Spectator's Journal/Behind Ethiopia's Hunger
Kaplan, Robert D.
SPECTATOR'S...
...Name Address City/State/Zip Code Phone AGE-1 Member $11 Billion Franklin Group of Funds Join the growing number of investors who are enjoying the high current income available from this Fund...
...They have use of the Asmara air base, and have a naval anchorage off the Dahlak Archipelago, along Eritrea's coast...
...As in Afghanistan, the Soviets are deeply committed in support of the government...
...Just miles away from where Belafonte stood, Dengue troops had instead been burning crops and bombing market stalls a few weeks before, in the course of capturing the town of Abi Adi fromthe TPLF...
...It's a private and voluntary activity not worthy of society's legal attention...
...Indeed, a law against homosexuality would do the same...
...An Ottoman THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986 25 form of exploitation ensued...
...SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL...
...After World War II and the Italian defeat, Menelik's successor, Haile Selassie, continued the policy of imperial exploitation of Tigre, while adhering to a tenuous autonomy agreement with Eritrea...
...The TPLF claimed 1800 prisoners were freed...
...The fighting in Tigre was on a somewhat smaller scale and achieved less dramatic gains for the Dergue...
...Day-care super-visors are not going to show up in the playroom in beards and tutus...
...Prohibition proved this, as do our present laws against marijuana and driving at 60...
...For many years, the Communist government controlled little more than the major roads and towns in the northern provinces where the principal rebellions are taking place...
...The value of your investment at redemption may be more or less than your cost...
...rather it is a prescription for lawlessness...
...If youhave an appendectomy, you will not be forced by law to receive blood from known male prostitutes...
...A few days after re-occupying Barentu in late August, the Dergue took Tessenei, lying on Eritrea's western plain between Barentu and the Sudanese border...
...The Soviets share his priorities, and the stakes are high...
...Many of Mengistu's troops were teenagers, given only a few weeks of training before being thrown into the offensive...
...To argue with excessive rancor against this odd, dumb city ordinance would put us in bed, so to speak, with some frightful loons...
...Moreover war, rather than drought, is behind the infamous resettlement scheme of the Marxist government...
...This left the Eritrean rebels in control of only an oval-shaped tract extending south-wards from the Sudanese border and covering Eritrea's central mountain region...
...For the United States, the EPLF and the TPLF are the best weapons against the regime of Lt...
...Helping out are 8,000 East bloc advisers...
...Besides, if "discrimination based on sexual orientation" had been strictly enforced within the Church, we'd be out of a whole lot of bishops and probably St...
...How can you tell the good guys from the bad...
...The decades of Italian domination over Eritrea, from 1889 to 1941, encouraged a feeling of political separateness, whereby the Eritreans saw rule from Addis Ababa as little more desirable than rule from Rome...
...Interviews with Tigrean refugees in the Damazine camp in eastern Sudan indicate that the real purpose of resettlement is to depopulate strategic swaths of territory where rebels are active...
...Plus the Catholic Church opposes the bill...
...But we should not trounce too vigorously on this latest nonsense from the World Capital of Bad Ideas...
...Neither the Ethiopian government nor the Tigrean and Eritrean guerrillas have permitted journalists into the region during an offensive...
...Like other Americans, Belafonte's USA for Africa entourage was largely ignorant of the war, except as a vague presence far less interesting than the famine...
...A person really shouldn't be fired or evicted or tossed p. J. O'Rourke's The Bachelor's Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig will be published by Simon and Schuster this fall...
...But after thousands of Dergue dead and wounded, Nakfa i= ; ,+ Air 4: 4i: 1}} ,$ •N 12.3310 _ _ _ _ FRANKLIN For a prospectus on this offering call: 889-4935 (local) Toll Free 1-800-392-8774 (Mo...
...Ruth he ain't...
...But one cannot be understood separately from the other...
...And legislation like New York's Sexual Lifestyles bill trivializes the civil and criminal codes...
...and the Tigreans have been severely strained, however, by the March killing of two famine relief workers by the TPLF...
...Hospitals are bombed, wells poisoned...
...drawing off two Dergue (government) brigades: an operation of great cunning and dramatic execution...
...Let freedom ring...
...On January 14, for example, in the northern province of Eritrea, commandos of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) launched an attack against the air base at Asmara, the government-held Eritrean provincial capital, used by the Americans until 1977 and since then by the Soviets...
...Authoritative figures are impossible to obtain, but it is estimated that the fighting in Eritrea in the summer and fall of 1985 resulted in over 10,000 dead and wounded on both sides...
...Yet few Western visitors have written about the war...
...Eritrea's Red Sea coastline gives Ethiopia great strategic value...
...Or I can have the sexual lifestyle of an Atlantic sahnon—swim up the East River, beget kids without meeting or even seeing my date, then die...
...The war's effect on millions of drought victims, moreover, remains untold—the same drought victims who gave the press one of its great human interest stories of late 1984 and early 1985...
...anti-government guerrillas live in under-ground cities to protect themselves from aerial attack...
...Makelle, the site of the prison break, stands as a symbol of how the media have ignored a conflict specifically labeled by President Reagan, in his speech at the United Nations last fall, as one of the handful of superpower flashpoints around the globe...
...I will read it carefully before I invest or send money...
...According to Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), a French relief group, and the Cam-bridge, Massachusetts-based Cultural Survival, the resettlement has resulted in 50,000 to 100,000 deaths...
...Ethiopia is plagued by other rebellions as well: in the Wollo, Gondar, Oromia, and Ogaden regions, although these are being fought on a much smaller scale than those in Eritrea and Tigre...
...Toll Free 1-800-325-8180 (III...
...This, by the way, is why the Equal Rights Amendment is such a redundant bag of junk...
...Mad Baptists, wild-eyed fundamentalist Moslems and Jews, repressed hard hats, schizophrenic LaRouche-oids are already double-aghast on the subject...
...He also writes for the Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal...
...Whether a man is black or white, rich or poor, or even not a man at all but a girl, he is equal to any fellow citizen before the law...
...And the bill specifically states that it does not "require or permit the establishment of affirmative action goals or timetables for the employment of homosexuals, bisexuals or heterosexuals, or to permit or allow sanctions for their enforcement...
...A law that cannot be enforced and will not be obeyed is no law at all...
...As many as forty Russian-built aircraft-MIG-23's among them —were damaged or destroyed, according to Western diplomatic sources...
...The Marxism of the EPLF and the TPLF is largely irrelevant to American interests, for both rebel groups are fiercely anti-Soviet...
...The inalienable rights upon which our society is founded are, as logicians say, rights of essence rather than rights of accident...
...Or my true love and I can have the sexual lifestyle of dogs and get stuck together on a grade-school playground during recess...
...and all other states) Or write: Drexel Burnham ATTN: B. Anthony Kirk 1st Vice-President, Investments 7701 Forsyth Suite 700 St...
...While the West is preoccupied with the famine, Mengistu is preoccupiedwith the rebellions...
...Upon taking Tessenei, the Dengue destroyed a .12,000-acre net-work of irrigated Eritrean farms in the midst of a region hard-hit by drought...
...While not disputing that claim, Western diplomats confirm that at least 700 prisoners escaped, many of them political prisoners of the Ethiopian regime for more than a decade...
...But here the media and the public have been deceived...
...Both groups, moreover, operate model famine relief operations, which have transported American-donated grain to populations under their control far more effectively than has the Ethiopian government...
...Not to be outdone, between mid-night and 3 a.m...
...Louis, Mo...
...The air-field is studded with Soviet helicopter gunships, used by the Addis Ababa regime in its war against the Tigrean and Eritrean rebels...
...Actually, to be ac-curate, New York City has passed a "Sexual Lifestyles" law which forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, public accommodations, and hiring...
...Nothing in New York is going to change...
...In addition, the fact that the rebels—like the government—are themselves Marxists, takes the sting out of the story...
...Like a lot of writers, I've been wondering when this was going to happen...
...Monthly dividends • Optional reinvestment plan • Easy liquidity at the then current net asset value • Convenient transfer to other Franklin Funds 'Current yield based upon an annualization of the monthly dividends paid by the Fund since August 1984 and the offering price on 05/01/86...
...But the real story—the famine as a manipulated consequence of war—was largely passed over...
...Mengistu spent the autumn of 1985 trying to take the EPLF held town of Nakfa in the southern tip of this oval...
...But last summer, after American interest in Ethiopia had slackened, the map of the country started changing...
...U seless laws weaken the necessary laws," said Montesquieu...
...With its port-folio of well researched, carefully selected discount bonds, it is a convenient way to invest in these securities...
...It will not reopen the city's homosexual baths, recently padlocked as public health nuisances...
...Paul...
...Diplomatic and other sources reported that the Dergue suffered 2,000 casualties in thirteen failed attempts to retake Barentu throughout July and August...
...Now, the Catholic Church is a fine and upstanding organization...
...Many of the casualties were ethnic Oromos, people taken from the southern lowlands and forced to fight in the north...
...In America, where taxpayers have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into famine relief in the very region of the fighting, both events went unreported...
...And traveling with the rebels between offensives, as I have, requires weeks away from ones base and telex, and the ability to endure bad food and little sleep...
...Yet the various civil conflicts lacerating northern Ethiopia may be too complex to excite an American audience...
...God's vicar on earth the Pope may be, God's Dr...
...Restaurants are not going to be required to have three different bathrooms...
...Mengistu Haile Mariam, a Soviet pup-pet whose cruelty has been compared with that of Pol Pot...
...63105 Please send me a prospectus containing more complete information about Franklin's AGE High Income Fund, including charges and expenses...
...Ethiopians are not allowed to enter the bases...
...To be fair, New York City's Sexual Lifestyles law does not mandate how-to instruction on homosexuality in public or private schools...
...The fighting in Tigre erupted in 1975, when Tigrean rebels took advantage of the general anarchy prevailing after the fall of Haile Selassie to launch a war...
...Meanwhile the people of Eritrea, even farther to the north, were suffering likewise under the Italians...
...Diplomats and guerrilla sources in Khartoum say the Dergue is preoccupied with another mass recruitment of young Oromos, in preparation for another assault on Nakfa...
...War has disrupted Ethiopia's entire agricultural pattern: it has destroyed crops, sparked mass migrations of peasant farmers into Sudan and Somalia, and siphoned off valuable resources —especially trucks—from the famine relief effort...
...THE PUBLIC POLICY...
...The only missing element is the American media, which has managed to provide exhaustive cover-age of the famine while virtually ignoring the savage fighting that lurks in the background, fighting that in many respects is the cause of the hunger...
...BEHIND ETHIOPIA'S HUNGER by Robert D. Kaplan It is one of the longest-running conflicts of our time, fought with state-of-the-art Soviet hardware and involving tens of thousands of casualties...
...This was true at the drive-in movie with Kitty O'Brian in 1964...
...But it is Mengistu's imperial ambitions, which are identical to deposed Emperor Haile Selassie's, that lie at the heart of the tragedy in the Horn of Africa...
...Blackness, poorness, giriness are essential qualities...
...Napalm, cluster bombs, T-54 and T-55 Russian tanks, and MIG-23's were used...
...It does not prevent religious, political, or other groups from loudly condemning homosexuality as sinful, ugly, or disease-prone...
...For several years running, the battle lines remained stable...
...And this is exactly my objection to it...
...Paradoxically, the idea that what a person does in bed is not an essential quality is what's behind the support for the Sexual Lifestyles bill...
...I am also interested in Franklin's El IRA ^ Keogh plan...
...Soviet advisers have recently been seen scouting EPLF defenses at Nakfa—another indication that a new offensive is imminent...
...The autonomy agreement broke down in late 1961: civil war between the central government in Addis Ababa and guerrillas in Eritrea has continued ever since...
...The break was accomplished by staging two diversionary attacks, one on the Makelle airfield and another on one of the roads leading out of town, which had the effect of Robert D. Kaplan is an Athens-based correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ABC Radio News...
...And, what the heck, let's do it...
...Hundreds of journalists have flown into Makelle airfield, enroute to visiting nearby famine relief camps...
...For now, the outlines of the story remain to be filled in, as the strategic denouement of the tragedy begins...
...The Soviets have been amply rewarded...
...What a person does in bed is not an essential quality...
...However, it has been my personal experience that whatever the Catholic Church says about sex—it's wrong...
...MANHATTAN SWISH by P. J. O'Rourke After fifteen years of argle-bargle, New York City has passed a "Homo-sexual Rights" law...
...Franklin's AGE High Income Fund 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986 remained in the guerrillas' hands...
...Religious and political beliefs are also essential qualities, protected by the First Amendment...
...At the moment, the war in Ethiopia is quiet...
...Relations between the U.S...
...Area diplomats say they are baffled by the absence of American coverage of even the most dramatic recent events of Ethiopia's civil war...
...While peasants flee from areas controlled by the Dergue, 80,000 Tigreans are migrating back to their homes in rebel-held Tigre from refugee camps in Sudan—an unambiguous indication of the rebels' popular support...
...And I'll bet it's true now...
...In fact, large sections of Tigre haven't been in government hands for more than ten years...
...We are protected from discrimination on these bases by the Fourteenth Amendment which says soin no uncertain terms...
...In the late nineteenth century, Emperor Menelik II restored Ethiopia to its former Axumite greatness, bringing Tigre in the north under the rule of his own Amharas, who inhabited the center of the country in the region of Addis Ababa, the capital which Menelik himself founded...
...Ethiopia has been independent for thousands of years, tracing its roots back to the Roman-era Semitic kingdom of Axum, centered in present-day Tigre...
...The peasants of Tigre were heavily taxed and the men conscripted into the Emperor's army...
...And it is, as its charter insists that it be, usually on the side of the angels...
...But there is a difference in any society between behavior that is permitted and behavior to which there is an inalienable right...
...During a visit to Makelle in June 1985, the singer Harry Belafonte was told by officials of the Dergue's Relief and Rehabilitation Committee that food was being delivered all over the province of Tigre...
...It's easy to have a cheap laugh at the expense of such legislation...
...As a mat-ter of fact, the Sexual Lifestyles bill is nearly meaningless...
...In fact, Ethiopia was never more than a human interest story: starvation was graphically depicted, and the resulting American relief effort provided the press with most of its material—an American story, about America's involvement in an African famine...
...The Eritreans, by contrast, have up to 50,000 troops, as well as tanks and armored personnel carriers captured from the Dengue...
...Had it not been for shelling from Soviet war-ships offshore in 1977, the Eritrean port of Massawa would have fallen into EPLF hands, and Ethiopia today would be almost a landlocked nation...
...The 33,000 Oromos who recently fled across the border into Somalia were reportedly escaping "villagization," a scheme in which whole villages are being relocated...
...As it turned out, the staged withdrawal was the rebels' last hurrah...
...Had Mengistu been a right-wing American ally instead of a Soviet puppet, perhaps his atrocities would have garnered as much attention as Bruce Springsteen singing "We Are the World...
...on February 8, the Tigre People's Liberation Front (TPLF) broke open the Makelle jail in central Tigre, also in the northern region of Ethiopia...
...When I go to New York, I can now have any sexual lifestyle I want...
...In the current cross-border feeding program, for example, the United States, the International Committee of the Red Cross, various other charities, and the EPLF and the TPLF are cooperating to truck up-wards of 200 tons of food daily into Eritrea and Tigre...
...Mengistu has put as many as 200,000 soldiers—two-thirds of Black Africa's largest standing army—into the battle against the EPLF...
...There are really no New York laws against anything two (or a hundred) willing grown-ups do in private with each other's naughty parts...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986 27...
...Finally, in the face of a massive Dengue troop build-up—which required the redeployment of two divisions from the Ogaden Desert—the EPLF with-drew from Barentu, having captured large amounts of Soviet weaponry stored there by the Dengue...
...The Fund's yield varies with changes in dividends paid and the offering price...
...Crops are burned by government soldiers in the midst of famine...
...In early July, the EPLF captured the strategic hilltop town of Barentu, in southwest Eritrea...
...I can have the sexual lifestyle of a writer, for instance—with a wife, a mistress, and a bevy of co-eds from my Contemporary Fiction seminar...
...Having chopped off the EPLF's western territorial flank, Dergue forces attacked the eastern coastal plain of Eritrea by the Red Sea, which they "rolled up like a hot knife through butter," according to a Western diplomat in Khartoum...
...There are no New York State or City laws against sodomy by consenting adults anyway...
...The American press devoted only a handful of stories to the last cycle of Ethiopian carnage, even though it was larger in scope than what has taken place in Angola or Central America...
...It is entirely possible, however, that many of the Oromos were escaping military recruitment as well...
Vol. 19 • June 1986 • No. 6
