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Resettlement is an ambitious government scheme to move 1.5 million peasants from the overcrowded and barren north to the more fertile south. While international agricultural officials acknowledge that the program is a legitimate effort to solve some of the country's long-term social and economic problems, they charge that in past years the Mengistu government carried it out with unnecessary cruelty. According to some Western diplomats, the regime broke up families and forced villagers to move to camps that had no housing, no water, no health facilities and often no food. Of the 600,000 northerners who were resettled during the last famine, 100,000 died, according to Doctors Without Borders, a Paris-based relief group. The government ejected the group from the country at the end of 1985 after labeling its charges "preposterous." Nonetheless, Mengistu suspended the resettlement program in early 1986, only to restart it last month. So far, 7,000 "volunteers" have been moved south, and the government plans to transfer up to 300,000 next year.
The rebels assert that the real motive behind the program is to persecute Eritreans and Tigreans and drain the rebel fronts of potential recruits. Dr. Frederick Machmer, head of the U.S. relief team in Addis Ababa, believes the rebels are disrupting the aid effort so the international community will accept "that they are a force to be reckoned with and that they control areas of the north." Geldof, whose organization owned some of the trucks blown up in October, finds the tactics of both sides despicable. Said he last week: "To attack food trucks and seal off roads in these conditions is tantamount to mass murder."
The convoy attacks are all the more tragic because the international agencies were well prepared to cope with the famine this time around. The U.N. and the Ethiopian government kept abreast of agricultural conditions through an "early warning system" that included satellite surveillance of farming areas. Months ago, at the first sign that the rains might fail, the agencies acted. One of the first nations to dispatch aid was the U.S., whose Agency for International Development is still bitter over charges that it did not do enough during the last crisis.
AID dispatched 10,000 tons of food to Ethiopia on May 7, when crops failed in Harar. When the rains failed in the highlands in July, 10,000 tons were sent to bolster the country's reserves. And when it was certain that a new drought had begun in August, the U.S. approved the delivery of 115,000 tons, valued at $43 million. The first 30,000 tons are scheduled to arrive this month.
In Washington, Reagan Administration officials speak proudly of the U.S. contribution two years ago and now. Said one: "The last time around we got criticized for not doing enough, but we spent half a billion dollars trying to help starving people. What did the Russians do? They gave Ethiopia two planes." The Soviets insist they gave much more, including food, medicine, blankets and tents, and they are pouring in humanitarian aid now. Western experts say these claims are overstated.