STILL THE WORLD

When famine swept through Ethiopia in 1984, more than 8 million people suffered severe food shortages and crippling malnutrition, more than 1 million died. Daily television coverage and a ground-breaking BBC documentary brought the horror to unprecedented global attention. Two immensely popular rock concerts – Band Aid and Live Aid – raised fortunes for relief. Top recording artists of the day joined together to sing “We Are the World,” raising even more money and public awareness.

Nearly two decades later, famine is back; this time it may even be worse. The vulnerable population in Ethiopia is estimated at 11 million; 35 million for the entire continent. Sustained drought has made those parts of Ethiopia that lessened the 1984 famine by being able to produce surplus food now barren, as is much of Southern Africa, traditionally Africa’s breadbasket. Livestock deaths, a precursor to human deaths, reportedly are more widespread than last time. That a smaller drought and famine in 2000 (50,000 died) came and went with scant worldwide attention or aid suggests a prevailing view that death by starvation is simply part of the Ethiopian way of life.

There are reasons to be optimistic that the coming famine will be averted. Aid in 2000 was sluggish in major part because Ethiopia was engaged in a costly and bloody border war with Eritrea. The 1984 famine spiraled out of control because Ethiopia’s military government tried to keep the emergency secret from the world as well as from its own people.

Today, Ethiopia and Eritrea are at peace and Ethiopia’s civilian government is doing all it can to bring attention to the distress. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has toured affected regions with reporters and has called on international agencies for help, the government has been warning its public for months of the potential disaster. This time, Ethiopia is not trying to hide the problem. Food shipments already have begun arriving. Already, about a third of the projected assistance needed for the coming year, 1.4 million tons of emergency food aid, has been pledged by an array of governments, with the United States expected to contribute another third. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, who visited Ethiopia in 1984, returned this week to assess another crisis in the making and promises to bring it to the attention of the rest of Congress. This time, if all those pledges of aid are met, help may arrive before it is too late.

There are, however, many roadblocks. In Zimbabwe, misbegotten agrarian reform and aid manipulation are creating man-made famine. Zambia is refusing food that may, or may not, contain genetically modified crops. Corruption and mismanagement already have hindered food distribution in other countries facing famine. As U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan recently noted, the AIDS epidemic sweeping Africa will make recovery from any degree of famine even harder. But the greatest impediment may be that the wealthy nations of the West are so focused upon the fresh crises in Iraq and North Korea that mass starvation in Africa may seem like the same old story.

The wealthy nations, especially but not exclusively the United States, are in a war against terrorism that must be won. This war, however, cannot become an all-consuming obsession, thwarting hypothetical tragedy must not preclude alleviating a real one. Rock concerts and celebrity recordings are fine for bringing attention to human suffering; they must not be the sole sources of relief.