Word: droughts
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First they arrived in a trickle, which quickly became an ever increasing stream, then a flood. Gaunt, starving, often dressed in rags, thousands of Ethiopian refugees continued to stagger across the drought-stricken northern wastelands of their country last week. Their destination was neighboring Sudan. On their heels came disturbing reports of Ethiopian air force planes strafing refugee columns and bombing villages. As makeshift relief camps sprang up and swelled with alarming rapidity on the Sudanese side of the border, yet another specter began to haunt Africa: the threat that the exodus of starving people would overwhelm the meager resources...
Despite its magnitude, the Ethiopian evacuation is relatively orderly. Traveling on foot for as long as eight weeks from their homes in the drought- ridden northern provinces of Eritrea, Tigre and Welo, the refugees stop at makeshift rest camps provided by two of Ethiopia's major antigovernment guerrilla organizations, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (E.P.L.F.) and the Tigre People's Liberation Front (T.P.L.F.). The refugees move largely at night; otherwise, they might be attacked by Ethiopian air force planes. In one widely reported strafing run on a refugee column last month, Ethiopian jets killed 18 travelers and wounded...
Zeno's comments highlight the fact that behind the images of famine, drought and disease that flicker across television screens in the West, there is another cause of Ethiopia's disaster: civil war. Many of the refugees are fleeing not only starvation but the policies of the Communist government of Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam as it pursues a harsh strategy aimed at subduing two long-festering insurgencies centered in the country's northern provinces. In the process, the Soviet-backed government stands accused of violating promises that it made to Western aid donors, particularly the U.S., that it would...
...that it is taking place while individuals, international charities and governments have begun pouring food and other supplies into Ethiopia at record levels. Typical is the case of Mohammed Idriss, 60, and his family of eight. Their home village is in Tigre (pop. 4 million to 5 million), where drought and famine have struck the hardest. The house they left sits on a hill overlooking one of the Ethiopian government's largest refugee camps and emergency feeding centers. Almost from his doorstep, Idriss could see trucks and aircraft ferrying in some of the thousands of tons of foreign relief supplies...
...poor condition. Said one Israeli involved in the resettlement program: "They are coming here less than ill clothed, less than ill fed and without homes. We have had to start from scratch." In fact, some arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport carrying nothing but water pails, cherished possessions in drought-stricken Sudan and Ethiopia. Many suffer from malnutrition, malaria, tuberculosis, jaundice, typhus and tapeworm. "I had to go back to my textbooks to look up some of these diseases," said an Israeli doctor...