International neglect, war and three years of drought have left refugees in Ethiopia at the end of the aid queue

Ethiopia 2000: special report

Jason Burke in Gode
Guardian

Monday April 10, 2000

In a dusty compound on the outskirts of the Ethiopian desert town of Gode, 300 women and children are squatting in the dirt. There is no shade so the mothers hold their faded robes over their listless children.

Occasionally an aid worker distributes water from a plastic bucket. When the queue moves forward, the shuffling feet raise clouds of red dust.

The queue ends at a pair of scales and a large ruler fixed to the wall of a hut. Here, workers from the Ogaden Welfare Society (OWS) - a local relief agency working for British and US aid groups - weigh and measure every child.

The more lively children hang laughing from the hook of the scale as if on a playground swing. Others, with the hollow eyes and distended bellies of malnutrition, dangle limply in its harness.

The statistics stack up in the register: Fadumo Sabdi is 75% of the normal bodyweight for her age, Xamdi Abdi 60% and Shagri Abdi 55%. Alis Mandid Aqasdir is one year old, and at 4.4kg, just over 9lb, 46% of normal bodyweight.

These are the lucky ones. They will be given high-energy porridge and biscuits three times a day until they are strong again.

The United Nations says 8m people in Ethiopia and another 8m elsewhere in East Africa are threatened with starvation. Gode is in the centre of Ogaden, the region worst affected by the current crisis. For tens of thousands that threat is already a reality.

"It is a very, very serious situation," said Mohammed Ugo Mohammed, the local director of OWS. "People are dying every day and unless we get substantial supplies quickly things will deteriorate fast."

Relief is beginning to trickle through. Last week 30,000 tonnes of food unloaded in Djibouti - the independent port state to Ethiopia's north - had reached the distribution centre of Combolcha, near the eastern town of Dire Dawa.

The aid had been sent by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) was yesterday being transported by trucks chartered by the Ethiopian government towards Ogaden. A second ship carrying 30,000 tonnes will arrive in 10 days and an American ship with 85,000 tonnes of food on board by the end of the month.

"There are trucks heading everywhere," said a WFP spokesperson. "The ships are being unloaded in record time and we are getting the relief out to the people who need it."

One problem is that no one knows how bad the famine is. Most of those affected are semi-nomadic pastoralists who wander the arid areas of the south and east of Ethiopia and surrounding countries, in search of grazing land.

The death toll could be 'only' in the hundreds nationwide, or it could be several thousand in Ogaden alone. Aid workers have visited a few more remote settlements. Some are deserted. In others people are holding on even though most of their cattle are dead. The surrounding desert is littered with animal carcasses.

There are reports of worse problems in war-torn Somalia. And the WFP is very concerned about pockets in southern Borena district close to the Kenyan border and northern Welo province, near the area hit by major famines in 1984.

So far at least this famine is on a far smaller scale than its predecessor. In 1984 a million people are thought to have died. Now it seems there is still time to avert a major disaster.

The question is how many people will perish before sufficient aid reaches them. The Ethiopian government's emergency food stocks have been allowed to run low and the shortfall has caused serious problems in the early stages of the relief effort.

Burhane Gizaw, the deputy commissioner of the government's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Committee, blames the shortfall on western donors who have failed to deliver promised aid.

"They told us to hand out our own stocks and they would replenish them... but they never did," he said. "We are now down to less than two weeks supply."

The WFP has admitted to delays in delivering 52,000 tonnes that were promised early last year and the European Union and the US government - though they have now pledged more than 800,000 tonnes - owe the reserves huge quantities of aid.

The Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, last week criticised the international community for ignoring repeated requests for assistance.

In turn, the Ethiopian government has been attacked for distributing food without proper targeting. The government is unpopular internationally for continuing a costly war with Eritrea. The war has no clear cause. Ethiopia granted Eritrea its independence seven years ago, ending more than two decades of conflict.

But in 1998 fighting flared again after mutual accusations of border violations. It is costing both countries a great deal of money that neither can afford. Addis Ababa recently imposed restrictions on foreign exchange after it became clear that it was running out of hard currency. It is believed the money was spent on weapons.

Privately, western diplomats in both countries say the war is a key reason for the recent delay in aid reaching the region. According to aid officials in Gode, only a major airlift will get enough food in fast enough to prevent hundreds more deaths.

The WFP is hoping to bring in at least two flights of aid early this week. Much of the food will be destined for Dana - a village 50 miles south of Gode. More than 9,000 refugees are camped on the arid plain on its ouskirts. It has not rained for three years.

The refugees have all left their homes in the Ogaden interior and walked for days in the hope of finding food. Aid agencies have been stretched to the limit by the influx. Water tankers run by Save The Children deliver only enough for a litre for each refugee a day and WFP has been able to distribute food to only a third of the families. The rest lie in the shade of their huts, waiting for help. Every day a dozen or so corpses are buried on the fringe of the camp.

Ahmed Hashi, a 40 year-old farmer, walked 80 miles to Danan from his village of Palaap with his family. Six of his 10 children have died and two others are too weak to stand. "I am begging God to help me," he said.

Aid workers fear the lack of water will lead to outbreaks of disease. Already tuberculosis is rife among the younger children. Mohammed Ugo Mohammed said: "If the rains do not come this year there will still be a catastrophe. Whole regions of the country will need feeding. They have no animals and no crops."

How you can help

British Red Cross 0870 444 3444

Christian Aid 0345 000 300

Save the Children Ethiopia Appeal 0171 703 5400

Unicef Ethiopia Appeal 0345 312 312

Oxfam 01865 313 131

Drought has killed their livestock and now the people of Ogaden rely on aid agencies for survival

Ethiopia: special report

David Gough in Danan, south-east Ethiopia
Guardian

Monday April 17, 2000

Abdi Farah's father sat in the back of the pick-up truck cradling his son's tiny body in his arms while his tears formed a dark circle on the purple shroud.

Two-year-old Abdi spent the final two months of his life in a feeding centre in Gode, south-east Ethiopia, the victim of a drought which has already claimed hundreds of lives.

He finally gave up the struggle early yesterday morning and later that day he was buried in a shallow grave next to his older sister, who died of hunger last month. Abdi's parents have now lost four of their 10 children to starvation.

Three years of drought have cost the nomadic peoples of Gode district everything - their livestock are dead, their crops withered.

For the last six months thousands of these fiercely proud people have made the trek out of the barren dustbowl toward this town in Ogaden.

The Ogaden Welfare Society, with help from the Save the Children Fund, has set up the feeding centre in Gode, but food and medicines are limited. Since it was established two months ago, 10% of the children admitted have died - most of them from hunger-related diseases like diarrhoea.

"We simply don't have any drugs," said Yibell Shibabaw, a nurse at Gode hospital.

For months the OWS has been pleading for help from the Ethiopian government and the outside world, but until the harrowing pictures began appearing on television screens its SOS fell on deaf ears.

Now the international community has responded with generous pledges of aid, which if delivered promptly should avert catastrophe.

"The promises they have made are adequate but the future for these people depends on when it gets here," said Mahmoud Ugas, the OWS area manager.

In the village of Danan, 45 miles away, more than 3,000 people who have lost everything they own survive "by the grace of God alone", according to one community elder.

There are no feeding centres here in Danan - just suffering. Médecins Sans Frontières plans to open one soon, but for now there is little respite for the thousands sheltering here.

They live in dome-shaped huts built from animal skins, cardboard, cloth - anything they can scavenge that will shelter them from the heat and the dust that blows incessantly across these desolate plains. The rotting carcasses of livestock emit a foul smell.

Hani Abdi holds her one-year-old son. She does not know where her husband is and was driven here when the last of their livestock died. Her son's skin clings to his bones like an undersized shirt and his eyes are sunk inside a head that lolls from side to side.

Half a mile from the camp Abdi Sheikh wanders away from one of hundreds of freshly dug graves, breaks a few branches from a nearby thorn brush and lays them on top of the mound of earth. "I do this to stop the jackals and hyenas from eating my son's body," he said.

Back at his hut, he pulls aside a stretch of cloth and points to the body of his wife. She has not eaten for more than a month and not spoken for four days. She is too weak to wave away the flies feeding at the corner of her eyes.

The drought has already cost Abdi Sheikh 200 of his cows, sheep and goats and two of his children. "Only God can save my wife," he said.

But now as donations of aid pour in and aid agencies set up feeding centres, optimism is growing that the worst consequences of three years of drought may be averted.

"These people have lost everything they own and their coping mechanisms have been exhausted," Mr Ugas said. "It will take years for them to recover but at least we should be able to keep them alive if the food comes in."

OWS staff go on daily patrols through the bush looking for communities too weak or desperate to make the long walk to help. "Because these people are nomads it's very difficult for us to know the true scale of this disaster," he said.

Mr Ugas, who has spent the day driving to watering holes, is trying to determine the health of the last livestock left alive in Ogaden - the camels. If they start dying, the long-term consequences of the drought could be catastrophic.

"These people are pastoralists and depend entirely on livestock. This drought has killed their livestock and pushed them into a cycle of aid dependency that will take years to change," he said.