explanation:
last october, americans became aware of the tragedy taking place in ethiopia and responded with the largest outpouring of humanitarian assistance in memory. relief agencies attempted to supply food and assistance to famine victims as quickly as possible; everyone assumed that the famine was the result of a drought - a "natural" disaster. soon, however, because of difficulties in getting food to many famine victims, agencies began to question whether this famine was totally nature-made. the results of cultural survival's research in early 1985, the first systematic research on the causes of famine in ethiopia, however, confirms that famine is not merely a result of the lack of rainfall. moreover, programs implemented by the ethiopian government assure that famine will continue in regions for another year and will spread to additional areas which have had abundant rainfall.
cultural survival conducted a survey with 250 famine victims living in the sudan. some had entered eastern sudan directly from their homes in tigre, the area most severely affected by famine. others had been forcibly resettled in the south by the government and later fled as refugees to the sudan. a third group of refugees had fled when their homes in the southwest were taken by the government for its resettlement program.
causes of famine in the north
interviews conducted with randomly selected famine victims from tigre in eastern sudan indicate that insects, drought and ethiopian military policies were the three leading causes of declines in agricultural production. most of those interviewed stated that army worms were the main reason for crop failure.
army worms can destroy a crop overnight, but the long-term stripping of the region's productive assets by the ethiopian military was no less debilitating. ninety-five percent of the famine victims who fled to the sudan before the end of 1984 reported that in their villages the ethiopian army had burned crops in the fields and grain they had harvested. the army, they said, never stole the grain, it simply destroyed it.
more than one quarter of those interviewed reported that the army had stolen their farm equipment - ploughs, seed bags, leather straps and tools. when asked about the relationship of the activities of the army to agricultural production, one man recalled that in 1984, soldiers had come to his village, chopped up two ploughs, made a fire and then cooked an ox they had taken from a neighbor.
even though virtually all of the tigrean refugees in sudan are from liberated areas, the army is able to penetrate most of these regions, destroy property and exact tribute. a third of those interviewed had been forced to pay taxes and make contributions to the government.
government feeding centers in the north, famine victims claim, are used as bait, to control people and make them dependent on food handouts. the ultimate goal of the government, they insist, is to use food to convert the agricultural production system in the north from one based on individual peasant producers to one based on state, collectivized farming.
the resettlement program
the cornerstone of the government's program to alleviate the famine is its "voluntary" resettlement program which is intended to move famine victims from overpopulated, infertile areas in the north to fertile, "unsettled" areas in the south.
yet not one person interviewed who had fled the resettlement areas had gone there voluntarily. while initially there were some volunteers, they were a minority and many of them reportedly regretted their decision even before the move had been completed.
the majority of those interviewed who had fled the resettlement camps claimed that they had not personally been hard hit by the famine. on average, those from tigre who were interviewed claimed that they had produced 80% of their subsistence, cereal needs in 1984. in addition, on average, these "famine" victims had had more than 22 head of livestock at the time of their resettlement. one man said he was taken by the army while he was selling mangoes he had grown on his irrigated farm; another claimed to have been taken from his farm while he was threshing grain.
everyone insisted that they had been separated from members of their family by the move. men were taken without their families, pregnant women without their husbands and mothers without their young babies.
the trip to the south was grueling. water and food were distributed only once a day if at all. vehicles were packed and many people died en route. the seats of the airplanes were removed so that 350-400 people could make the trip; people were prodded with sticks so that more could be loaded. children had to be held above adults' heads during takeoff and landing to avoid being crushed.
