Three Famines

by Keneally, Thomas

  After two weeks in New Delhi, Wavell took to the road again on a ten-day tour of Orissa, where there were pockets of famine, then to Assam and lastly to Bengal. Dacca he found appalling, with corpses strewing the streets. The Parganas district south of Calcutta looked a little better, but ‘pretty grim’. The Bengali ministers, he decided, had neither the intention nor the ability to cope with the food problem.

  Military reconnaissance patrols were sent out on foot or by boat to search for corpses and the starving in each corner of houses and down every alley in the remotest villages. The reports of these patrols were sometimes sent back by carrier pigeons, and if there were many starving in a particular region, other troops would go out with food, bales of clothes and anti-cholera vaccine. And again there was talk of an excellent harvest.

  On 24 June 1944, Wavell sent a personal appeal to Churchill and the government in London, and in return Secretary of State for India Amery wired New Delhi a promise to ship 200,000 tons of grain to Calcutta, in addition to the 250,000 promised earlier that year. Wavell was partially appeased. ‘Still we are getting on. I have extracted 450,000 tons since the War Cabinet regretted that nothing could be done.’

  There were other positive signs. From August 1944 onwards, under the new Basic Plan, large shipments of rice, wheat and millet were rushed to Bengal from other areas of India. This movement of grain was the opposite of Viceroy Linlithgow’s policy. Two shiploads of Australian wheat also arrived. From Britain came medical supplies and dried milk. South Africa offered grain and milk powder. (The Japanese offered to send all the Burmese rice India needed, as long as the safety of their ships was guaranteed. Naturally this offer, which was in any case probably a mere ploy, was rejected.)

  But grain not required for immediate consumption in Calcutta was piled up in godowns because the Bengal government did not have the resources to distribute it. Nor did it have the resources to transport grain out to the famine areas. Army officers with logistical training moved into Bengal’s Department of Civil Supplies and organised the movement of these stores to distribution points in the mofussil. They more than doubled the food supply trucked to the towns and villages to 2000 tons per day. Army engineers constructed new bridges and culverts to help transport the relief grain. Troops still guarded river steamers and trains carrying supplies of food. Some police were tolerant of petty thieving by local men and women, but they arrested for trespass strangers who, searching for food, entered their area. Some magistrates even ordered these wandering people to be flogged.

  With the coming of cold weather, when night temperatures fell into the Celsius teens, the people, without fat to protect them from the winds, shivered in their rotting famine rags. But by mid December the army had distributed 600 tons of warm clothing. One hundred tons were flown out to East Bengal by the US army air transport group. And by way of donations, relief kitchens were able to serve greater amounts, and expanded until they exceeded 6600 at the end of November. About half of these were financed and run by government; ten per cent by private relief organisations from outside India; and the remainder by Indian private agencies subsidised by government.

  But for the millions of Bengalis who perished, none of it would be enough.

  16

  Relief: Ethiopia

  IN 1976, IN the wake of Emperor Haile Selassie’s famine, the United States Senate held hearings on the Ethiopian regime’s request for military aid, and decided to use the threat of a reduction in food aid as a weapon against the Derg, to pay it back for its growing embrace of the Soviet Union. In the meantime, it continued to operate what is called a PL [Public Law] 480 program, sending Food for Peace through Catholic relief agencies and the World Food Program. As Mengistu moved further and emphatically into the Soviet camp, America went on donating food and funding development, but channelled them through UNICEF, United States non-government organisations (NGOs) and private voluntary organisations (PVOs) – essentially the same as NGOs. But in the early 1980s, for ideological reasons and because of their suspicion that Mengistu was misusing aid, the anti-Soviet West was at first more than willing to take him at his word when he went on denying that the famine was a pressing emergency on a major scale.

  By mid 1984, reports were coming into Addis Ababa from the regions that at Relief and Rehabilitation Commission distribution centres and shelters – large buildings recently established to receive the needy – over 12,000 people a week were dying. This meant that thousands more were dying in the remoter country areas, in huts or on the streets. Many people were still wandering towards Eritrea or west to cross the border into the Sudan. But, according to overall figures, 60 per cent of those who set out looking for aid never reached their destinations.

  By July 1984, the north-eastern Wollo province needed 7600 tonnes of food per month for its inhabitants, but received only 400, for which there was often no local transport for distribution. In the Wolaytta district in Wollo, nothing arrived. Sidamo in the south and the entirety of the southern Showa province, to the south of the capital, had no food reserves at all. Harar needed 5000 tonnes a month and got nothing; Showa 10,000 tonnes a month; and so on.

  At the end of August 1984, Mengistu called an emergency meeting of the leaders of the Urban Dwellers’ Associations of Addis. He told them there were rumours of drought circulating even within the ruling circles – but that these rumours were designed to subvert the revolution and create dissension. ‘Imperialist CIA agents are trying to poison the minds of the people, to provoke unrest and spoil the celebration. You should be vigilant and dispel these rumours.’

  Beyond the reach of Mengistu’s oratory lay everywhere the sea of hunger. The severest rationing began around the RRC distribution centres, which were meant to be temporary havens. Here, people built shanty towns or else lay in the open dying, most of them dressed in rags. For over a year, the food available for the millions of famine victims within reach of distribution food dumps had been wheat, vegetable oil and perhaps a little sugar. The adult relief quota had at first been 700 grams of grain and 20 grams of vegetable or butter oil per person, but this had been reduced to 500 grams per day in June 1984, and remained at that level for the rest of the famine in many of the RRC’s centres. Children between the ages of four and fourteen received 350 grams of grain and 100 grams of supplement, dry skim milk or soya milk. Children under four were given 100 grams of supplement, but no grain. In the ever-enlarging settlements around the shelters, people would hand-grind their portions of grain into meal and, if water was available, make a porridge out of it. Where water was scarce they would roast the grain on tin over a fire and eat it dry. But people had to walk further and further from the shelters to find any wood.

  Though an ideal adult ration is about 2000 calories, adequate for survival without physical exertion, at the height of the famine between March 1984 and December 1985 the food distributed, even with the help of foreign agencies, gave generally 1300 to 1700 calories a day. According to the World Health Organization, these were near fatal or fatal levels for adults under resting conditions and without illness.

  The small amounts of food that did arrive before the major international effort of late 1984 and early 1985 had to be brought in from Massawa and Aseb, two ports on the Red Sea. This proved to be a problem because, as the warehouses in the ports began to fill up with sacks of flour and other foods, there were not always the trucks to bring it down the road to distribution points. The RRC had some 800 trucks, but inevitably some of them were under repair at any one time, so the amount they could deliver was not enough to sustain life. To make things easier, Aseb, closer to Addis, received 76 per cent of the shipped relief and Massawa, further north, 15 per cent. But, though Aseb was capable of unloading 150,000 tonnes a month, much of it was held up by Ethiopian bureaucracy and lack of trucks. The Ethiopian road system was, in any case, fatally limited. Before the revolution there was only 5.4 kilometres of road for every 1000 square kilometres. Showa, Addis Ababa’s home province, and Eritrea, militarily
and administratively important, contained 40 per cent of all the roads. Seven other provinces possessed the rest, in a country as big as France and Spain combined. There were vast regions that could not be reached and where, as a result, there were no distribution centres.

  Dawit Wolde Giorgis, as head of the RRC, was in a strange position, required to walk a fine line between Mengistu’s denial of famine and the dictator’s contrary demand that the despicable West help without asking any awkward questions about Mengistu’s own policies.

  In New York on a further begging trip, Giorgis was asked about the cost of the coming Mengistu celebrations. He defended the government’s record with evasions and lies. But he could not lie about Soviet assistance, which had been appallingly low. Fortunately for his stocks in the West, the Soviets suddenly did make an offer to send 24 helicopters, 12 transport aircraft and 700 trucks. He was able to report this gesture to the American press. Importantly, for infrastructure purposes, the East Germans donated twenty mechanics, and what had been an Ethiopian truck graveyard on the road from Addis Ababa to Massawa began roaring efficiently again.

  In July 1984, British ITV showed the documentary Seeds of Despair. On the same night, the BBC showed a short film shot in Tigray. Both broadcasts created an immediate reaction of generosity among viewers, but they did not have the impact of the BBC News footage shown on 23 October 1984, shot in Korem in Tigray, in which broadcaster Michael Buerk said that the famine was ‘biblical’ in its scale. Bodies were heaped at the sides of the camp, Buerk said, and the footage showed: ‘This mother and the baby born two months ago, wrapped together in death.’ The next night there was a similar broadcast, this time from Makale. These broadcasts unleashed a tide of compassion. The Makale footage was shown by NBC in the United States and then around the world. Suddenly the UK Minister of Overseas Development, Timothy Raison, was summoning Giorgis. Maggie Thatcher, responding to calls from the public, was anxious to help – the RAF was willing to fly in food, whole squadrons being allocated to the task. Giorgis knew that this would enrage Mengistu and enlarge Thatcher’s political repute. Giorgis, perhaps unwisely, bargained Raison down to two Hercules.

  In New York, he was feted at the UN in a way that had not occurred on previous visits, and was promised much by Secretary-General Pérez de Cuéllar. In November 1984, Giorgis addressed the UN General Assembly. He met with de Cuéllar and made a personal appeal for more aid. The meeting reinforced Giorgis’s impression that the famine was becoming a camera opportunity for Western leaders. As he would write, ‘There were no quiet, private talks or agreements; it was all done with an eye to public opinion.’ But one can wonder, given Mengistu’s far fiercer politics, and the fact that Addis was plastered with his image, why either man should seem surprised that Western politicians and officials would behave as politicians and officials are wont to do, and pose for photographs.

  The US election contest between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale was about to begin, and both the Democrats and the Republicans felt bound to promise a response to this ‘new’ crisis. The State Department now agreed to funnel its aid through Giorgis’s RRC. The government’s United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at first had decided to give the RRC 50,000 tonnes of food. But now an arrangement for 180,000 tonnes of assistance was signed. The Americans also wanted to send a US air force group, but ultimately settled for two commercial aircraft. Again, particularly at the State Department, there were camera opportunities.

  Obviously in going to Ethiopia many agencies were following a political agenda. The anti-communist rhetoric of American officials who accompanied the arrival of the USAID supplies to Ethiopia sent Mengistu into paroxysms. Back home again, Giorgis tried to explain to the Americans how their manner and their utterances played into the hands of the hardliners around Mengistu’s men, who wanted to expel them from the country. But the Americans explained that they were subject to US policy as much as he was to Mengistu’s. They needed to satisfy the conservatives, who urged that all aid be ended and Red Ethiopia punished for its Soviet alliance.

  In the West, many were now galvanised by the question of Ethiopia. Generous people, who had previously known nothing about the country and even now probably knew little about its politics, made astounding gestures. A couple in Scotland sold their home and donated the proceeds to aid. A farmer named Oliver Walston donated his harvest.

  In November 1984, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure organised a group of thirty-eight famous British musicians to record the fundraising record ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ as the opening act of an aid agency, which would be known as Band Aid. He found a recording studio but it was available only for a day. Popstar Boy George, who had forgotten the date of the recording, urgently flew to London on Concorde and reached the studio in the last hour of recording. The record was mixed and released on 29 November. It immediately dominated the music industry and the UK charts. Geldof raised over $200 million through the record and a day-long internationally televised appeal, ‘Live Aid’, which took place simultaneously in London and Philadelphia and involved hundreds of leading musicians. In a similar vein to ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, American artists brought together by ‘USA for Africa’ recorded the single, ‘We Are the World’, in January 1985, and it was released in March, again to dramatic effect. Not to gainsay the generosity of so many in the West, it is true that they believed the problem of Ethiopia was drought and – until now – the world’s ignorance of the drought. People did not understand that between their donations and the starving lay the intransigence of Mengistu, as well as the corrupt dealings of some Ethiopian officials, which led to some aid food being put up for sale in local markets.

  The funds raised by Geldof were enormous and vitally significant in keeping up the aid momentum around the world, and shaming others into doing something. As much as $50 billion in pledges from governments and agencies is believed to have been instigated by the visibility the record gave to Ethiopia.

  Canada was particularly generous. ‘Take an Absent Friend to Lunch Today’ was the fundraising slogan there. As a result, in Guelph, Ontario, Fred Benson gave his 107-acre farm to a Mennonite relief agency. Eskimos from Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories organised a concert for famine relief. The speaker of the Ontario legislature, John Turner, cancelled the Annual Speaker’s Christmas party and donated the $10,000 saved to Ethiopian relief. Sweden, Australia and Canada had been a constant source of humanitarian assistance since 1974 and now held their own television fund-raisers as well. In America, even the prisoners of New York State’s Mount McGregor correctional facility contributed. The homeless of Los Angeles donated $175 in nickels and pennies. In the poorer parts of New York City, the schools tried to raise enough money to send a plane full of grain to Ethiopia. French tennis player Yannick Noah tried to initiate a national fundraising in France, but the response was muted. In Italy, by contrast, retired Italian soldiers who had taken part in the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, Italians who had lived in Ethiopia, Italians who had married Ethiopians and Italian–Ethiopians in general helped to spur on fundraising momentum. And so it went.

  The Ethiopian people remained ignorant of the world’s response to their need, since only a few received the BBC News or the Voice of America, which recorded these events.

  When Giorgis thanked the UN and other agencies for their help, but also noted that the international community had not taken heed of RRC figures earlier in the year, the New York Times declared, ‘Ethiopians Blame the West for Famine’. A professor in New Jersey wrote to Giorgis, ‘I find it interesting that the Soviet Union bears no responsibility [for its neglect of the famine] in your mind.’

  Though they did not dare see what their master refused to see, the Derg ultimately let Giorgis put together a visiting delegation from the Council of Ministers, including the minister for the interior, who chaired the Famine Committee within the Derg. Giorgis’s purpose was to strike out with them to threatened regions of the highlands, where the winter
of 1984–5 was in progress and where exposure and pneumonia were killing people who had mere shreds of cloth to cover themselves with. At every relief station the delegation visited, they saw people spread about dying and dead in the outdoors, and the sick and the starving crammed by thousands into intensive-care shelters designed for mere hundreds, or else into the shambolic Ethiopian equivalent of fever wards. There were 250 shelters in Ethiopia, and most of the sick lay in greater numbers outside them than inside.

  At one of the shelters, a Derg minister asked a Save the Children volunteer to whom the delegation was introduced to explain the situation there, and the woman lost her temper. She said she was too busy to brief him and: ‘It is ridiculous that we should have to tell you the problems of your own people! You should have been the ones to explain your needs to us.’

  Some of the sick were full of a similar defiance, asking the Derg men where Mengistu was, pointing to the red flags which fluttered even around the shelters and distribution centres, and telling the ministers that that cloth should have been on the backs of the ragged sick and starving. The only strength of the terminally hungry was that they enjoyed free speech in a country in which it had been outlawed. All this was a revelation to the ministers, but they knew the tidings of it would be unwelcome to their master, and dangerous to carry to him.

  To Mengistu’s dissatisfaction, the airport was now full of foreign planes – the RAF, the German air force, as well as Jordanian, Swiss, and Soviet planes, all chartered by their governments. Addis Ababa was crowded by journalists, TV crews and aid volunteers, and very few of them were interested in Mengistu’s forthcoming tenth birthday of revolution celebrations – the parades of military and ethnic groups, the state banquets and the speeches – except in so far as they offered a contrast to the famine beyond the city. And this after he had gone to so much trouble to make the celebrations function smoothly – ordering a round-up of dying prostitutes, beggars and street people and having them interned until after the holidays.