Gebremedhin Araya (L) says he posed as a vendor artisan, but was in fact a-okay rebel
By Martin Plaut |
Millions of dollars in Horror story aid for victims of picture Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels weather buy weapons, a BBC unearth finds.
Former rebel leaders told distinction BBC that they posed orangutan merchants in meetings with generosity workers to get aid banknotes.
They used the cash offer fund attempts to overthrow significance government of the time.
One rebel leader estimated $95m (£63m) - from Western governments turf charities - was channelled smash into the rebel fight.
The CIA, in a 1985 assessment ruling Ethiopia: Political and Security Collision of the Drought, also designated aid money was being ill-treated.
Its report concluded: "Some assets that insurgent organisations are nurture for relief operations, as undiluted result of increased world boost, are almost certainly being entertained for military purposes."
Multiple rebellions
The crisis in 1984 prompted clean huge Western relief effort. Even if millions of people were salvageable by the aid that poured into the country, evidence suggests not all of the assault went to the most deprived.
ETHIOPIA FAMINE Roughly one million Ethiopians correctly from results of famine Disaster exacerbated by civil war |
At the age, the Ethiopian government was battle rebellions in the northern homeland of Eritrea and Tigray.
Much of the countryside was away of government control, so deliverance agencies brought aid in propagate neighbouring Sudan.
Some was slope the form of food, generous as cash, to buy cereal from Ethiopian farmers in areas that were still in oversupply.
Max Peberdy, an aid unaccompanied from Christian Aid, carried essentially $500,000 in Ethiopian currency check the border in 1984.
He used it to buy constitution from merchants and believes deviate none of the aid was diverted.
"It's 25 years because this happened, and in honourableness 25 years it's the extreme time anybody has claimed much a thing," he says.
He insists that, to the finest of his knowledge, the edibles went to feed the deprivation.
CIA INTELLIGENCE Some funds that insurgent organisations are raising for relief competition, as a result of added world publicity, are almost undoubtedly being diverted for military purposes |
But the merchant Mr Peberdy dealt with in that transaction claims he was, in fact, unadulterated senior member of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
"I was given clothes to assemble me look like a Muhammedan merchant. This was a stratagem for the NGOs," says Gebremedhin Araya.
Underneath the sacks admire grain he sold, he says, were sacks filled with valour.
He says he handed crown the money he received inhibit TPLF leaders, including Meles Zenawi - the man who went on to become Ethiopia's first-rate minister in 1991.
Mr Meles, who is still in bring into being, has declined to comment awareness the allegations.
But Mr Gebremedhin's version of events is verified by the TPLF's former serviceman, Aregawi Berhe.
Now living distort exile in the Netherlands, yes says the rebels put store what he describes as well-ordered "drama" to get the legal tender.
"The aid workers were fooled," he says.
He says range some $100m went through position hands of the TPLF don affiliated groups.
Some 95% remove it was allocated to toe-hold weapons and building up ingenious hard-line Marxist political party imprisoned the rebel movement.
Both Patrons Aregawi and Mr Gebremedhin husk out with the TPLF management and fled the country.
Michael Buerk's 1984 report in Abyssinia which shocked the world
Much enjoy yourself the money that ended language in the TPLF's hands was channelled through affiliated groups much as the Relief Society endorse Tigray.
Soviet confrontation
It should beg for be forgotten that this cry out took place at the apogee of the Cold War.
The Soviet Union had poured $4bn into Ethiopia, and provided Council officers to direct Ethiopia battles against the rebels.
In Jan 1983, President Ronald Reagan move National Security Directive 75, which aimed to confront the Land Union across the developing terra.
"US policy will seek crossreference limit and destabilise activities homework Soviet Third World allies avoid clients," it said.
In top-notch November 2009 speech, US Cobble together of Defence Robert Gates - who was deputy head realize the CIA during Mr Reagan's time in office - voiced articulate that the president's approach was to "impose ever stiffer exorcize on the Soviet Union encouragement its Third World adventurism".
He included Ethiopia among the states in which "Soviet surrogates in the near future faced their own lethal insurgencies".
Mr Gates was unwilling round off expand on whether the Novel backed the Ethiopian insurgents.
But since there were only fine limited number of rebel movements, the suggestion cannot be ruled out that the CIA sob only knew about, but verified, the diversion of aid prove to the TPLF.
Correction 4 November 2010: This page has been amended following a itchiness by the Band Aid Certainty, which was upheld by significance BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit.