The Humanitarian Aid-Corruption Nexus in Ethiopia

June 21, 2013

The
Amharic version of the Voice of America (journalist Solomon Abate serving as
moderator) entertained a discussion on corruption which was broadcast on May 17
and 18, 2013. Participants included Messrs. Mulugeta Aragawi of Addis Ababa
University, Abebe Gutta (attorney at law in Addis Ababa), Berhanu Assefa (Ethical Education and Communication Affairs Director of the
Federal Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission-FEACC) and
I.

The first two gentlemen who really knew the sources, extent and potential
solution to the rampant Ethiopian corruption politely provided their views,
including the approaches that the government has to take to fight the
corruption that the government has admitted to be rampant. As expected and is
customary of the members of the EPRDF, Mr. Berhanu Assefa of the FEACC was on
the defensive and mostly on the attack mode, instead of listening to the
complaints and suggestions of the two citizens.  As those who listened to the debate can
easily attest, Mr. Assefa spent most of his time talking about unrelated to the
topic of discussion –yes, you guessed it right: the same old and tired double
digit growth rates that all EPRDFites like to parrot each other ad nauseam.  He also suggested that the current
decision to fight against corruption is for real and the arrest of Minister Melaku Fenta, director general
of the revenue and customs authority and his deputy Gebrewahed Woldegiorgis
along with several officials and
businessmen merchants should
serve as proof and we ought not to discourage it.  I partially agreed with Mr. Assefa’s
suggestion in that all of us have to encourage the fight against corruption, if
indeed it is for real while at the same time expressing my serious doubts.

I will
perhaps address this issue (whether Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s
government is both serious and capable of fighting the rampant corruption in
the country) with a separate short write-up. Delay such a commentary also allow
us to give the current authorities a little more time and the benefits of doubt
to show it to the world, as promised, that they have ended embarked on fighting
against the debilitating corruption in the country. This and the next two
(probably more) series of short commentaries instead focus on my soon to be
published research findings related to the foreign-aid–corruption-nexus
as applied to Ethiopia. These two forthcoming articles are included in the
upcoming Ethiopian e-Journal for Research
and Innovation Foresight-Vol.5,
no.1-Special issue on the Ethiopian Economy which incorporates seven
professionally written manuscripts. The contributors include Professors Abu
Girma Moges (two articles: one on federalism and the second one on the extent
of and the sham nature of calculating and indexing of poverty in the country),
Minga Negash (on the peculiar nature of corporate governance in Ethiopia and
the way forward), Getachew Begashaw (on the effects of landlockedness), Zeleke
Worku (on Traditional Financial
Structures such as Iqub,
etc.) and I (two articles on the foreign aid-corruption nexus).  Both of my research articles are related
but the first one tries to exclusively focus on the humanitarian
aid-corruption nexus (that is, corruption when the TPLF was a rebel front) while
the second one focuses on the development aid-corruption nexus (that is,
corruption after the TPLF seized political power). They both are byproducts of
many years of my extensive research and fact documentations regarding the
nature and causes of corruption in Ethiopia. I expect readers of these articles
to find the extensive literature, testimonials and interviews that I consulted to
be highly beneficial to them.

The State
Capture Onset in Ethiopia: Humanitarian Aid and Corruption. Forthcoming:   Ethiopian e-Journal for
Research and Innovation Foresight-Vol.5, no.1-Special
issue on the Ethiopian Economy.

Abstract: The first part of this paper shows that a substantial part of the money
that aid agencies gave to feed the 1984-5 Ethiopian famine victims, including those
raised by Band Aid and Live Aid were siphoned off by the Tigrayan
Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF)
to buy military weapons. I also use newly found evidences, interviews and
testimonials accumulated over many years to show that famine aid scamming by the TPLF had gone
beyond using humanitarian aid to purchase military weapons and feed the rebel Front’s
red army. I show how humanitarian aid, as a resource in the midst of extreme
scarcity, has enriched some quarters, fuelled corruption and intensified and
prolonged conflicts among the warring factions of Ethiopia and legitimized the
rebel fronts’ operations. Humanitarian aid lured the Fronts, particularly
the TPLF, to parade hundreds of thousands of peasants to Sudan, which led to
the deaths of tens of thousands of them (due to overcrowding, disease epidemics, lack of regular food
supplies, poor water and sanitation problems, and from being exposed to targets
for bombing). The documents I
examined, the interviews that I conducted and the testimonials I have gathered
over many years indicate that the refugees were abused by the TPLF both during
their trek to the Ethio-Sudanese border which took 4-6 weeks and within the
refugee camps. According to some ex-TPLF veterans, (and their claims to be
indirectly proved by the written work of foreign nationals), a good portion of
the humanitarian food aid was not made available to the starving peasants of
Tigray. Their statements regarding this issue are indirectly corroborated by
the field and research work of foreign nationals. By all these three counts,
according to them, the TPLF has committed crimes against humanity (and, the
International Committee of the Red Cross –ICRC agrees with them on this front).
The documents I examined
and the interviews and testimonials I gathered indicate that donors and aid
agencies knew that the Relief Society of Tigray (REST) was the flip-side of the
same coin- the TPLF and aid agency personnel knew a portion of the humanitarian
aid that they were providing was being diverted for military purposes by the
Fronts, indicating a violation of the principle of neutrality and impartiality
on the part of aid agencies. There are also indications suggesting that the
cross-border interventions by donors and aid agencies were against the
multilateral agreements such as the Lomé conventions (Duffield and Prendergast, 1994).  This shows that the provisions and
delivery of humanitarian aid have been used to violate and perhaps diminish the sovereignty of Ethiopia. Looked in a
different way, a good portion of the humanitarian aid
provided by donor countries to the TPLF and other fronts fighting the Derg
regime was in part for the advancement of the diplomatic and foreign policy
goals as well as political and military tools of donor nations and aid agencies.  It may be for this reason why they cared
less about how humanitarian aid was spent or abused.  The literature that I examined also provides reasons why the abuse
of humanitarian aid would be inevitable in conflict ridden countries such as
Ethiopia. The evidence gathered have
allowed me to inductively test one of my fundamental hypotheses: that
humanitarian aid resources were and still are the sources of predation and
capture in Ethiopia and that the culture of corruption and political malaise
that we observe in today’s Ethiopia is a byproduct of what the TPLF/EPRDF
learned and adopted when it was a rebel front and such a culture of corruption
was aided and abetted by humanitarian aid. 

 Summary,
Implication and Conclusion (abridged)