Word: ethiopias
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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...
...paradox of the swelling exodus is 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...
Those tactics appear to be part of a government strategy to force an end to Africa's longest-running war. For 23 years, Eritrean guerrillas have been battling governments in Addis Ababa. The prize is control of their 45,400-sq.- mi. homeland, a former Italian colony absorbed by Ethiopia in 1962 during the rule of the late Emperor Haile Selassie. In the mid-1970s, the insurgents were joined in the struggle by Tigrean guerrillas demanding greater autonomy for their 25,400-sq.-mi. province. The insurgencies have intensified in the years since the 1974 coup against Haile Selassie that...
...harshest charge being leveled against the Mengistu regime is that it is using Western food aid as part of its "pacification" program. Though Ethiopia says it has 211 famine-relief centers operating chiefly in its northern provinces, all in towns under government control, Mengistu's opponents maintain that little food is reaching most of the residents of Eritrea and Tigre. The main reason: the government refuses to distribute aid in "unsafe" regions, meaning those under guerrilla control. Those who visit government food centers must display identity cards showing that they belong to state-controlled peasant organizations or neighborhood associations. Says...
...street corners and in coffee bars Israelis excitedly discussed the rescue operation that had airlifted thousands of starving Ethiopian Jews from refugee camps in Sudan and brought them to the Promised Land. Declared one proud Israeli: "The rest of the world is talking about the famine in Ethiopia, and we are doing something about it. It makes me feel good." But two days after the covert seven-week mission, code-named Operation Moses, became public knowledge, it came to an abrupt halt. Just before a plane carrying some 200 Falashas landed in Israel, officials of Trans European Airways, the Brussels...