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 investi-gation finds, BBC online reports Wednesday.
Former rebel leaders told the BBC that they posed as merchants in meetings with charity workers to get aid money. One rebel leader estimated 95 million US dollar (ca. en halv milliard DKR) 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.
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 dollar 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.
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 handed over the money he received to TPLF leaders, including Meles Zenawi – who later became Ethiopias prime minister in 1991.
