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Following the week that Band Aid released Band Aid 20, an all-star recording to aid the starving Sudanese in Darfur, the documentary-maker Daniel Wolf argues that the first Band Aid fundraiser of 1985 only made matters worse for the victims of famine ["The Myth of Band Aid, "Sunday Mail (Brisbane, Queensland), November 21].

By the release, twenty years ago, of another all-star recording, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and the associated Live Aid concerts, Bob Geldof raised $150 million for famine relief in Ethiopia. At the time, many fans of rock music believed that they had accomplished great good, saved Ethiopia, and "fed the world." They did not.

Ghastly images of starving Ethiopians in 1984 shocked the world. What was not understood at the time was the famine was largely created by the government of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. After a severe drought in the region, Mengistu withheld food supplies to the area and destroyed crops in order to suppress a rebellion. In October, 1984, Mengistu launched a major offensive into the famine-stricken areas in the north. Troops set up road blocks to prevent the aid shipments of food.

Meanwhile, Bob Geldof was telling the international media that agencies had to trust representatives of the Mengistu government. Yet with a billion dollars of aid flowing into Ethiopia in 1985, Mengistu was able to convert the incoming Western dollars into local currency at a highly favorable rate. By tripling Ethiopia's foreign reserves, Mengistu could spend the cash to buy weapons and feed his army. The United Nations in Addis Ababa, which was coordinating the aid program, denied there was any diversion of the funds.

At the peak of the famine operation, Mengistu decided to strip the rebel areas of their population by resettling more than half a million people from the north to the south. This resettlement resulted in the loss of 100,000 more lives. The money for the program came, directly and indirectly, from the aid program. People were abducted, some even from relief camps run by aid agencies, to be transferred to transit camps, where many starved to death.

They probably never knew it was Christmas.

Labels: Bob Geldof, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, Live Aid, Sudan

Syrian President Bashar al-Asad speaking in Damascus at the Conference of Syrian Expatriates on October 8 said: "Do they [the Western countries] want to fling the entire region into the volcano? Haven't they learned from 9/11? Haven't we learned from the Iraq war? Hasn't the world learned? We learned many years ago that when a volcano erupts, its core strikes countries near and far, great and small, powerful and weak. The time has come for us to learn this lesson." ("Syrian president Asad Issues Stark Warning, Supported by Possible Terrorist Action and IRBM Capability," Jason Fuchs and Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, October 15, 2004.)

Asad's threat of an Islamist "core" capable of striking targets anywhere is particularly ominous in the light of the GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily report that government officials in Damascus and Tehran were involved in intense debates with the high command of the Islamist-jihadist movement over whether to launch "spectacular" strikes against Western and specifically United States targets. GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs reports intelligence of at least two large missile launch sites that have a strong Iranian involvement. Rumors that these sites may have been prepared to launch the Iranian Shahab-3D IRBM are particularly disturbing. Edward Jay Epstein reports that the imprecision of the Shahab-3 missile, announced by Iran on September 26 to be deployed on mobile launchers, makes it impractical for any payload other than WMDs. In July 2003, Syria tested air-dropped chemical and biological weapons in Darfur, Sudan.

Labels: Bashar al-Asad, biological weapons, chemical weapons, Damascus, Darfur, Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Global Information System, Shahab-3D IRBM, Sudan, Syria