Forum for Social Studies (FSS)        A New Initiative in Ethiopia  

Baleti, Ethiopia -- Under pressure from international donors tired of giving millions of dollars in food aid to help Ethiopians at risk of starvation, the Ethiopian government came up with a quick fix -- move them.

Two million of them.

But in late May, a year after the start of the largest relocation program in Africa's history, the government was forced to allow international relief organizations to deliver aid to about 250,000 of the 350,000 already moved, many of them hungry and dying of diseases such as malaria, according to a World Bank probe.

Marea Hussein, a 20-year-old with big, shiny eyes, recently held her 2- year-old son, Seyfudin Abdu Rahman. She and her husband, Abdu Rahman Amada, were moved to Baleti two months ago from her home 500 miles away. Her daughter Urji died a few weeks ago.

"She had diarrhea, high fever and vomiting for four days," Hussein said. "I don't have any money to take her to a real clinic."

She held up some liquid the makeshift government clinic gave her on the fourth day -- painkillers that expired nine months ago. Urji died that night, just 6 months old.

"Now my son has the same symptoms," she said.

The boy lay limp in her arms, with vacant eyes and a swollen little face, his hair razed, dry, falling off.

"We came here by force," Hussein said. "We said, 'We don't want to go,' but the local officials told me, 'If you don't go, we'll burn your houses.' "

The government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi insisted the program is voluntary and said settlers are given land, food, safe water, grain mills, health care, schools and roads as incentives to relocate.

Last year, 20 years after a million Ethiopians died in a famine that caught the attention of the world, the U.N. World Food Program declared 13 million Ethiopians in danger of starvation. This year, the rains have been a little better, but 7 million are still near starvation.

Donors and aid organizations such as the World Bank and UNICEF, which have long sustained Ethiopians in times of drought, have pressured the government to come up with long-term solutions by making their loans conditional on sustainable agriculture initiatives. The $220 million relocation program is part of a $3.2 billion rescue plan -- financed by the Ethiopian government and donor groups -- to reverse years of dependency on international aid.

Each person in Baleti receives 33 pounds of wheat each month, which they take to the mill to grind into flour. For the families in Baleti, this translates into 2 cups of porridge in the morning and 2 cups in the evening --

a bright, white, mushy mix. Lacking any protein, they are increasingly emaciated.

In this neighborhood of 150 families, six children have died after just two months.

Death by malnutrition begins with weight and muscle loss. Then there is a long period of "starvation diarrhea.'' Hair thins, and fat is lost from the cheeks last. The long, painful process ends in coma and death.

"We want to work the land, but disease and lack of food has made it impossible to succeed," Marea said. "Everyone who has money has left and gone back. Only the poor people are left."

The government asserted in January that resettled farmers achieved food self-sufficiency in the first year of the program, producing a surplus in the first harvest. But the World Bank, the U.N. mission in the country and other organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, have criticized the government's management of the resettlement program, saying that rather than combat famine, the hasty exodus has led to a humanitarian crisis in many areas.

Teams of World Bank investigators visited sites in four parts of the country in March and found "moderate to severe malnutrition" in most. In Oromia, where most of the settlers have been moved, they found "severe malnutrition'' in nine of 19 sites. In one, more than 40 children had died of malnutrition and 17 from diarrhea. In almost all of the sites, malaria was endemic.

Paul Hebert, director of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia, said the government wasn't prepared to handle such a huge project.

"They're giving out food indigestible by children and putting them in areas with malaria outbreaks," he said.

"The reality on the ground was horrible," said Yoseph Mulugeda, head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, after a team of rights workers visited the relocation sites in April. "Thousands are dying.''After the World Bank released its findings, the World Food Program stepped in to help feed the starving settlers, but the U.S. Agency for International Development said only about half of the food aid needed to avert a crisis has been delivered so far.

There is a well-established international aid system in this nation of 70 million, but Desalegn Rahmato, director of the Ethiopian Forum for Social Studies, said, "The government is reluctant to ask for food aid, because this would prove the failure of the resettlement program."

Along the dirt path to Hare Chachisa, another resettlement site, a throng of peasants recently bore an elderly man sick with malaria on a makeshift wooden stretcher, carrying him 45 miles round-trip to seek medical care. Hare Chachisa is three hours' drive from the nearest town on a dry day.

A rocky landscape of long sharp curves and gradations, Hare Chachisa seems an unlikely place to settle peasants seeking a new life on arable land. The only water source for 2,100 families is a bright brown stream smelling like burned plastic and free-flowing expired milk. There is no well and only one flour mill for thousands of people.

Unlike in Baleti, settlers in Hare Chachisa said they volunteered to come. But in the first week, 500 of the 6,000 to 8,000 resettled villagers returned home. The air is hot, diseased, bitter with despair.

An eager man with a beautiful smile invited visitors inside, speaking slowly in broken English.

"Ethiopians, we are good to guests," said Tasfu Nebaba, 53. "I will give you tea, but I have no food."

By this, he meant he had neither food nor tea.

"We work day and night, but all Africans need help from the world. Why us, why are we poor?"

He began to weep, moaning as if he carried the continent's suffering alone. He clutched his mosquito net, his only protection from malaria.

"It is breaking," he said, grabbing the net roughly, as if to rip it down.

"When I saw this area, I wanted to stay forever,'' he cried. "Now all of us attacked by malaria."

In Hare Chachisa's first year, 600 people have died of malaria and malnutrition, residents said.

Nebaba took us to the cemetery, spread out over six miles. After just one year, there are 27 graveyards with large communal burial mounds marked by dried-out sticks.

"We bury three or four people in one grave," Nebaba explained. "There's space, but no one is well enough to dig, and there is a funeral every day. "Siyume Alemu's 3-year-old daughter died of malnutrition two months ago. When the rest of his family fell sick with malaria, Alemu collected money for his wife and remaining daughter to return home. Doggedly unwilling to fail on this new land, he stayed behind.

Now Alemu's wife, Kurre Masganu, who is still sick with malaria, sleeps all day in her father's hut in Chisa, about 500 miles away.

A tiny village in eastern Ethiopia, Chisa is in a region beleaguered by cyclical droughts. Last year, farmers lost 70 to 80 percent of their harvest. Still, it is better than Hare Chachisa, said Shumi Kade, another villager in Chisa.

"When I was there, I became sick and hopeless, so I came back," she said. "The kids are healthy now.'' But back at Hare Chachisa, Alemu is dying.

Suffering from high fever, vomiting and malarial shivering, Alemu has been unable to eat or walk for three days. He curls himself in a blanket and, unable to balance, his body sways.

His lungs are weak, and he is convulsing with sweat. In a faded voice, he strains to say, "They told us there is very wide farmland, so we came."