After three years of drought, humanitarian aid organisations have come to the rescue of the famine-stricken Ogaden in southeast Ethiopia. But this disaster has little to do with nature. Rather, the famine has been cynically staged with the aim of attracting maximum international aid and capturing votes. by SYLVIE BRUNEL *

Drought is again affecting the Ogaden. The 3.5m Somalis who live in this region of Ethiopia have suffered from it for three years running. Water resources have become scarce and the land has been over-grazed; climatic difficulties, common in the Sahel, have made the growing imbalance between the area's capacity and utilisation all the clearer.

The Ogaden economy, directed towards the east rather than to Ethiopia, has suffered a succession of setbacks: the war in Somalia from 1991, a change in Saudi Arabia's sanitary regulations - depriving the region of its traditional cattle exports - recurring droughts, occasional floods and permanent insecurity. Last year, while the rest of Ethiopia harvested a grain surplus, the Ogaden suffered a serious loss: the drought destroyed 90% of the crops and spread unusually far into the south. The price of cattle has crashed while the cost of food has risen dramatically. The death of a large part of the bovine herds from starvation signals a breaking point.

Yet the Ethiopian authorities controlled the deep wells - still being replenished, unlike the traditional wells managed by the clans, which had dried up at the onset of the crisis. So they could have intervened to make up for the lack of rain and avoid concentrations of men and cattle around the wells. Due to high demand near sources of water, the land is quickly grazed out.

Ethiopia is one of the few African countries where the public crisis management system works. An early warning system was put in place in 1976 and the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC), a legacy of the 1984-85 famine, ensures that famines are avoided. Its results are satisfactory, thanks to security stocks that are released on the market in case of abnormal price hikes. The DPPC was thus able to avoid shortages, in spite of the lack of rain in the Tigray, in the northern part of the country, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's home province.

Preventive distribution of food, a reduction in herd size by regulating the purchasing system as well as the implementation of the early warning systems (EWS) would have avoided disaster. But the EWS is prevented from operating in the pasture zones, even though they are fragile, by restrictions of movement imposed on UN agencies and other non-governmental organisations (NGO). In fact, the country thinks it is sufficiently organised not to need international NGOs unless they are limited to giving technical assistance and financial aid to the authorities. The NGO's capacity to react in emergencies is destroyed by permanent harassment: long approval procedures and various other hindrances, such as limiting the number of authorised vehicles, forbidding the use of trucks, helicopters and cell phones, limiting communications to radio exchanges, and putting heavy taxes on incoming goods.

Insecurity hampers the development of humanitarian programmes. In 1977 military occupation of the Ogaden by Somalia unleashed an international conflict. Today, this insecurity continues on account of numerous separatist movements, in particular Ittihad al-Islam and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), both supported by Somalia. The country lives in a state of chronic war, with constant confrontations between clans, between the military and the rebels, and between the rebels and the civilian militias organised by the Addis Ababa government and paid for with sacks of food taken from international aid, mainly that of the World Food Programme.

The Somalis are doubly penalised in Ethiopia. On the one hand, they represent a minority in relation to the other high plateau peoples (1) with whom they live in a state of reciprocal hostility. On the other hand, they are an extremely divided people, partitioned into rival groups. At the height of the drought, the antagonism between clans deprived many families of access to food and water, particularly along the region's main river, the Wabe Shebele.

The threat of "somalisation" of the Ogaden haunts the Ethiopian government, which has always neglected the Somali people but covets their land. This huge, sparsely populated space could be an ideal agricultural frontier for an Amhara nation in search of a demographic outlet.

Geographically, the Ogaden may be barren Sahel, but it holds enormous unexplored quantities of natural gas - 35bn cubic metres, according to a Russian evaluation conducted in the early 1980s. In 1997 a Chinese firm signed a contract to produce liquefied gas with the help of the World Bank. There is even a pipeline project to Harare (Zimbabwe), where a refinery can be built.

Brought to heel

What better way to bring this rebellious province to heel than to organise controls around the main perennial sources of water? Only the deep wells have retained water. Some of them belong to private owners who charge dearly for access. Others are controlled by the Ethiopian army. Those who want access must pledge allegiance: here as elsewhere, those who control food and water hold the power.

In April last year the Ethiopian military forbade access to the Wabe Shebele river, toward which thousands of families were gathering, on the pretext that it was full of bacteria. Food distribution, organised under army rule in the areas with the greatest population, allowed tight control over a territory until then poorly controlled by troops with little regard for local populations.

The authorities' take-over of the region was exacerbated by the prospect of general elections (held in May, except in the Ogaden where they were postponed until August). The coalition already in power was elected by a huge majority. The elections were for Council Members in the nine federal states - the regional legislative bodies - and for the individual administrative regions, as well as for the House of Representatives, the federal legislative body.

The stakes are high for Addis Ababa in the Somali region because of the principle of self-determination adopted by the Meles Zenawi government. In the Ogaden, the previous elections, held in 1993, had brought to power local leaders who were greatly tempted by independence. Only by funding "friendly" parties did the central government succeed in limiting the damage, at the cost of an increased military presence, financed in part by United States aid.

Last year Human Rights Watch denounced the "secret war" in the Ogaden. The province had become a huge, closed military camp in which the army has carried out extortion and massacres, imprisoned people, and denied access to water. In April, at the height of the drought, the army suddenly changed its tactics and set itself up, unexpectedly, as the good Samaritan. It transported food and organised aid. Even if the quantities it distributed were insufficient - and distribution methods were a far cry from those used by real humanitarians - the aim was clear: the impact of food distribution a few weeks from the election could only work in favour of candidates for a federal administration that had, until then, been struggling to impose its legitimacy.

Cashing in on the famine

The means, however, were lacking. The fratricidal trench warfare between Ethiopia and Eritrea had been draining all the country's vital forces since May 1998 (2), with great loss of men, materials and financial means. Receiving international aid while rallying Ethiopians around a national disaster was an excellent move by the regime. On the pretext that roads and transportation infrastructure were lacking, the government concentrated the media and aid agencies in a calm area that was well controlled by the military. Its epicentre was the city of Gode, which has one of this under-equipped region's few airports. All the news reports by the world media on the "Ethiopian famine" were done in the same 50 kilometre radius - most of them in Denan, a town 40 kilometres from Gode, where the famine was particularly visible.

Symbols of absolute desolation, the bodies of dead cows lined the road from Gode to Denan. The cadavers were dragged along the road, carefully aligned and straightened up as often as possible - props for the famine display. The authorities led the westerners to the Denan cemetery to show them a few freshly dug children's graves and criticise the international community for its lateness in sending aid. They did not mention that, shortly before, they were still refusing to allow any western humanitarian aid organisation to be present.

In April Ethiopia was promised five times more food aid than had been planned before the media coverage of the famine. Close to 900,000 tons were promised - a considerable amount, and not tied to the cease-fire with Eritrea, since Addis Ababa had categorically refused to give in to such "blackmail". Crucially, this amount of aid was not founded on the real numbers of starving people.

In March the humanitarian aid organisations hesitated to estimate the numbers of victims. But the mission head present in the afflicted zone estimated that about 1m people - almost a third of the Ogaden's population - needed emergency food aid. But in early April the government announced that 2m people had been hit by the famine. In a few days the numbers of starving people were reported to have doubled, reaching 4m - then doubled again to 8m. A visit by the director of the World Food Programme (WFP), who was taken by the authorities to the northern Tigray region, geographically opposite to the epicentre of the disaster, resulted in an additional doubling of the estimate - now 16m people! The WFP and Unicef, taking over from the Ethiopian government, then requested aid for the entire northern part of the country, on the grounds of drought. Yet in the Tigray, the British NGO Save the Children did not see any deterioration of the food situation.

The impressive number of 16m is a dangerous extrapolation, based on a very limited geographic reality - that of acute malnutrition in the area surrounding Gode. It corresponds to the total number of people living in the regions of the Horn of Africa that have suffered from lack of rain to one degree or another.

We know, however, that people will not be equally affected. Famine sifts through the population, selecting the most vulnerable. Nevertheless, the call has been heard and 900,000 tons of grain have been promised. Such a volume of aid can meet the chronic need for food in Ethiopia, one of the 17 countries in the world said to be at "major risk". But the starving people of the Ogaden may only receive a small part of this aid, since the ports of Berbera and Djibouti are physically incapable of absorbing this kind of tonnage, and the government has categorically ruled out using Eritrean ports.

This humanitarian disaster has little to do with nature. The Ethiopian government has cynically used the drought in the Ogaden to obtain the maximum amount of aid in the shortest possible time.

* Geographer and author of La faim dans le monde, comprendre pour agir, PUF, Paris, 1999
The Oromos, Amharas and Tigrayans; the latter number 3m according to the most recent census and are themselves a minority in relation to the Oromos, even though they control the political power.
See Jean-Louis Péninou, "Ethiopia invades Eritrea", Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, July 2000.

Translated by Carole Beaulieu