By Yilma Bekele
The news from home is not good. We are doing it again. If I remember right this is the third or fourth time around. The first was in 1974. The whole world wept with us. Over 200,000 people died in Wollo alone. The famine sealed the fate of the Imperial regime.
The next double famine in one country was the 1984-85. There was famine in the north (Tigrai) and famine in the south (Oromia). This famine prompted the famous concert ‘Live Aid’ which raised over $100 million US.
We were faced with food shortage again in 2000. The West was happy that the ‘early warning system’ they set up worked. Our people died, but not at a higher rate they said. Our country, our people, the word ‘Ethiopia’ has become a synonym for hunger.
There are certain deficiencies one cannot overcome. Things like your location on planet earth is one. But we are lucky to be located at the confluence of civilization. We are blessed with being the cradle of civilization in its truest sense. We have a climate that is the envy of the world. You can travel from the Semen Mountains on top of the world to Danakil lowlands below sea level to the Awash Valley, the Rift Valley with beautiful Shala, Zuwai, and lovely Langano, and south to Arba Minch. We have everything going for us.
We can be the breadbasket of East Africa and Arabia. What went wrong? Why are we dying of hunger? Why are we relying on donations and good will of the West to survive? Are we so stupid and dense that they have to come from Oxford and Harvard to find out why we go hungry? What is it about food that it is such a powerful weapon?
We are hungry and destitute for variety of reasons. The single most important cause of hunger is ‘lack of sovereignty’. We are not in charge anymore. This trend did not start yesterday. We have been sliding towards this hellhole of ‘neo-colonial’ camp the last forty years or so. After assuming power the TPLF minority regime was too happy to facilitate the eventual take over of our country by the industrialized west and international bankers.
The mafia clique in charge is doing this not because they are evil, nor because they have a hidden agenda to destroy Ethiopia and liberate Tigrai. That is just a smoke screen. The people of Tigrai are made to feel insecure by waving Amhara Nationalism. The Amhara are made hostile towards all of Tigrains by overplaying the non-existent over development of the region at the expense of others. Meles and company are doing this because that is the only way they can stay in power. TPLF is not a mass based organization. In today’s Ethiopia they have no single interest group they can count on. Their main constituents are the foreigners.
On planet Earth the most vital resource is food. We all get sidetracked by this talk of oil, gold and other rare natural resources. If you think about it without food all others lose their value. Without human being the Earth will be another ball among billions in this vast wonderful universe we call home. At the moment this is the only place where life is known to exist. Without food to sustain us we will not exist. This is exactly our problem in Ethiopia. We do not have enough food to sustain us. But what happened to our food?
We are but just another victim of globalization and the new international order. The military regime, which assumed power after the ‘74 famine, was in the words of our beautiful son Teddy Afro ‘le lewte yalfeterew seltan lai seweta’ situation. The world was polarized between the West and the East and the Derg gravitated towards the Soviet Union. It was a time Russia’s power and influence was ascending and the US was on a retreat mode. The Soviets poured in arms and Cuban solders to reel us into their orbit. The illiterate and cruel Derg mowed down the most experienced older generation and the most educated new generation of our country. We became an empty shell of our former self.
We borrowed heavily from the World Bank and International bankers to purchase arms to fight internal wars. We were forced to buy food since production came to a standstill due to war on all fronts. There was EPLF, TPLF, OLF, EPRP and other LF’s all raising arms against the Fascist regime. It was inevitable. The center collapsed. The beginning of the dilution of our sovereignty was underway.
The high debt, the complete collapse of the economy and the general hopelessness permeating the nation opened the door for outside powers to rearrange society in their own interest. The TPLF that rode into Addis was indebted to foreigners more than the Ethiopian people. The World Bank, IMF and International bankers were ready with all the necessary programs and ‘economic therapy’ for the new government to sign. The clique that did not have the necessary tools or capacity to grasp the new situation was happy to oblige.
This is what Michel Chossudovsky in a wonderful research paper wrote:
‘In Ethiopia, a transitional government came into power in 1991 in the wake of a protracted and destructive civil war. After the pro-Soviet Derge regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam was unseated, a multi-donor financed Emergency Recovery and Reconstruction Project (ERRP) was hastily put in place to deal with an external debt of close to 9 billion dollars that had accumulated during the Mengistu government. Ethiopia’s outstanding debts with the Paris Club of official creditors were rescheduled in exchange for far-reaching macro-economic reforms. Upheld by US foreign policy, the usual doses of bitter IMF economic medicine were prescribed. Caught in the straightjacket of debt and structural adjustment, the new Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE), led by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – largely formed from the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – had committed itself to far-reaching “free market reforms”, despite its leaders’ Marxist leanings. Washington soon tagged Ethiopia alongside Uganda as Africa’s post Cold War free market showpiece.’
The IMF and the World Bank are good at this game. They have managed to penetrate the economies of Eastern Europe and Third world countries at will. They have an age proven way of operation which no country have been able to say no to. If they were a criminal organization you can say they have a certain ‘modi operandi’ known to law enforcement. In a very simplistic way all their victims have the following in common.
· Preferably a dictatorship, a military junta or corrupt crony capitalist state.
· A seemingly growing economy.
· Local currency pegged to the dollar.
· Rampant speculation in real estate and currency trading.
· Financial institutions under heavy debt to trans national banks.
When these conditions are met the game is set. The crisis is invented. The foreign banks call the short-term loan in. The currency speculators start hitting the foreign reserve. The desperate government calls in the IMF. They are there the next day with new terms and conditions. It has happened to the following countries.
· Mexico 1994 known as the ‘Mexican Peso Crisis’ The peso fell by 35 percent against the dollar in three days. IMF approved 48billion loan to prop up the peso.
· Thailand November 1997. Bail out 3.9 billion.
· Korea December 1997. Bailout 55 billion.
· Indonesia. 1998. Bailout 43 billion
· Brazil. December 1998. Bailout 30 billion.
The G7 countries banks were protected form the effects of giving excessive loans to a poor and corrupt creditor while the those countries economy was saddled with further debt
Compared to us all these are giants. What do they want from us?
What we got today is as important as what we could be tomorrow. The trans nationals are the new colonialists. Control comes in many forms. A weak corrupt regime is a fertile ground for their operation. When they show up during a certain point in the crisis like the collapse of the Mengistu dictatorship they come with what they call ‘a policy framework paper’ (PFP) The new game plan is trade liberalization, wage freeze, open markets, hasty privatization and new labor laws among a host of changes to make it easy for the Banks and Agro-businesses to operate freely.
We know what happened in Ethiopia. State assets were sold out (transferred) to TPLF organized companies. Land that was illegally confiscated by the Derg was reconfisiscated by the new masters. New labor unions were organized for all trade and professional groups. Teachers and social workers were let go. Price subsidies to farmers was stopped. Price control was lifted. The ‘Kelel’ system was set up in the name of federalism but a Bantustan in nature. Dagmawi writes ‘the ethnic nationalism represented by Kuma Demeksa and other servile ethnic politicians is referred to as “Castrated Nationalism”. The organization of society into ethnic nations and its top down control via castrated ethnic parties was the governing strategy in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.’ Look at both of them now. So much for ‘castrated nationalism’ as a tool for self-determination.
The most important mission of neo colonialism is the control of the food system. We are number one victims of this practice. Giant Agro-business took control of our farm-based economy. It was not a physical take over. That is old fashioned. They gave grants and loan subsidies to the regime, which in turn used the capital to consolidate its hold on the peasant farmer. Seed and fertilizer came under government monopoly that in turn was controlled by trans national agro business conglomerates. According to Chossudovsky ‘Pioneer Hi-Bred positioned itself in seed distribution and marketing, Cargill Inc established itself in the markets for grain and coffee through its subsidiary Ethiopian Commodities’. This symbiotic relationship serves the two parties at the expense of the third, the peasant farmer. Three important names in this are Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill Inc. Our wheat, barley; maize, teff, sorghum and other Ethiopian seed variety have become genetically mapped and patented properties of the agri businesses. What this means is our farmers cannot save and plant or exchange the seeds without breaking the law.
The poor Ethiopian farmer is victimized from many sides. He does not own the land. He cannot raise capital. His seed has been confiscated from him. Fertilizer is out of his reach. Since the ’84 hunger more than 8 million have been locked in what is called a ‘famine zone’. There is no way out. The current ‘give away’ of land to Sudan pales in comparison to the outright robbery of our unique seed supply. We will never get it back. We can reclaim what Sudan is trying to take but the prospect of going against treaties enshrined in their World Trade Organization (WTO), Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreements and other neo colonialist tools is very remote.
It is not good to bite the hand that feeds you, but circumstances have to be taken into consideration. The IMF, World Bank and the trans national corporations make the existence of the corrupt mafia regime possible. The policy they formulate to benefit them selves in turn causes untold misery and pain to our people. The ruling elite they prop up to facilitate their control is destroying our identity and our home. Their callous policy towards us is the cause of famine. Are we supposed to thank them for dumping on us genetically engineered grain that is banned in Western Europe? Is it true that we are being used to ‘launder dirty grain’ in the name of aid? Why is genetically manipulated seed given out with ‘food aid’? Does this cause a further deterioration of Ethiopia’s genetic pool of indigenous seeds?
What is bizarre about the current famine is that the International Organizations and NGO’s are appealing for help while the Ethiopian government is busy denying the extent of the problem. They seem to be angry by the 8 to 12 million figure being quoted by the media. The Prime Mister himself is upset about the conspiracy by the western media to tarnish his image. Instead of ‘one hungry citizen is one too many’ the regime is setting the record straight by claiming the number should not be no more may be 75,000 children dying. I guess that is an acceptable number to perish. As far as you and I are concerned, it comes down to the same old question. What are you going to do about it?
I will leave you with a timely quotation from Indonesia in the aftermath of their ‘crisis’ in 19998.
“”It is paradoxical that the IMF is willing to dictate terms to Suharto when it comes to managing the economy but not when it comes to fundamental economic rights,” an Indonesian human rights worker and researcher using the pseudonym ‘Aryati’ told a Congressional committee… While it is apparently acceptable to the IMF that political power is monopolized, it absolutely insists that the debt be democratically distributed.”
Resources used in the preparation of this article.
*Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia, by Michel Chossudovsky
*David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism
*Dagmawi
*Anuradha Mittal, Co-Director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First, in Oakland, California.
*Shiva – The threat to third world farmers.
*IMF– Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand, Korea
*Sang Mok Ahn – The IMF Korea Bailout – A Korean Nationalist’s View
11 thoughts on “Cry for mother Ethiopia”
I agree with Elias
Let us support each other
Gobeze Entebaber ende!Wogen enrda!
A well organized and thoughtful piece. Ethiopia and Ethiopians have one and only one problem, and we have clearly known this problem for more than 8 decades. Good enough, we also know the solution but we could not manage to solve it!!
PROBLEM: lack of government
SOLUTION: remove the so called junta in power
HOW TO SOLVE IT: only via armed struggle. The rest SIMPLY do not work!
THE OPEN PROBLEM: Who, how, when, where,….. operate armed struggle???
Tip: First remove opposition parties working for the legitimacy of the junta.
Hellow Fellow country Men/Women,
If we continue crying about starvation and other disasters, we cannot go anywhere until Ethiopia is wiped out from this planet.The cause is the woyane TPLF evil and blood thirsty creature. There are enough water suitable for producing food in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is the sixth when it comes to usuable water. People can make irrigation if they are allowed but not.
Time is running out. It is time to get rid of this evil blood thirsty mercinary and criminals from the face of the earth.
Ethiopian muste rise ant fight this evil creatures. Otherwise crying shall never save the people and the country.
Ethiopia Prevails.
Yes we can get together and cry for mother Ethiopia!
We have been doing that for such a long time and our eyes seems to be getting tired from the endless cryings as a result of which may be needing to do something else too.
Fatalistic and defeatist world view, or stating the problem as an end in itself is not the answer. But proactivity and challenging the problems from their roots and finding fresh and new solutions are the essence. THAT IS TAKING THE BULL BY ITS HORNS! No disrespect is meant here though.
Yes, various conspiracies and robbermanships of the international fiancial and market systems being devised and run by the Neoliberal economic ideology is weighing on the very weak and frigile back bones of poor Ethiopians and pressing them firmily down to the dry and hard ground.Hmm…!
Yes, local minority merecenary dictators are killing poor Ethiopians as a matter of routine and forcing them in to modern day slaves and beggars by taking away every thing and anything of the meager possessions meant for lives and basic livings, and throwing the too much scarce resources in to the senseless mad man’s mother of all idiot’s unending wars.
“Divide and rule so that facism may mashroom” is a tactical practice and slogan of the parochial dictatorship.
The rest of the dictator’s money ends up in the dictorship’s secret bank accounts.
At the same time, poor and dying Ethiopians are being bombarded by the dictator’s empty propaganda to the effect that Ethiopia is making dramatic economic growths never seen before. That is to say, a beautiful magic cake high up in the sky, or MANA from the heavens.
Yes nature is some times hard on people and the environments.
But most countries and societies get organized, united and solve their multiple propblems including the negative impacts of neolibralism, dehumanizing and impoverishing medieval dictatorships, nature based periodc disasters and other forms of problems and challenges.
External or nature based problems are not applicable only to Ethiopians alone to which they own exclusive negative bondages, but are world wide problems to say the least.
For example, why is Israel, a country with no known natural resources and located in the middile of vast deserts and other hostile environments flourishes with dynamic economy and exporting prime quality goods including exotic fresh fruits and vegtables and attracts world wide tourists to go there and spend pleasurable holidays?
Why is Finland a natural resourceless samll nordic European country is one of the top technologically, economically, socially and politically developed society and assiststing other underdeloped countries and societies on a global scale, over and above its own and even hosting global refugees and immigrants within its own territory?
List of working and successful societies and countries can be long irrespective of the known challenges nd obstacles being equally faced by all on this planet earth.
Hence, one of the main question is whether a country possesses good governance and representative democratic institutions and solid governmental structures with all of its genuine checks and balaces for all of its citizens down to the last person.
You can’t go any where or travel any distance with the bad governance and corrupt scarce resource robbing and squandering unrepresentative dicattorial BAD management of society. It is the prime cancer that sopils any and everything to start with.
Worse yet, lack of viable, diverse but united consensual opposition with broad focus on the big picture and the common good for all may promote favourable working and better survival environments for spinless dictartorship which in turn perpetaues endless misery and continouse s under developments.
In that case we should only sit on the fense and keep documenting about the unfortunate behaviors of the neoliberal and natural calamities facing humanity, rather than getting together and reducing the negative impacts of these phenomena while taking advantage of its positive feaures and converting them in to national resources for the creation of human welfare and well beings for ALL.
Instead of Wishing Start Washing away those crimnals.
Hi, wagne I write before yesterday,if we simple talk it is not bread for the people as Aba jafer say the cause is”wayne” what we do is to fight those devile& to help the people that is it!!!!!!!
“well organized and thoughtful piece. Ethiopia and Ethiopians have one and only one problem, and we have clearly known this problem for more than 8 decades. Good enough, we also know the solution but we could not manage to solve it!!
PROBLEM: lack of government
SOLUTION: remove the so called junta in power
HOW TO SOLVE IT: only via armed struggle. The rest SIMPLY do not work!
THE OPEN PROBLEM: Who, how, when, where,….. operate armed struggle???
Tip: First remove opposition parties working for the legitimacy of the junta.” I defenitely agree with you,we need to destroy those non functional organizations like EDU,EPRP,OPDEO,MEISON,even KINIGIT AND THE LIKES and creat one patreoitic democratic party to stand up and bring chenge in a very short period of timefor the country.
“Why are we starving?” It is called mismanagement of recourses stupid! As long the leaders of Ethiopia, even those that would come after the Weyanes are long gone, do not place the priority of the nation in order, Ii am afraid the people of Ethiopia will remain condemned to suffer. Like Elias stated in the other piece, one shouldn’t even consider of using some agricultural recourses for the generation of fuel when the fuel for the survivability of the human race is at stake. It simply does not make any economic and moral sense. The Weyanes may be notoriously characterized by the following three things:
• Cheating, lying or otherwise misinforming their constituents in broad day light,
• Showoff, over exaggerating or bragging about their non existent ability to achieve anything worthwhile
• Quick to blame all their misfortune on Eritrea or any of the oppositions
Hiy everybody let do the fristing frist.Let our eyes to open our heart too.cry first to the one our blood.let is feed them and we fighet for evil.stop bleming someone do your part. forgat the crimnals for one day. feed one baby and we all fight.
It is Breakfast in The Hell again in Ethiopia. That is the title of a book written by an Australian medical doctor who came to help victim of hunger in Wollo and Tigray in 1985.
He began his story about Breakfast in Hell from the Hilton Addis and he tells his excruciating humanistic experience while he was trying to help dying Ethiopian children or adults every morning in Ethiopia during
the rule of Megistu Haile Maria. Jonathan Dim blebby video Taped what he discovered in Wallo and was suffering how he could ever smuggle the news . This Australian doctor did write his tragic memoirs very quietly. I salute him for his great help to people of our country and his great little book that put the conditions of hunger and drought in Ethiopia very vividly.
People with power and money never cared much except chasing their egos. That was what was being played in Addis while our too helpless and too destitute citizens were starving to death. The powerful while they were choosing what was for diner, breakfast or lunch in big cities such as Mekele and Addis Ababa, Adama and Dire Dawa the poor Ethiopian peasant were dying in masses.
He did not want to enjoy the trendy and dazzling breakfast served to him and other NGO workers at all, his mind would not go away from the scenes in Wallo or Tigray, he used to come to Addis sometimes to take care of some business and he stayed in the famous and beautiful Addis Hilton. It was too harrowing and too powerful to wittiness the death of citizens while a dictatorial government was decorating streets of Addis Ababa for his party inaugurations. It has the same feel and the seem scenarios to it just now in Addis Ababa.
He was especially very mad at the journalists who just sport the usual hunting gears for the news and walk around Addis Ababa and send out their messages or news to their head Qauaters now and then. He was also mad at some fat individual who were double dipping at everything that came for breakfast at Hilton Addis every morning. Because he always saw the dying numbers of people at Dubti and Tigray.
He was trying to help people and wanted to save as many people as possible but it was impossible to do so for their condition was beyond medical help and assistance, most people at those camps were at the verge of death. So the nurses and the doctors had to select and brand people into groups. They were separating people into the ones who were dying and the ones who were hopeful to survive. They were chalking them up by making a white cross on the heads of the dying ones with markers.
It was very tragic situation and while they were doing that
the scavengers birds were sitting on the trees waiting for
human bodies as animal carcasses. He imagined these days, nights for hours and he was not able to say anything except frustrating and getting mad at the governments, NGO
s and journalists.
He hated to eat and drink while hundreds and thousands were dying because they did not have breakfast to eat of dinner to give to their dying little ones. He felt he was in Hell.
that was why he titled his book Breakfast in Hell.
Now I feel the same thing that the good Australian doctor felt. After I saw the pictures of the dying people in the BBC and other world news media website. I am feeling we should not eat breakfast in Hell.
Foot note: acceding to Times of London Russian grossed 11 billion dollars from arms sale to Ethiopia during Megistu.
sabbataa Dubbii
Yilma Bekele has it right for the most part, Ethiopia has been and still is under neo-colonial control since WWII. I agree with him that no government in Ethiopia has popular basis so the only option they have is to be dependent on foreign powers and their banks. The only one thing I would like to correct Mr. Yilma is there are a few countries the western powers couldn’t control despite every try, they are China, India, Vietnam, today’s Russia and Eritrea. There are also two more countries giving them headaches and are working hard to destroy their economies, they are; Iran and Venezuela.
In Eritrea’s case the world bank and the IMF tried to force Eritrea to accept their economic model in Paris in 1994, when Eritrea refused they waited for the country to crumble under its own weight, when that didn’t happen they ordered Melles to concuct a non-existent border dispute to destroy
Eritrea, they financed Woyanne and even actively participated by giving them satellite intelligence, that didn’t work, when war didn’t work they even tried bribed a few high ranking government officials and corrupt diaspora based “intellectuals” to overthrow the defiant GOE. The reason I am writing this recent history is to prepare my Ethiopian brothers and sisters for the hostilities you will face from the current neo-colonial powers if you decide to take charge of your affairs. These neo-colonia powers use every means possible to destroy any country that tries to take charge of its destiny, they will even enlist other African countries who are their stooges to invade that country if all else fails.