Africa editor, BBC World Service
Millions of dollars in Western aid for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels to buy weapons, a BBC investigation finds.
Former rebel leaders told the BBC that they posed as merchants in meetings with charity workers to get aid money.
They used the cash to fund attempts to overthrow the government of the time.
One rebel leader estimated $95m (£63m) - from Western governments and charities including Band Aid - was channelled into the rebel fight.
The CIA, in a 1985 assessment entitled Ethiopia: Political and Security Impact of the Drought, also alleged aid money was being misused.
Its report concluded: "Some funds that insurgent organisations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes."
Multiple rebellions
The crisis in 1984 prompted a huge Western relief effort, spearheaded by pop star Bob Geldof's Band Aid campaign and Live Aid concerts.
Although millions of people were saved by the aid that poured into the country, evidence suggests not all of the aid went to the most needy.
At the time, the Ethiopian government was fighting rebellions in the northern provinces of Eritrea and Tigray.
Much of the countryside was outside of government control, so relief agencies brought aid in from neighbouring Sudan.
Some was in the form of food, some as cash, to buy grain from Ethiopian farmers in areas that were still in surplus.
Max Peberdy, an aid worker from Christian Aid, carried nearly $500,000 in Ethiopian currency across the border in 1984.
He used it to buy grain from merchants and believes that none of the aid was diverted.
"It's 25 years since this happened, and in the 25 years it's the first time anybody has claimed such a thing," he says.
He insists that to the best of his knowledge, the food went to feed the starving.
“ Some funds that insurgent organisations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes”
But the merchant Mr Peberdy dealt with in that transaction claims he was, in fact, a senior member of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
"I was given clothes to make me look like a Muslim merchant. This was a trick for the NGOs," says Gebremedhin Araya.
Underneath the sacks of grain he sold, he says, were sacks filled with sand.
He says he handed over the money he received to TPLF leaders, including Meles Zenawi - the man who went on to become Ethiopia's prime minister in 1991.
Mr Meles, who is still in office, has declined to comment on the allegations.
But Mr Gebremedhin's version of events is supported by the TPLF's former commander, Aregawi Berhe.
Now living in exile in the Netherlands, he says the rebels put on what he describes as a "drama" to get the money.
"The aid workers were fooled," he says.
He says that some $100m went through the hands of the TPLF and affiliated groups.
Some 95% of it was allocated to buying weapons and building up a hard-line Marxist political party within the rebel movement.
Both Mr Aregawi and Mr Gebremedhin fell out with the TPLF leadership and fled the country.
Much of the money that ended up in the TPLF's hands was channelled through affiliated groups such as the Relief Society of Tigray.
Band Aid's accounts show that it gave almost $11m to the society and other groups close to the rebels, but the charity has declined to comment.
Soviet confrontation
It should not be forgotten that this all took place at the height of the Cold War.
The Soviet Union had poured $4bn into Ethiopia, and provided Soviet officers to direct Ethiopia battles against the rebels.
In January 1983, President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Directive 75, which aimed to confront the Soviet Union across the developing world.
"US policy will seek to limit and destabilise activities of Soviet Third World allies and clients," it said.
In a November 2009 speech, US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates - who was deputy head of the CIA during Mr Reagan's time in office - said that the president's approach was to "impose ever stiffer costs on the Soviet Union for its Third World adventurism".
He included Ethiopia among the states in which "Soviet surrogates soon faced their own lethal insurgencies".
Mr Gates was unwilling to expand on whether the US backed the Ethiopian insurgents.
But since there were only a limited number of rebel movements, the suggestion cannot be ruled out that the CIA not only knew about, but supported, the diversion of aid funds to the TPLF.
http/www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/nyregion/09indict.html
NY Times
March 8, 2010
Brought to U.S., Man Is Charged With Aiding Somali Terrorists
COLIN MOYNIHAN
A man has been brought to the United States from Nigeria to face charges that he provided money to a Somali terrorist group — and that he received military training from that group.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed an indictment on Monday accusing the man, Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed, of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, Al Shabab, which has declared its intent to harm the United States. Mr. Ahmed, 35, is also charged with providing that support, conspiring to receive training from a foreign terrorist organization, and receiving the training.
Mr. Ahmed was transferred to United States custody by Nigerian authorities on Saturday. He wore dark blue prison clothes during a brief detention hearing on Monday before Debra C. Freeman, a federal magistrate judge in Manhattan. Communicating with the help of an Arabic interpreter, he indicated that he understood the charges against him. He is to be arraigned on Tuesday; a lawyer representing him, Sabrina Shroff, said that he would plead not guilty.
Prosecutors said that they believed that the defendant was a citizen of Eritrea and a resident of Sweden.
The indictment charges that in 2009 he bought a Kalashnikov rifle and two grenades and provided about 3,000 euros (about $4,470) to Al Shabab. In addition, the indictment states, he received training at Shabab paramilitary camps in Somalia that included lessons in making bombs, and was found to possess bomb-making instructions in Nigeria in November 2009.
Since 2004, Al Shabab, which means “the youth” in Arabic and which prosecutors called an “extremist faction of ‘shock troops’ ” affiliated with the Islamic Courts Union, have waged a bloody battle against the Somali government. That government has been backed by the African Union and the neighboring nation of Ethiopia. The group has assassinated civilians and journalists and used suicide bombing attacks against Burundian peacekeepers, prosecutors said.
The State Department designated Al Shabab a terrorist organization in 2008.
Last year, the group claimed responsibility for mortar barrages aimed at a United States congressman, Donald M. Payne, a Democrat from New Jersey who was visiting Somalia. And Mr. Ahmed’s indictment said that the Islamic Courts Union and Al Shabab were thought to have provided a haven to members of Al Qaedawanted for bombings of United States embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania.
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http://www.apanews.net/apa.php?page=show_article_eng&id_article=119662
APA
March 9, 2010
Ethiopia to take part in IAAF’s championship despite diplomatic row with Qatar
Addis Ababa ( Ethiopia) A team of Ethiopian athletics will leave on Wednesday morning for Qatar, Doha to take part in the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) World Indoor Championships from 12-14 March.
The Ethiopian athletics team is traveling to Qatar despite a diplomatic row that erupted in 2008 between the two countries.
Ethiopia accused Qatar of interfering in the Ethiopian and Eritrean affairs saying that Qatar become a sources of instability in the horn of Africa region.
The row that erupted 10 years ago is still under tense condition with “no peace, no war” condition between the two countries.
Ethiopian Athletics Federation said on Tuesday that the Ethiopian athletics team will travel to Qatar on Wednesday morning. Ethiopia’s world 3000m indoor championMeseret Defar will lead the country’s squad.
The 26-year old Defar, who run the third and second fastest times in the history of the 3000m and 5000m indoors in her two competitive races this year, is hoping to win a four consecutive time .
“I am ready to repeat my victory in Qatar,” said Defar.
Defar will be challenged by her compatriot, Sentayehu Ejigu in the 3,000m race.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/08/rageh-omaar-live-aid-geldof
Guardian
March 8, 2010
Even Band Aid is not above criticism
Rageh Omaar
Bob Geldof is furious at the BBC story about NGO funds buying rebels' arms, but the politics of delivering aid are always complex
There are some things that are just too sensitive and difficult to inquire about, and the idea that considerable sums that ordinary people around the world – but especially here in the UK – raised to aid and help their starving fellow humans in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s is one of them. Band Aid and the accompanying humanitarian efforts on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians threatened with famine in the northern province in Tigray was much more than just an important moment captured in a rock concert. It was transformational. It changed forever how politics, aid and the electronic media would function in response to humanitarian needs.
For western politics and aid, what happened in 1985 was the big bang. Nothing would ever be the same again. Even more fundamentally than that, it said something about who we were and what we were all capable of. For any of us who were there at the concert, gave money, lived through it and got involved, in however small a way, it was quite simply life-affirming.
But it also made Band Aid and the entire humanitarian response to the famine in Tigray almost holy; only the shameless or mendacious would subject it to critical review in the way that Martin Plaut of the BBC has done this past week when, after nine months of research, he found what he and the BBC World Service believe is credible evidence that aid money from famine relief efforts was used by the rebel group fighting Ethiopia's military dictatorship under Mengistu to buy arms.
Many of the humanitarian relief agencies involved in Tigray Province and Ethiopia in 1985 have understandably reacted with horror. They have swiftly and universally condemned the BBC for the report, saying that their scrupulous oversight of the aid could not have let this happen, and nothing of the sort happened.
But why the strong and blanket reaction without a hint of wanting to know more?
Let's get some things straight: humanitarian operations in the midst of large-scale civil wars where territory is held by rival powers are almost always politicised and misused. The idea that this never happens and that NGOs are never put in situations where, in order to get the aid delivered, they have to work with and often through the powers that control the territory where the suffering is taking place is a ridiculous fantasy. It's happening now, in Congo; in my own country, Somalia, where al-Qaida-affiliated groups have dictated how theWorld Food Programme delivers emergency food; and also in Zimbabwe, where I have just spent two weeks talking to aid workers having to work through government bodies in delivering aid to prisoners of Mugabe.
One aid worker told me: "There is a really bad outbreak of measles in townships with huge HIV infection rates, but we can't mention or talk about it if we want to remain here." Those are just three examples; there are many more.
Plaut is a first-class journalist. He hasn't just come to this. He was actually there on the frontlines in Tigray, with his wife, a nurse, in 1984, as the famine was brewing. One of his main sources, ridiculously dismissed by Sir Bob Geldof on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday as an exiled malcontent and "not a credible voice whatsoever" on this story, was actually a founding member of the rebel group, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and one of the main military commanders in the Ethiopian civil war in 1985.
The BBC's assertions and evidence need to be seriously and open-mindedly followed. Their assertion is that aid agencies in the mid-80s had to work through an organisation called the Relief Society of Tigray (Rest) in order to get to the starving people. The Ethiopian dictatorship did not control the province. But Rest was undeniably the humanitarian wing of the rebel movement. Of that, there is no doubt.
So, effectively, the relief agencies were working and channelling their efforts via the rebel group, the TPLF. I am absolutely sure that all the NGOs were extremely diligent about how their money was spent in getting relief to the people who needed it. But they did not have oversight and control of Rest. In fact, they had no way of knowing whether the official buying sorghum for them from Rest was an independent local aid worker, or a member of the rebel group posing as one.
I know the TPLF very well. I was based as a reporter in Addis Ababa immediately after the rebel group came to power in 1991. The TPLF is the most ruthlessly organised and efficient guerrilla group I have ever encountered. The fact that this peasant army, with thousands of women among its ranks, overthrew the might of the Mengistu regime proves that. These rebels were drawn from the very families and communities that the Ethiopian regime was trying to starve. I have no doubt in my mind that, faced with a government that was using famine as a tool of war against them, the TPLF would seek to use the ocean of money coming from around the world, in response to efforts like Band Aid, to buy the weapons that would rid them and the rest of Ethiopia of what was a horrendous regime.
The politicising of aid is a fact of life everywhere. The challenge is to stop it getting in the way of saving lives. As Plaut says, in Tigray this politicising did not get in the way of saving lives, and perhaps that is why many didn't ask questions. As a Somali, looking at what happened in my country during the US-led humanitarian intervention in 1992 and what is happening today, what I find unacceptable is that a humanitarian operation can be elevated to the status of being above criticism.
Geldof challenges BBC aid claim
ReplyDeleteBob Geldof has challenged the BBC to substantiate its report that millions raised for famine relief in Ethiopia were diverted to pay for weapons.
The anti-poverty campaigner said there was "not a shred of evidence" Band Aid or Live Aid money was siphoned off.
The report included claims that substantial sums of aid that went into rebel-held areas of Tigray province in 1985 were used to buy arms.
The BBC World Service has said it is standing by its report.
Mr Geldof told BBC One's Andrew Marr show he would personally sue the Ethiopian government and spend the money on aid if any evidence was produced.
'Credible voices'
He said: "Produce me one shred of evidence and I promise you I will professionally investigate it, I will professionally report it, and if there is any money missing I will sue the Ethiopian government for that money back and I will spend it on aid.
"There is not a single shred of evidence that Band Aid or Live Aid money was diverted in any sense, it could not have been."
The news and current affairs editor at the World Service, Andrew Whitehead, said the BBC stood by its report.
Taking part in a discussion with Mr Geldof, Mr Whitehead said the BBC had "quite a lot of evidence" to support the report.
The World Service report featured interviews with two former members of a rebel group who made the allegations dating from the mid-80s.
They told the BBC they posed as merchants in meetings with charity workers to get aid money which they used to fund attempts to overthrow the government.
One rebel leader estimated that $95m (£63m) from Western governments and charities, including Band Aid, was diverted.
The CIA also alleged aid money was being misused, Mr Whitehead pointed out in a radio discussion.
He accepted the 1985 report from the crime agency was written before Band Aid had gone into Ethiopia, but said it established "a pattern" that international aid was being used for military purposes.
The report concluded: "Some funds that insurgent organisations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes."
Mr Geldof, who was speaking to the BBC from Nairobi, also said one of the sources quoted in the report was a "dissident political exile" who was "not credible".
“ There is a clear public interest in determining whether some money given as famine relief ended up buying guns and bullets ”
Andrew Whitehead, BBC World Service
Martin Plaut, the World Service's Africa editor who broke the story, said a lot of his nine-month investigation was spent trying to corroborate or dismiss events.
He said: "We came across a lot of other evidence which made it clear that yes, indeed, some of the money had gone astray."
He added that the "balanced, measured" programme had gone through the entire BBC editorial process and had not simply been "thrown on air".
Mr Geldof and the Band Aid Trust are taking their complaint to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom.
They and a number of other agencies, including Oxfam, the Red Cross, Christian Aid and Save The Children, are also writing to chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons.
John Kennedy, a co-founder of the Band Aid Trust, said: "The trust is writing to the BBC and Ofcom to complain about the broadcast."
A Christian Aid spokeswoman confirmed it was planning to support the complaint.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8554048.stm
Published: 2010/03/07 14:59:30 GMT
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