From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   U.S. Suspends Food Aid for Ethiopia, Citing Widespread Theft   
   By Declan Walsh and Abdi Latif Dahir, June 8, 2023, NY Times   
   The U.S. on Thursday suspended all food aid to Ethiopia, where its   
   contributions feed an estimated 12 million people, citing “widespread and   
   coordinated” theft of emergency rations in a countrywide scheme overseen by   
   Ethiopian government officials.   
      
   The unusual decision was likely to hit hardest the millions of vulnerable   
   Ethiopians already reeling from the combined effects of civil conflicts,   
   climate change and swarms of locusts that devoured crops.   
      
   The discovery that American aid had been stolen in Ethiopia on an   
   “industrial scale,” as one senior American official put it, was also   
   another blow to Washington’s already-strained relations with Ethiopia,   
   Africa’s second-most-populous nation,    
   with 120 million people, and once a key American ally.   
      
   The U.S. is by far the largest aid donor to Ethiopia, where about 20 million   
   people depend on food aid. In the past fiscal year, it gave $1.5 billion in   
   aid, more than two-thirds of that in food. Although a significant amount of   
   that aid reached the    
   hungry, American officials said they had discovered misappropriation on a   
   scale that left them with no choice but to halt the deliveries.   
      
   “We made the difficult but necessary decision that we cannot move forward   
   with distribution of food assistance until reforms are in place,” the U.S.   
   Agency for International Development said in a statement. “Our intention is   
   to immediately resume    
   food assistance once we are confident in the integrity of delivery systems.”   
      
   The USAID statement did not say who stole the food. But a briefing document by   
   the Humanitarian and Resilience Donor Group, a coalition of foreign donors   
   including USAID, said the scheme “appeared to be orchestrated by federal and   
   regional government    
   of Ethiopia entities, with military units across the country benefiting from   
   humanitarian assistance.”   
      
   A senior USAID official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an   
   ongoing investigation, confirmed that account. After an extensive   
   investigation in seven of Ethiopia’s nine regions, American officials   
   uncovered “probably the largest    
   scale diversion that we have seen, at least in recent history,” the official   
   said.   
      
   But American officials, whose tense relations with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed   
   of Ethiopia had been slowly warming in recent months, were reluctant to   
   publicly blame the Ethiopian government for the diversion of American aid.   
      
   After a meeting on Thursday with Ethiopia’s deputy PM, Demeke Mekonnen, on   
   the sidelines of a conference in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. secretary of state,   
   Antony J. Blinken, said he welcomed Ethiopia’s commitment “to work   
   together to conduct a full    
   investigation” into the missing aid, and “to hold accountable those found   
   responsible.”   
      
   A spokeswoman for Ethiopia’s PM did not respond to a request for comment.   
   But in a joint statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia’s capital,   
   Addis Ababa, the two governments committed “to collaborate toward an   
   efficient aid distribution    
   system” that would “safeguard assistance from diversion.”   
      
   Ethiopia has endured one of the worst droughts in decades in the Horn of   
   Africa. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the suffering, causing inflation and   
   unemployment to rise. Locusts and conflict decimated the agricultural sector   
   in some areas.   
      
   Relations between the U.S. and Ethiopia plunged during the two-year civil war   
   in the northern Tigray region between forces of the federal government and   
   regional leaders, which ended with a settlement in November. It was, by many   
   estimates, the deadliest    
   war this century, resulting in about 600,000 deaths and accusations of gross   
   abuses by all sides.   
      
   Ethiopian forces, in particular, faced accusations of ethnic cleansing, mass   
   rape and using food as a weapon of war during the campaign. In September 2021,   
   President Biden threatened sweeping sanctions that drew a furious response   
   from Mr. Abiy.   
      
   Human Rights Watch said last week that ethnic cleansing had continued in   
   western Tigray since the November peace deal and that much of it was   
   orchestrated by local officials.   
      
   But some Western countries are keen to edge back toward normal ties with Mr.   
   Abiy. In April, a delegation from the International Monetary Fund visited   
   Addis Ababa to discuss Ethiopian requests for emergency funds, which would   
   require American assent to    
   be approved.   
      
   Around that time, though, USAID officials were beginning to make alarming   
   discoveries about their food aid program in Tigray, where most of the six   
   million residents rely on food assistance to survive, and it quickly spiraled   
   into a much wider    
   investigation, according to the senior USAID official.   
      
   During 5 trips to Tigray in April, American officials discovered evidence of   
   “widespread and systematic diversion of assistance,” the USAID official   
   said. Instead of being delivered to the needy, food aid was being rerouted to   
   commercial mills and    
   sold on local markets.   
      
   In testimony to Congress on April 26, the USAID administrator, Samantha Power,   
   cited evidence of “collusion between parties on both sides of the   
   conflict,” referring to the Ethiopian and regional Tigrayan authorities. On   
   May 3, USAID suspended food    
   aid to Tigray.   
      
   By then, the U.N. World Food Program, one of the main agencies that deliver   
   American aid in Ethiopia, had already paused its operations in Tigray based on   
   similar suspicions. (USAID depends on large aid groups to deliver its   
   supplies).   
      
   American investigators quickly widened their focus. They visited refugee   
   camps, markets and 63 flour mills in seven of Ethiopia’s nine regions, where   
   they interviewed commercial traders, officials and aid beneficiaries.   
      
   What they discovered was a “coordinated and criminal scheme” that deprived   
   Ethiopia’s “most vulnerable” citizens of lifesaving assistance, the   
   donor group’s briefing document said. It worked differently depending on the   
   region. In some places,   
    officials collected aid from beneficiaries and diverted it to flour mills. In   
   others, beneficiary lists were inflated with false names — or hungry people   
   never received the aid intended for them.   
      
      
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