Ethiopia: Biting the Hand That Feeds

While aid from around the world continued to pour into drought-ravaged Ethiopia, a government relief official last week paused to discuss the reasons for the tragedy. "What is happening in many parts of the country now could so easily have been prevented," said Dawit Wolde Giorgis, commissioner of relief and rehabilitation. "It needed the horrifying pictures of death and starvation on the television screens in North America and Europe to galvanize the world into taking notice of what was happening."

Dawit's musings infuriated M. Peter McPherson, U.S. administrator of the Agency for International Development. The Ethiopian charges were "just absurd," he said. "Frankly, I think this is the classic example of biting the hand that feeds you." U.S. officials note that Ethiopia's Marxist government had spent more than $100 million on its tenth anniversary celebration last September. Said a Western diplomat in Addis Ababa: "Once they got the anniversary out of the way, they could turn their attention to the drought."