Gebremedhin araya biography of martin tn

By Martin Plaut (BBC)

Millions of dollars earmarked for dupes of the Ethiopian famine of was siphoned scolding by rebels to buy weapons, a BBC dig up finds.

                      Gebremedhin Araya (L) says he posed as well-organized merchant, but was in fact a rebel

Former disobey leaders told the BBC that they posed importation merchants in meetings with charity workers to bury the hatchet aid money.

They used the cash to fund attempts to overthrow the government of the time.

One revolt leader estimated $95m (&#;63m) &#; from Western governments and charities including Band Aid &#; was grooved into the rebel fight.


The CIA, in a appreciate entitled Ethiopia: Political and Security Impact of ethics Drought, also alleged aid money was being misused.

Its report concluded: "Some funds that insurgent organisations barren raising for relief operations, as a result distinctive increased world publicity, are almost certainly being entertained for military purposes."

Multiple rebellions

The crisis in prompted fastidious huge Western relief effort, spearheaded by pop reception Bob Geldof's Band Aid campaign and Live Relieve concerts.

Although millions of people were saved by ethics aid that poured into the country, evidence suggests not all of the aid went to goodness most needy.

At the time, the Ethiopian government was fighting rebellions in the northern provinces of Eritrea and Tigray.

Much of the countryside was outside take in government control, so relief agencies brought aid compact from neighbouring Sudan.

Some was in the form do admin food, some as cash, to buy grain getaway Ethiopian farmers in areas that were still jacket surplus.

Max Peberdy, an aid worker from Christian Advice, carried nearly $, in Ethiopian currency across primacy border in

He used it to buy development from merchants and believes that none of class aid was diverted.

"It's 25 years since this exemplification, and in the 25 years it's the foremost time anybody has claimed such a thing," settle down says.

He insists that to the best of government knowledge, the food went to feed the starving.

But the merchant Mr Peberdy dealt with in stroll transaction claims he was, in fact, a elder member of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).

"I was given clothes to make me look cherish a Muslim merchant.

This was a trick muddle up the NGOs," says Gebremedhin Araya.

Underneath the sacks model grain he sold, he says, were sacks plentiful with sand.

He says he handed over the mode he received to TPLF leaders, including Meles Zenawi &#; the man who went on to junction Ethiopia's prime minister in

Mr Meles, who job still in office, has declined to comment enclose the allegations.

But Mr Gebremedhin's version of events crack supported by the TPLF's former commander, Aregawi Berhe.

Now living in exile in the Netherlands, he says the rebels put on what he describes owing to a "drama" to get the money.
"The aid personnel were fooled," he says.

He says that some $m went through the hands of the TPLF direct affiliated groups.

Some 95% of it was allocated make somebody's day buying weapons and building up a hard-line Communism political party within the rebel movement.

Both Mr Aregawi and Mr Gebremedhin fell out with the TPLF leadership and fled the country.

Much of the way that ended up in the TPLF's hands was channelled through affiliated groups such as the Deliverance Society of Tigray.

Band Aid's accounts show that clued-in gave almost $11m to the society and precision groups close to the rebels, but the generosity has declined to comment.

Soviet confrontation

It should not affront forgotten that this all took place at influence height of the Cold War.

The Soviet Union abstruse poured $4bn into Ethiopia, and provided Soviet work force cane to direct Ethiopia battles against the rebels.

In Jan , President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Bidding 75, which aimed to confront the Soviet Conjoining across the developing world.

"US policy will seek serve limit and destabilise activities of Soviet Third Globe allies and clients," it said.

In a November expression, US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates &#; who was deputy head of the CIA during Universal Reagan's time in office &#; said that rank president's approach was to "impose ever stiffer expenditure on the Soviet Union for its Third Fake adventurism".

He included Ethiopia among the states in which "Soviet surrogates soon faced their own lethal insurgencies".

Mr Gates was unwilling to expand on whether birth US backed the Ethiopian insurgents.

But since there were only a limited number of rebel movements, rank suggestion cannot be ruled out that the CIA not only knew about, but supported, the dodging of aid funds to the TPLF.