On April 17, 2000, a New York Times editorial entitled "Impending Famine in Ethiopia," presents a caricature of the present crisis. Its claim, that "the current government, led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has been more cooperative with international relief agencies," gives undeserved credit to Zenawi9s regime. The fact is that Ethiopia's presumed "enemy," Eritrea which Ethiopia has been waging a pointless and costly war against on and off for two years, has offered a corridor through its port in Assab, for the international relief effort, but Ethiopia's rulers refused to accept the offer despite pleas from Catherine Bertini, the head of the World Food Program (WFP).

As a result, the WFP has been forced to embark on a wasteful $2.7m port improvement project in Djibouti expanding the monthly handling capacity of Djibouti's port from 100,000 to 150,000 tons, all because land-locked Ethiopia refuses to use the superior facilities of the Assab port which has easier access to the worst-affected areas. As well as spending several million dollars on improving roads from Djibouti to Ethiopia the WFP have had to add 400 imported trucks to its existing fleet of 550, because most Ethiopian trucks have been diverted to serve its futile war.

The other access point earmarked is the port of Berbera in northern Somaliland. Judith Lewis, a regional representative for the WFP says that the road from Port Berbera is choked with potholes that it takes over an hour to travel just 10-12 kilometers. The larger Port Sudan is also being considered, but the forthcoming rainy season could make the route into northern Ethiopia perilous. Most food aid is expected to come via Djibouti then. However, none of the three extant berths are large enough to accommodate the cargo ships expected in the coming weeks, which will force ships to anchor outside the port and off-load the aid onto smaller boats. Additionally, the Djibouti and Berbera ports lack the shore cranes available at the Eritrean port to unload cargo quickly. Moreover, all of what was Somalia until the government collapsed in 1991 is still classed as a war zone for insurance purposes, making the cost of bringing in ships via Berbera very high.

On average, delivering food from its point of origin to a hunger victim costs roughly $250 per ton. Multiplying that by an expected 1.35m tons of food over eight months gives almost $340m in transport costs alone. Despite the irrational obstacles erected by the Ethiopian government, the U.S. has nonetheless chosen to appease Ethiopia's leaders. Responding to a question about whether relief efforts would be aided " with access to that port [the Eritrean port of Assab] and a corridor through the conflict lines?" Hugh Parmer, Assistant Administrator for Humanitarian Response, US AID, said, "Yes, it would. But the fact is that we don't have that as an excuse for not doing everything that we can do to prevent this famine? I think at the moment what we have to do is we have to do the best job possible to take the Djibouti route supplemented by the Berbera route, succeed." The WFP estimates that 170,000 tones of food a month will be needed to prevent disaster in Ethiopia. At present, Djibouti is able to handle 100,000-110,000 tones, while the port of Berbera can take around 25,000 tones. That leaves a deficit of 35,000-45,000 tones a month. Parmer admitted as much when he said: 'I can't assure anybody that we can deliver enough food through the current distribution system to prevent starvation, I could assure this if we use Assab.'

Drought alone is not enough to make people starve; people will be fed if the government makes it a priority. Drought does not and need not translate itself directly to famine if people have enough reserves, if distribution of resources including food materials is fair. For example, the Eritrean government ran an aggressive campaign to feed its people despite drought conditions similar to those in Ethiopia. As a result, Eritrea was able to meet 90% of its food needs in 1998 and 70% in 1999 -- all this, despite 12% of its most productive population being engaged on the battle front. In contrast, Ethiopia has failed to promote cooperation adequate to save the lives of its citizens.

It takes a famine to wake the world -- and the UN-- up to the fact that Ethiopia's rulers violate human rights with impunity. With the exception of Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, the world reacted with indifference when ethnic cleansing and systematic deportation of Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean descent were taking place. Now the impending famine may have the unintended consequence of helping the regime to continue the war against Eritrea. While the donor community feeds the famine victims, Ethiopia will be able to further squander its meager resources and cash reserves in buying weapons from Russia, North Korea, etc. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based research organization, estimates that Ethiopia spent $467 million on defense last year. [The CIA says the same]

The intransigence of the Ethiopian regime is well known. Even the normally restrained Kofi Annan felt compelled to express his frustrations with Ethiopia's rulers. He said that "there has been an adequate response by the world. We have had food supplies there [inside Ethiopia], they have not been distributed properly, the government could have done a better job of distribution." Coming from the consummate diplomat, this is a major indictment. But this does not shame Ethiopian rulers. As outrageous as it is, they have attacked the international community for not responding quickly enough to the disaster that they themselves helped create. Seyoum Mesfin, the Ethiopian foreign minister, accused that international community was guilty of waiting to see 'skeletons on screens' before answering appeals to avert a new famine. It also needs to be noted that the famine victims are not really of concern to them as they are predominantly Somalis and Oromos. These people are not their constituency and have risen up in arms against them. Ethiopian nationalism is not shared by all the ethnicities in Ethiopia except the Tigreans and the Amhara (the Abyssinians). While Europe was colonizing Africa, the Amhara emperor Menelik II was also busy annexing and expanding Oromo and Somali territories to the south. Repression, divide and rule methods and blackmail maintained Ethiopianism. The core of the current ruling clique comes from the northern province of Tigre, who consist only a minority 6% of the population in Ethiopia and they have shown a remarkable lack of concern for the famine victims, who are predominantly Somalis and Oromos who have taken up arms against them.

In the looming famine in Ethiopia, the War contributes to famine in the sense that the Ethiopian people don't have quite as many different ways of earning money and by diverting attention and resources to war. For example, people used to move from the Ethiopian province of Tigray to Eritrea to earn some money which they'd send home to their families, and that would enable people whose harvests were poor to have a little bit more purchasing power so that they could buy grain in the market. The war put an end to this mutually beneficial economic activity between the two countries. The War also contributes to famine because a large amount of food is set aside for the army.

Relief work is an urgent necessity of course, but also a new attitude toward ruling groups who use the shield of national sovereignty to hide behind when they fail to promote the well being of their country's populations. Zenawi expressed this attitude more explicitly when he said, "In Ethiopia, we do not wait to have a full tummy to protect our sovereignty." Notwithstanding the rhetoric, Zenawi, the ruling clique and the army will be the last to starve. At minimum, Ethiopia must be required to sign the Algiers peace plan sponsored by the United States and the Organization of African Unity (which has already been signed by Eritrea). Rather than feverishly planning to wage another bloody war against Eritrea, the Ethiopian regime must be placed under sustained international pressure to wage war against the twin scourges of AIDS and famine that are ravaging the country. Ethiopia with three million people infected with the AIDS virus ranks third in the world according to the percentage of the population affected in addition to the 8 to 12 million Ethiopians under the spell of a looming famine. Ethiopia desperately needs accountable leaders and a sound development plan that brings it out of the morass that it is in and puts an end to its groveling kowtowing to neoliberalism.

And we must hope that when their stomachs are fed the Ethiopian people will settle their account with the intransigent and newly emboldened Zenawi regime, which has been rewarded with too many carrots from the international community. In particular from the U.S. which continues to play the unfortunate game of realpoilitik by grading its allies in terms of their relative importance to its strategic agenda. The former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia David Shinn was not shy in confirming this policy. He stated: "the U.S has strategic interest in the Horn of Africa in general. Eritrea may have the advantage of the coastline, but so do Djibouti and Somalia. It is very difficult to ignore the key country in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia. The U.S has developed a significant historical relation with Ethiopia and does not intend to replace it with Eritrea's strategic interest to the U.S."