities as a precautionary measure for fear of Eritrean retaliation to the massive Ethiopian attack of February and March of 1999. Once people were intentionally displaced, the TPLF government turned around and has been asking funds from donors to assist the internally displaced population of Tigray. A few months before the February-March 1999 offensive, Gebru Asrat, the President of the Tigray Administrative Zone informed the population to be displaced that donors had pledged to help rebuild Tigray after the war. People left their homes and farms with the understanding that the international community would help rebuild Tigray.

The question is: how should the world respond ? The answer is not by any means an easy one. The world remains haunted by the emaciated images of mothers and toothpick legged children clutching empty bowls during the last Great Famine of 1985. Relief workers descended on Ethiopia from all parts of the world, ostensibly to help, to do good, but then staying there because they were doing well. They made a good living by providing help to the needy, and when the needs were substantially ameliorated, they came up with a new justification for staying over. Now they said Ethiopia needed assistance in making the transition from relief to development. Given their influence in the multilateral agencies and their home countries, the NGO became important channels for distributing relief as well as development funds.

The TPLF government early on recognized the NGOs importance as magnets for external funding, and befriended them. The Relief Society of Tigray (REST) worked closely with several NGOs in funneling funding towards Tigray, and in return the NGOs received political support for working in Ethiopia. It is no accident that 85 percent of all international aid to Ethiopia went to Tigray., according to Theodore Vestal's latest book, Ethiopia: A Post-Cold War African State (Praeger: 1999). Professor Vestal's source was an anonymous U.S. Embassy staffer in Addis Ababa. The quid pro quo arrangements served the interests of the TPLF and the NGOs. Thus when REST began diverting relief supplies for the war effort, the NGOs who knew full well what was going on were too compromised to say anything. In fact staff members of some of the NGOs took sides on the war. They wrote letters in their hometown newspapers in support of Ethiopia's position on the war, in part to get even with Eritrean government because it threw them out of the country, and in part to ingratiate themselves with the TPLF. Like REST and the UN agencies, the NGOs have a vested interest in relief aid coming to Ethiopia without interruption.

Non Governmental Organizations, working closely with REST and the local UN agencies, have formed an iron triangle, a form of Relief Emergency Syndicate, to insure the constant flow of emergency aid without doing much to eliminate the conditions that created the need for relief in the first place. As anyone should know by now, more than anything else, it is the absence of peace, the heavy military expenditures, the diversion of relief supplies for military use, that have left millions of Ethiopians destitute, hopelessly dependent on international charity. Obviously the donor community finds it more expedient to use its surplus grain to feed the hungry, than to summon the courage to compel Ethiopia to accept the OAU peace proposal or face adverse consequences. The NGOs will feed the hungry, even if that means keeping them alive until they go to the war front to die.

So how should the world respond to the latest call for disaster relief for Ethiopia ? Surely the world cannot, and must not remain silent when there is genuine emergency anywhere in the world. That there is emergency in Ethiopia cannot be doubted. The question is, What is the best way of providing emergency relief without giving the minority controlled government an opportunity to fill its coffers with money intended to help the poor, or with diverting supplies for the war effort initially intended for the poor ? It should be clear by now that as far as the TPLF is concerned the US$190 million was intended to soften the blow to its economy from the self inflicted hits of the "no war, no peace" strategy originally designed to strangle Eritrea's economy.. The TPLF will have no incentive of settling the war peacefully as long as it knows it can count on the donor community bailing out Ethiopia's economy when TPLF's "no war, no peace" strategy begins to boomerang as it already has.

The UN appeal is filled with requests for funding for projects that should come from the normal government budget. It should not be hard to disaggregate the emergency food needs for other spending plans. If it is deemed necessary to fund the UN appeal, then donors must inform Ethiopia that for every non food related expenditure the donors are required to pay for, they would offset dollar for dollar from future development loans and grants. At some point the minority government has to be made to choose between war and peace, between development and destruction. If it continues to squander scarce resources on a military adventure, in opposition to the OAU and the entire world community's opinion , then the TPLF will have to confront the wrath of the Ethiopian people. In the end, only the collective disgust of its own people will stop the TPLF from plunging the country into unimaginable destruction and despair.

If the TPLF insists on prolonging the region's agony, then there is a price that it has to pay. It has to understand that the world community cannot continue oiling the minority government's war machine. For example, donors must tell the Ethiopian government that it is her sovereign right to use whatever ports it wants to patronize, but the world should not be asked to pay for Ethiopia's political choice. If Asab is the closest port of entry to a drought stricken area, donors must insist in paying ocean freight up to Asab. If Ethiopia prefers Mombassa, then it has to make up the difference out of her pocket. Donors must not be a party to the economic strangulation of Eritrea. Nor should they have to subsidize Ethiopia's war. If emergency assistance is to be provided to the truly needy, then the question becomes what the donors ought to do to insure that their acts of generosity do not, directly or indirectly, support the war effort Indeed they know that money is fungible--it can be moved from place to place without leaving any traces.

Donors must also reexamine the role of NGOs in dispensing emergency relief.. Ethiopia based NGOs have hopelessly compromised themselves by working closely with the Relief Society of Tigray, the principal conduit in the diversion of relief supplies for the war effort. The link between war and emergency relief supplies has to be broken. Unfortunately the NGOs have not exhibited any zeal for championing a peaceful settlement of the dispute than they have in ensuring that the flow of relief supplies remains uninterrupted. Donors must address the misuse of relief supplies before the world opens its wallet. If not their unexamined generosity will only set the stage for another round of horrific casualties that will necessitate another appeal for more emergency assistance.