Word: eritrea
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ETHIOPIA. The last time famine visited, the rains had failed for three years and people were already dying before the world awakened to the tragedy. This time most of the country had a better than normal harvest in 1988 and crop failures are confined to the northern provinces of Eritrea, Tigre and Wollo. Moreover, there is food in the relief pipeline; last week the United Nations' ) World Food Program announced an additional $8 million in emergency food aid, and the European Community raised its pledge $12 million...
...insurgent armies battling Mengistu's troops. Mengistu so far refuses to let relief convoys enter rebel-controlled territories for fear the food may go toward feeding the insurgents or the trucks may be ferrying arms to them. His obstinacy follows a year of humiliating defeats for his forces in Eritrea and Tigre...
What makes this situation doubly frustrating is that distribution networks now exist in Eritrea and Tigre -- if only the government would put them to use. But the organizations are controlled by the rebel fronts. The Mengistu government might be less obdurate if the food were funneled through the Joint Relief Partnership, a group of five Ethiopian churches without ties to any of the rebel groups. In response to heavy international pressure, Mengistu hinted that the government might work with the churches to open "corridors of safe passage" through the hardest-hit regions. But he has yet to give formal approval...
Already the world's poorest country, Ethiopia faces famine again. In the northern provinces of Tigre and Eritrea, drought has cut crop yields 85%. The U.N. estimates that 4 million people are in danger of starving and will need emergency food aid. An international relief effort is at work, but in the civil war between the rigidly Marxist government of President Mengistu Haile Mariam and rebels from Tigre and Eritrea, denial of food is a key weapon for both sides. The main relief agencies would like to bring supplies to the insurgents across the Sudanese border instead of via government...
...string of battlefield defeats, the frail Ayatullah Khomeini grudgingly submits to "God' s will." -- Would peace between Iran and Iraq send oil prices skyward once again? -- Contra hard- liners threaten new battles in Nicaragua. -- An album of stark photographs from Ethiopia' s rebellious and famine- plagued province of Eritrea...