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SUBSIDIZING TRAGEDY: THE WORLD BANK AND THE NEW COLONIALISM
by Yonas Deressa You have all seen the pictures of starving,
gaunt-faced men and women, the children with the dull, hopeless
eyes and swollen bellies. This year, like three years ago, famine
has returned to Ethiopia. This time, a s the last, people are
suffering as a direct result of the policies of a ruthless, inhuman
communist regime that cares not the least bit for human life - only
for the preservation and expansion of its own power.
In the years since the 1984-1985 famine, pe ople in the West have
learned the truth about the reasons for that tragedy. Now they are
aware that strongman Mengistu Haile Mariam took advantage of
drought to engineer a famine in order to destroy opposition to his
regime. In areas of rebel activity his soldiers burned crops, stole
livestock, confiscated seed and food reserves. Mengistu cut those
areas off from the rest of the world. He only allowed relief aid
after the international outcry that resulted when a BBC camera crew
smuggled out 'the footage w e now remember so well: the videotapes
of his wretched victims. Much of the food that was sent by the West
to feed the hungry was diverted and used to supply Ethiopia's huge
army instead. The areas in the north, where opposition to the
regime is strongest, were precisely the areas that were hit hardest
by the famine, because Mengistu deliberately kept food away from
them.
Destroying Everything. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. The
Soviet client regime in Ethiopia has committed crimes beyond
descript ion, worse even than those of the infamous Idi Amin. This
is a dictatorship that during its Red Terror campaign of ten years
ago murdered hundreds of schoolchildren and left their bodies
stacked in the streets and hanging from lamp posts. Political
murder s number in the thousands, and everyone in the cities lives
in fear of the midnight knock on the door, of being taken away to
disappear forever. Suspected democrats are tortured by suspending
them from shackles and hanging concrete weights from their genit a
ls. This regime has earned for itself the distinction of being the
most cruel on the face of the earth. In its determination to
construct a new Marxist-Leninist workers' paradise, it is
destroying everything it touches, with no regard for the havoc and
mi sery it leaves in its wake.
In true Stalinist fashion, this dictatorship is engaged in a
massive social engineering program that is wrecking the very
structure of Ethiopian society, destroying the lives and families
of millions, and ruining the country's a bility to feed itself.
And, most ironic and tragic of all, Mengistu is using money from
the West - from the World Bank - to do it. The World Bank has given
over $659 million to a regime that is recognized as the most
oppressive and inhuman in the world. W hy?
Yonas Deressa is President of the Ethiopian Refugees Education
and Relief Foundation. He spoke at The Heritage Foundation on July
28, 1988. ISSN 0272-1155. 01988 by The Heritage Foundation.
Draining the Pond. In 1984 the Mengistu regime began a proje ct
called "Operation Red Star," to move a million and a half people
from areas in the high, and north to camps in the humid lowlands of
the southwest. Mengistu claimed that the reason was to prevent
famine, but the real reason was to depopulate areas of g u errilla
activity. Mao said that a guerrifla 64moves among the people like a
fish swims in water," so Mengistu. has decided just to drain the
pond. Soldiers come to drag farmers off their lands during harvest
time. Families are deliberately torn apart, and people brutally
packed into trucks, buses, and unheated and unpressurized
airplanes. Thousands die on the journey - many from suffocation or
being trampled to death. Often the authorities starve people in
jails before the journey to make them easier to ha ndle. And most
tragic of all, many who are kidnapped have grown sufficient food
for themselves and their families. They are in no danger of
starvation at all!
When they arrive at their destinations, these people find
themselves not in new homes, as the reg ime teRs Westerners. They
become inmates in prison camps. They are forced to labor at
gunpoint, with little food, and under the constant threat of
torture, beatings, and death. People are paid with food to inform
on one another. Many try to escape, and th ose who fail are shot.
From what my own sources tell me, I estimate that at least 160,000
have died so far in the camps or during relocation. Mengistu plans
to subject 1.5 million people to this abomination.
When the West found out about this, the outrage was so great that
Mengistu was forced to suspend the project for a few months. But
even when the protests were at their loudest, the World Bank
proposed to give him more money - $100 million for "development."
Reduced to Serfs. Then there is what the regi m e calls its
"Vinagization" campaign. In it soldiers force families to pull up
stakes and carry their houses on their backs to centralized
compounds, where they can be watched and constantly supervised by
agents of the regime. If they do not submit, they a r e beaten,
raped, or killed. In these so-called villages people are reduced to
the status of serfs. Their crops are taken from them, and they are
forced to attend interminable indoctrination sessions, to teach
them how to be good communists. The dictatorsh i p has vowed to
subject over 30 million people to this ruthless campaign. Even
where these monstrosities haven't yet been imposed, the damage by
the regime to Ethiopian society is tremendous. Mengistu has
destroyed the traditional farming economy with comm u nist controls
on prices, by confiscating all land, and by making the state the
sole buyer and seller of food. Since 1979, agricultural output has
faHen in Ethiopia by 15 percent. Before the communists, my country
not only fed itself, it even exported food . Now, even in good
years, 7 million or 8 million people are on the verge of
starvation. Ethiopia has become an economic basket case. Life has
become so horrible that over 3 million people have fled, most of
them trudging for up to a month through the wild erness, risking
death from thirst or starvation.
What is the World Bank's answer to this litany of cruelty and
disaster? In the face of overwhelming evidence that Ethiopia's
rulers are murdering cutthroats, hostile to the West, and committed
to violence an d expansionism, the Bank carries on business as
usual. In 1985, it doled out an amount equal to 16 percent of the
dictatorship's budget. In 1986, it
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gave Mengistu $45 million. In May 1987, it handed the ministry of
Agriculture, which has been carrying out the villagization
campaign, $39 million. And a few months ago it proposed a loan of a
nice, round $100 million. Making Millionaires, Financing Oppre s
sion. Ethiopia's case, while perhaps the most extreme in Africa, is
not unique. Nearly everywhere on the continent, inept, uncaring,
and corrupt regimes are bleeding their people dry. But to all of
them, the World Bank hands out money like candy, helping t o keep
ruthless dictators in power, making them Millionaires through
stolen funds, and financing the oppression of their victims. In
Tanzania, for instance, the Bank provided the money for dictator
Julius Nyerere's campaign called ujamaa, a prototype of M e
ngistu's villagization. Farmers lost their freedom, and the state
took over their lands and claimed their crops, all with the help
and blessing of the World Bank. In a few short years, Nyerere
turned his country into a ruin, a starving beggar nation. But the
Bank has never admitted its folly.
New Colonialism. In fact, the World Bank is leading exponent of
what I call the New Colonialism. Ethiopia was unique in black
Africa in that, until it became a vassal of the Soviet Union, it
had never been colonized. The rest of the continent was divided up
in the 19th century between the European powers: France, Britain
Germany, Belgium, and Italy.
These old colonialists were concerned mainly with trade and the
extraction of our raw materials, and had little desire t o
interfere in the day-to-day lives of their subjects. They left
native institutions and customs pretty well alone, even ruling
through local chiefs and headmen, as the British often did. Their
influence was concentrated mainly on the coasts, rivers, and f ew
major population centers. Nine-tenths of Africans continued to live
much as they had always done. Now, I'm not saying the old colonial
rule was good or fair. Africans were treated as second-class
citizens, and often colonial governments were stupid, cl u msy, and
heartless. And remember, no matter how enlightened a colonial ruler
is, people want to be able to run their own countries. But,
ironically, it was in the late fifties and early sixties - when the
Europeans left - that the real oppression of the A f rican people
began. Third-Rate Marxism. As the old white elite relinquished
power, the machinery of colonialism was simply taken over by a new,
African elite. But unlike their predecessors, the new rulers wanted
absolute hegemony. They ruthlessly crushed opposition, and began
immediately to impose arrogant, unworkable social engineering
schemes on their helpless subjects. Badly educated in third-rate
Marxism, they looked upon their populations as little more than
ants in an anthill, or cogs in a machine.
A ll over Africa, dictators interfered in every aspect of their
people's lives. Africa's centuries-old traditions of free trade and
entrepreneurship were swept away by pathetic, incompetent attempts
to plan economies. State bureaucracies expanded tremendous l y, but
without a European industrial base to support these new parasites.
As a result, the 80 percent of Africa's population that lives in
the countryside is squeezed and exploited to support a new class of
government worker making up to ten times the per capita income.
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Bank Boondoggles. This huge expansion of government power has been
paid for in part by funds from the World Bank. The Bank has
funneled billions to African dictators to help them consolidate
their power. It has actively helped them se t up immense
"development" projects that wind up sucking the life blood of their
economies. Almost every kind of boondoggle you could imagine has
been dreamed up and paid for by the World Bank in the Third World.
Huge irrigation projects that waterlog the soil or fill it with
salt so that it becomes sterile. Government-owned steel mills that
immediately fail because of bad design or because there is no
market for their product. Soviet-style farms that can hardly grow
enough to feed their own workers. Dams t hat flood valuable forest
and farmland, destroy people's homes, and provide breeding grounds
for disease and mosquitoes. Badly constructed highways to nowhere.
State-run cattle ranches that turn grassland into desert. In
Vietnam, the Bank even directly fi nanced the infamous "new
economic zones" that resulted in hundreds of thousands fleeing the
country in overcrowded, leaky boats. You name it, the Bank has done
it.
The World Bank has spent billions on agriculture in Africa - $2.4
billion between 1973 and 1 980 alone. And yet since 1960, per
capita food production has fallen 20 percent. All the money had
done is strengthen the stranglehold of dictatorships on the lives
and work of their people. And always money is skimmed off to fill
the pockets of the rulin g classes, to swell the Swiss bank
accounts of dictators, to build luxurious villas and buy
Mercedes-Benzes for the new colonists, while their countrymen live
in abject squalor. But the Bank hardly seems to care.
Potential for Good. Conceivably, such an in stitution as the World
Bank could do a lot of good in Africa and the rest of the Third
World. It could make funds available to set up local banks and
savings and loans that could advance capital to qualified people
who wanted to start small businesses, or to farmers to expand
production on their family holdings. But for such enterprises to be
successful, they must take place in societies where the people are
free to act in their own interests, where governments let people
live their own lives. Unfortunatel y , the World Bank has actually
fostered the kinds of regimes that prevent development. By funding
state capitalism, it has discouraged enterprise, promoted
socialism, and perpetuated poverty. Today this kind of folly is
more apparent than ever before. Soci a lism has been stripped of
its credibility in the eyes of the entire world. While the
socialized economies of Europe have not created a single job in the
last eight years, in that same time Reagan's America produced 15
million new jobs, and shows no sign o f slowing down. The
courageous Mrs. Thatcher has revitalized the once-moribund British
economy. Even the rulers of those bastions of socialism, the Soviet
Union and Red China, recognize the bankruptcy of socialism, and are
trying to find a way to get the e c onomic benefits of freedom
without losing power. It is time for the World Bank to recognize
the error of its ways. Every dollar it lends to ruthless
dictatorships adds to the suffering of their people. Every loan
that fails to raise productivity adds to a crushing burden of debt,
that will either hang like a millstone around
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the necks of generations, or will be defaulted on and add to the
West's financial difficulties. Every advance to such ruthless
rulers as Mengistu frees up funds for the military and bureaucracy.
As long as the World Bank gives them money, they do not have to
make the choice between oppressing their people and survival.
Remember, it is your tax dollars that the World Bank is spending to
keep dozens of little Hitlers and Stalins in power. Better that the
Bank's magnificent buildings here in Washington be dem o lished or
sold. Better that its legions of overpaid, underworked bureaucrats
be forced to get real jobs. Better that those billions be used for
a strong, well-armed American presence in the world, than that
another cent of your money be spent to subsidize tragedy.
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