Columnists
Aid not going arms way
Paul Vallely
So, basically, said the bloke on the internet, most Live Aid
money went to buy arms, that's correct isn't it? Well, no, it isn't
actually. And it wasn't even what the story which the blogger
purported to be commenting on had claimed. But it tells you rather
a lot about the power of suggestion - and the crude subliminal
messages that people pick up even when reading a carefully-nuanced
piece of writing. And it also tells us something, I suspect, about
what people want to believe, and why.
But let's, for the sake of the record, get some facts straight.
The story, by the BBC World Service's Africa analyst, Martin Plaut,
said he had evidence that millions of dollars, earmarked for
victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85, went to buy weapons.
The rebels of the Tigrean People's Liberation Front, the TPLF, had
diverted $95m of aid cash into its fight to overthrow the
government of the time. He quoted two senior rebel soldiers as
saying that rebels had dressed up as merchants to trick NGOs like
Christian Aid into handing over large amounts of cash, purportedly
to buy food. To back up the claims he cited recently released CIA
documents, and quoted a senior US diplomat as saying that at the
time they had believed that aid was 'almost certainly being
diverted for military purposes'.
This sounds convincing. But it all starts to slip through your
fingers when you examine it. First consider the two rebel leaders
making these allegations. One is Aregawi Berhe, whom the BBC
described as 'the former commander of the TPLF's army'. This brings
the first twitch on the antennae, for Berhe was a
commander, rather than the commander; he lead the rebel's
sixth offensive against the Ethiopian dictator Mengistu. More
significantly Berhe is someone who subsequently fell out with other
TPLF leaders and fled to Holland, from where he has over the past
few years conducted a persistent attack on Meles Zenawi, the TPLF
leader who went on to become the Prime Minister of Ethiopia.
The other rebel official in the BBC story is Gebremedhin Araya,
a senior figure in the TPLF's finance department who was
photographed in a book by Christian Aid's Max Peberdy dressed up as
a Muslim merchant counting the charity's money after selling it
sacks of grain which were really, he said, filled with sand. Araya
too was purged by the TPLF and fled to exile in Australia.
So the core of the BBC story rests on the claims of two
individuals with a grievance against the current Ethiopian
government and a track-record of attempts to discredit it. That
does not mean they are wrong, but it sets up reasonable doubts.
Then there were other telling discrepancies. Gebremedhin Araya
claimed that Peberdy had handed over $2m where the records show
that he had had only $500,000 for his entire grain-purchasing
mission and Peberdy says that the deal in the photograph involved
only $60,000. Then the CIA document which suggested that 'some
funds that insurgent organisations are raising for relief
operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost
certainly being diverted for military purposes' is dated April 1985
- three months before the Live Aid concert even happened. A CIA
document dated July 1985, after Live Aid, makes no mention of aid
cash going on arms in rebel areas.
Finally Martin Plaut quoted Robert Houdek, the most senior US
diplomat in Ethiopia in 1988, the year after the TPLF overthrew
Mengistu, as saying that the former rebels told him that 'some of
the food coming in through the Sudan was being sold for cash'. He
added: 'And of course with money you can buy weapons, you can buy
fuel. That was going on. There was no question about that.'
But Houdek is probably talking about bilateral US aid and has no
facts or figures. And, again, he is offering hearsay, not
evidence.
Those closely involved in the aid effort have been fierce in
their rebuttals of the BBC story. Bob Geldof dismissed it as 'total
bollocks' revealing that less than half a per cent of all Live Aid
money spent in 1985 went to Tigray. In the six years to 1991
Band Aid's total spend there was only £11m of the $100m Live
Aid raised and most of that went not on food aid but on
agriculture, forestry, livestock, water and health and the use of
the money was stringently monitored by Band Aid staff in the field
and external evaluators.
Christian Aid, more politely, said that its investigations 'do
not correspond to the BBC's version of events'. It had robust
on-the-ground assessment criteria in place to monitor the spending
of emergency food relief. There is far more evidence that the money
was channelled to where it should have been than there is for much
going astray. The BBC story was 'outrageous and very damaging'.
Indeed. 'Live Aid concert's Ethiopian famine aid spent on
weapons,' said the headline on one leading Washington website. In
London the inventive cartoonist Peter Brook twisted the Live Aid
guitar logo into a Death Aid one. Distortions of the truth, wilful
and otherwise, abounded.
Why, I often wonder, are people so gleefully prepared to believe
such stories? Because it gives them an intellectually-respectable
excuse for not putting their hand in their pocket to help those so
evidently in need. It is why right-wing 'down-with-aid' Africans
are routinely feted on the north London dinner party circuit. When
our tv screens show so many people in the world in abject need we
need something to assuage our guilt at the contrast between their
lives and ours. The idea that 'all aid is wasted through
corruption' is a convenient conscience salve.
No-one who has been involved in the delivery of aid would deny
that corruption is a serious problem. But the central ethical
imperative is to find ways to counter corruption while still
helping those in need. Most donors now have rigorous systems in
place to monitor aid delivery and minimise the risks of diversion.
Some money may well have gone astray in Ethiopia in 1985. But not
on the scale which the BBC has alleged. To dress up claims as
evidence on such an important issue is journalism of the most
irresponsible kind.