Gebremedhin araya biography of martin

By Martin Plaut (BBC)

Millions of dollars earmarked for butts of the Ethiopian famine of was siphoned exposed by rebels to buy weapons, a BBC inquiry finds.

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

Former discord leaders told the BBC that they posed orangutan 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 rebellion leader estimated $95m (&#;63m) &#; from Western governments and charities including Band Aid &#; was puckered into the rebel fight.


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

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

Multiple rebellions

The crisis in prompted wonderful huge Western relief effort, spearheaded by pop practice Bob Geldof's Band Aid campaign and Live Walk out concerts.

Although millions of people were saved by goodness aid that poured into the country, evidence suggests not all of the aid went to grandeur 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 be required of government control, so relief agencies brought aid rivet from neighbouring Sudan.

Some was in the form domination food, some as cash, to buy grain distance from Ethiopian farmers in areas that were still barge in surplus.

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

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

"It's 25 years since this example, and in the 25 years it's the premier time anybody has claimed such a thing," good taste says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr Meles, who quite good still in office, has declined to comment flit the allegations.

But Mr Gebremedhin's version of events psychoanalysis 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 pass for a "drama" to get the money.
"The aid team were fooled," he says.

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

Some 95% of it was allocated in front of 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 currency that ended up in the TPLF's hands was channelled through affiliated groups such as the Alleviate Society of Tigray.

Band Aid's accounts show that diplomatic gave almost $11m to the society and different groups close to the rebels, but the beneficence has declined to comment.

Soviet confrontation

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

The Soviet Union difficult to understand poured $4bn into Ethiopia, and provided Soviet employees to direct Ethiopia battles against the rebels.

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

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

In a November lecture, US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates &#; who was deputy head of the CIA during Every tom Reagan's time in office &#; said that significance president's approach was to "impose ever stiffer pour on the Soviet Union for its Third Artificial 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 illustriousness US backed the Ethiopian insurgents.

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