02:15
Ethiopia is a country at war. As the war with Eritrea intensifies, eight million people are starving to death. And yet both countries continue to spend millions on arms. Tonight on Special Assignment we visit Ethiopia to investigate the arms race in the Horn of Africa...
02:42
INTRO: Meskel Belai says she was born some years after the reign of King Menelik the Second. She must be about 65. She's lived all her life in the village of Edagarbi in the province of Tigray in northern Ethiopia.
Meskel is looking for help. The village is almost deserted. Drought has forced the men and the younger people to take the animals and trek west in search of food and grazing. Many are soldiers, fighting against Eritrea. The warfront is not far from here.
03:14
Meskel's daughter is blind. She looks after her twin babies by herself. They have no food. Meskel's neighbour is already dying.
03:25
In Edagarbi, women, infants, the old and weak are waiting. If the men don't return soon, they might die.
03:35
This area is Ethiopia's breadbasket. But three years of drought and two years of war with Ethiopia have devastated the lives of many Tigrayans.
As we leave Edagarbi, the heavens open. But farmers haven't planted. The first rains have come too late.
04:00
Across Tigray, the search for food and grazing continues.
04:17
Not far from the village of Edagarbi is Axum. Granite obelisks over a thousand years old, guard Ethiopia's most ancient and holy city. Pilgrims flock to the Church of St Mary of Zion to witness one of the most sacred events on the Ethiopian calendar.
04:40
Legend has it that the Ark of the Covenant is kept here. The Ark contains the Tablets of Law God gave to Moses. Twice a year the guardian of St Mary's takes the Ark out of its vault. Covered in cloth, it's paraded through the streets of Axum. No living person has ever seen it... or opened the cloth. But the Ethiopians believe the Ark is real. And that it still has magic - even deadly power. That is why today is a day of prayer. ?
05:18
Interviewee: We pray every day at midnight. We ask God for two things. He must destroy the Eritrean invaders, and bring us rain. We are suffering.
05:34
Axum is on the frontline with Eritrea.
For two years, Eritrea and Ethiopia have been fighting the world's biggest and deadliest war. As many as eighty thousand soldiers may already have died as the two sides continue to rain bombs, mortars and missiles on one another. When we were there, the Ethiopian army was preparing for battle. Half a million men on both sides were dug into kilometres of trenches.
06:07
And yet, as Ethiopia musters its arsenal of high-tech weapons against Eritrea, eight million of its people face famine. Over the past two years, the country has spent billions on the war. Ethiopia is not only at war with its neighbour... but also with itself.
06:30
Professor Mesfin Mariam, philosopher and Author: Ethiopian paople are tired of war, are tired of starvation, are tired ofrelief assistance, are tired of this indignity.
Dr Brook Hailu, Addis Ababa University:The two of us, both poor countries, face big challenges to fight poverty, illiteracy, who are not even capable of providing health services and drinkable water to our people. My goodness, as if war is a luxury.
Prof Mesfin Mariam: For a poor country like Ethiopia, the poorest country in the world. Why on earth should we spend so much money on arms?
Dr Brook Hailu: Do we have to fight? Do we have to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of people? Once again young people specially? Do we?
07:19
Our journey to uncover the extent of famine and the effects of the war in Ethiopia takes us to the capital Addis Abiba... a city steeped in history. It still bears the legacy of the emperors Melenik and Haile Selassie. And the Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.
07:40
Professor Mesfin Mariam is one of East Africa's great philosophers. He lived through the regimes of Selassie and Mengistu... and he's seen many wars, famines and conflicts.
07:55
Prof Mesfin Mariam: This is a country that has seen many wars. You know continuosly we have wars.
(archive footage)
08:10
Only nine years ago, Ethiopians managed to rid themselves of one of Africa's most notorious dictators: Colonel Mengistu Haile Maraim. For more than fifteen years, he ruled Ethiopia... crushing any opposition through fear and repression. His rule became known as the "Red Terror". He also assembled one of the biggest armies in Africa.
08:35
Prof Mesfin Mariam: There is no God (?) There is no law, there is nothingSo you, it is terror. Rule by terror.
08:45
Dr Brooke Hailu is one of the country's foremost political scientists... a powerful figure in Ethiopian society.
Dr Brooke Hailu: You could hear gun shots, etc. You know, and the bodies all over. It was really a pity. We lost a whole generation of intellectuals, young people. People wwho had qualities of stealthmanship in Ethiopia, really.
09:09
In 1991, Eritrean and Ethiopian resistance fighters together defeated Mengistu. For centuries Eritrea was part of Ethiopia. In 1993 Eritrea became independent.
Ethiopia itself got a new government. For five years, the two countries were close allies. But in May 1998, the Eritrean army invaded Ethiopia and occupied the Badme plain.... Claiming it belonged to them.
What started as a border dispute has escalated into the world's bloodiest conflict. At this very moment, a ferocious battle is raging here. Thousands of soldiers have been killed in the past ten days.
09:53
Prof Mariam: And still I do not see, why there should be a war. We live in a world where there are some possibilities for international intervention.
Dr Hailu: Nobody could thought that war could come from Eritrea. Maybe from other neighbouring countries, yes, but not from Eritrea. I mean look, we are brothers, I mean. Eritreans are our brothers. Eritrea is an artificial creation.
Netsanet Asfaw, Member of Parliament: It took me many days to believe that my friends had actually betrayed us. That we were occupied, that our land was occupied by Eritreans.
10:26
The war makes no sense. Two nations, until recently friends and allies, are now bitter enemies... shedding blood over a piece of land. They speak the same language and share the same religion and culture.
10:42
Mammo Dudneh, Author: It is really shameful. Not only for this generation, but for the coming generation. It will be very shameful. That sisters and brothers are killing because of the snatch of this land.
10:55
Dr Hailu: For me it is very tragic. Our social problems are very big, like Mountains.
11:02
In 1887 Emperor Menelik the Second built a new Ethiopian capital. He called it The New Flower ... Addis Ababa. But the Addis of today carries little resemblance to the nineteenth century city of palaces and temples. The destitute and jobless flock to the capital. The Ethiopian nation of 60 million is one of the poorest on earth.
11:29
Prof Maraim: Even without moving...... you know when famine has started. If you go down Chrchill Road, and out here, you will see many women, mostly women, with small children. They hjave come all the way from Tigra, here, running away from famine.
Mammo Dudneh: Sometimes I am crying. Sometimes I cannot move, because it is not a sin of....in the older days(?)
Prof Maraim: We are people nnow within the last 20 years or so, who have lost our pride.
Mammo Dudneh: We lost everything. We lost our common sense. We lost our understanding. We lost our culture. We lost our...power.
12:28
Several rounds of peace talks between Ethiopia and Eritrea have broken down. Eritrea refuses to leave the Ethiopian land it occupied. Ethiopia says it won't agree to a cease-fire unless Eritrea withdraws.
Netsanet Asfaw If they come back to their senses and say, Ok, this didn't work, lets just evacuate the area, fine. But if they don't, they will have to pay the consequences.
Dr Hailu: The very fact that we are poor or empty handed...the very fact that we are faced with famine does not mean that we must concede or totally. Turn around and not fight. Not fight for our sovereignty rights.
Netsanet Asfaw If they refuse to leave our land, then we will do it by force...there is no other way.
Dr Hailu: It is very sad, we could have but thousands of more, of clinics, of roads of thousands of kilometers, but we are using it for distractive purposes..that is part of it (?)
13:28
On the 12th of May, an Ethiopian army of at least a 100 000 men attacked the Eritreans... In their trenches along Badme and other war fronts. It's the bloodiest battle in the two year-long war between the two countries. Ethiopia has already pushed deep into Eritrea.
13:46
Ethiopia attacked shortly after the latest round of peace talks broke down. For the past two years, both Eritrea and Ethiopia have acquired some of the most sophisticated weapons available. Analysts talk of an arms race between two of the poorest countries in the world.
14:05
Patrick Gilkes is one of the foremost experts on the Horn of Africa. He's written extensively on the subject.
Patrick Gilkes: Neither country can really afford this kind of expendidture. It is something they should not be doing. Its out of control in the sense that it is an unnecessary war.
Dr Makonnen Bishaw, Ethiopian Human rights council: And they have been investing in this modern war machinery, helicopters, jets, tanks and so on
Patrick Gilkes: Both sides are aquiring tanks, aquiring armoured cars and so on, and when one side aquires an extra load of tanks the other side hears about it pretty quickly and puts in another order somewhere else.
Dr Makonnen Bishaw:It is really amazing how the leadership can justify this kind of expediture, but at the same time we go around the world begging for food, begging for this and that development assistance.
Patrick Gilkes :The biggest items have been the aircraft, they have been buying High-tech stuff, new tech stuff. The ethiopians have aquired 8 sukoy-27's in 1998, the Eiritreans aquired 8 mic-29's at the same time.
15:15
The republics of the former Soviet Union have become valuable markets ? for Ethiopian and Eritrean arms buyers. They have a surplus of arms that're relatively cheap. Russia is known to have sold to both countries.
Patrick Gilkes :The packages for the mic-29's and the sukoy 27's that were both bought in dec 1998, has been largely quoted at about 120, 140, 150 million dollars on both sides.
15:43
Ethiopia has also acquired attack helicopters from former East Block countries and bought a hundred tanks from Bulgaria. According to analysts, it might have spent about 400 million American Dollars or R3 000 million on the war effort last year alone.
Patrick Gilkes: One of the things that is interesting in this context is that both sides have had to pay cash upfront. Nobody has been doing this on a long-term basis.
Dr Makonnen Bishaw I think it will destroy both societies. Destroy in the sense that already the people are feeling the effects of the war.
Patrick Gilkes Eritrea is certainly hurting very badly economically, far more so than it adnmits. The same certainly applies to Ethiopia, but Ethiopia is bigger.
Dr Makonnen Bishaw :There may be about 400-500 thousand soldiers on the Ehtiopian side, in the complete area.
16:43
Ethiopia has been severely criticized for recruiting so-called "peasants" into the army, especially at the start of the war.
Dr Makonnen Bishaw They recruited peasants, trained them for short periods of time, and then ran to the conflict area, and dropped them in en masse.
17:05
This Eritrean army video shows Ethiopian soldiers advancing on the Eritrean trenches at Tsorona in March last year. Eritrea says it killed thousands of Ethiopians. Two weeks before this battle, Ethiopians had driven the Eritreans back. Neither side releases any casualty figures.
Reporter: How many soldiers have died in this war?
Selome Taddesse, Ethiopian Government Spokesperson: I am sorry but I cannot disclose numbers to you right now.
Reporter: How many soldiers have died in this war?
Isaias Afwerk, Eritrean President: Relative, comparative to the losses of the other side.
Selome Taddesse, Ethiopian Government Spokesperson: They have suffered many casualties. Because they are the ones who have had more soldiers at battle than we did.
Isaias Afwerk, Eritrean President: Our losses have always been minimal. The figures have been coming out and people have been speculating but they have been wrong all the time.
Patrick Gilkes, Horn of Africa Expert: People are suggesting that something like 30-35,000 people have been killed on both sides, so a total of say 70 thousand. Wounded would be as more if not more again.
18:10
That figure is now much higher. Pictures released by the Ethiopian authorities indicate that the Eritreans were humiliated in the latest offensive. Many more have died in the past ten days.
Selome Taddesse, Ethiopian Government Spokesperson We have an army sitting on our territory..what choice do we have?
Isaias Afwerk, Eritrean President It could be resolved by peaceful means. There is no reason why we should sacrifice people in a senseless conflict like this one.
Selome Taddesse, Ethiopian Government Spokesperson It is senseless and mad that he did that, but it is not senseless and mad that wedefend ourselves.
Isaias Afwerk, Eritrean President Madness is a symptom of agressors. Greed, which makes any battle senseless.
18:53
The Ethiopian government claims that the war and the famine are not related. Is it true? And what is the effect of the war on the lives of ordinary Ethiopians
Ad break
19:06
To see the effects of the war, we headed for the province of Tigray... in the northeast of the country. This is the frontline with Eritrea.
19:17
It's a land steeped in history and legends... the cradle of religion in Ethiopia. It's famous for its rock-hewn churches. Caravans of camels carry blocks of salt from the Danakil desert in the east... to the salt markets in the west.
In Tigray, we met up again with Netsannet Asfaw ... a member of Parliament of the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front.
Netsannet Asfaw : We are sitting in a place called the temple of the moon, er, this is a structure which is believed to have been a temple around 1200 BC. We are the custodians of one of Africa's greatest civilisations. That is why I am proud of it.
20:09
With Netsanet Asfaw as our guide, we traveled across Tigray. For months, the area has been closed to all foreign journalists as the Ethiopian army prepared for battle. Thousands of troops, tanks and cannons were moving to the front. We were not allowed to film them.
Netsannet Asfaw : I never for on miinute worry about losing as I know we can't lose. It is impossible to lose.
20:40
Tigray has borne the brunt of the war. Many towns, factories and military installations have been attacked and bombed. In June last year, an Eritrean cluster bomb hit a school in the Tigrayan capital of Mekele. More than fifty children and adults were killed.
Netsannet Asfaw :The whole of Ethiopia rose up in arms and said- we're going! Their miscalculation was very very obvious in this. They thought that if you hit to cry? The whole of Ethiopia will crumble.
12:13
A hill not far from the Badme front. A song for Eritrean President Issaias Afewerki. "Issaias, you're a thief. The vultures are picking your bones", they sing.
21:32
These children are among the 400 000 Tigrayans who've been displaced by the war. Many now live in caves and have to be fed.
Thirteen babies were born on this side, in a cave. Many more were born on the way, when the women were running from the soldiers. 58 school habe been closed in only one area, all the clinics have been destroyed. All the churches and their treasures have been taken away. Imagine, we are talking about churches in Ethiopia, and their treasures, and they are all being looted
22:11
Recently the situation in Tigray has got worse. Eritreans have fled the war and came to Ethiopia. In the past few months many arrived as Eritrea prepared for the big battle. Tekle Aradom is 71 years old. He says he was called up for duty.
22:32
Tekle Aradom (translated by Netsannet Asfaw): They took all my children and then they said that I also had to participate. I thought that this was too much. I cant help them.
22:43
54 Year-old Goder Gebre-Yesus and his sons arrived in Ethiopia a year ago.
Goder Gebre-Yesus (Translated by Netsannet Asfaw): I was already recruited a year before last to be a soldier. So I decidede that I have to save my life....ah! another son...ah, he was with the catholics, He is just coming, that is why he is giving him a kiss.
23:18
Just after he had left, Goder's wife discovered that she was pregnant. She had arrived with her youngest in Ethiopia only four days before we met her.
Goder Gebre-Yesus (Translated by Netsannet Asfaw): OOH. I gave her the name ‘Haagwass' which means joy. So you can imagine what I feel.
Reporter: So he is a very proud father?
Goder Gebre-Yesus (Translated by Netsannet Asfaw): Yes! I would have flown, you know suddenly grown wings when you are happy, had it been soI would have been floating when I saw my family together again.
24:03
Hunderds of Eritrean army deserters and young recruits have recently arrived in Ethiopia.
Translated by Netsannet Asfaw : His name is Abre Halle,, he is seventeen. I was a soldier of the Eiruitrean army. There were 4 of them in the family. They took 3 of them and they never came back, so I just came to save my life.
(another boy): They have made homes empty. 4 of my brothers are already in the trenches. I was the 5th. I have already saved myself
24:51
Tigray is hundreds of kilometres away from the famine stricken south and southeast Ethiopia. And while the world's attention has been focussed on those areas, another famine is developing. In Tigray itself.
Netsannet Asfaw :It seems to me that the small rains have failed anyway. Er the big rains are supposed to come in June. If they don't, the famine that
is starting will be very intense.
Prof Maraim:The proportion of able-bodied peasants has decreased significantly.
Netsannet Asfaw The war has meant that they have not been able to produce food.
Prof Maraim Who finances all of this. The eithiopian peasants, the ethiopian people, incessantly.
Netsannet Asfaw We would have built schols and clinics, instead of spending money on fighting, you know.
Prof Maraim He has to pay all sorts of contributions. He has to sell more fodder, and then starve
25:57
130 000 people live in the Edagarbi region in central Tigray. Half of the people need food. Twelve thousand have already left their land to look for grazing or work. Meskil Belai ,her daughter and her grandchildren are kept alive only by the handouts of others. The administrator of the area, Yosef Woldegiorgis, says some people have already died.
Yosef Woldegiorcis, Administrator Edagarb: The 1984 famine could have been as bad But I have never seen anything like this. This is very bad.
26:32
Across Tigray, trucks are trying to bring food to the hungry. As a result of the war, the near-by Eritrean ports have all been closed Relief has to be trucked in all the way from the port of Djibouti. What should have been a one-day drive, is now a week-long journey.
Netsannet Asfaw : Three recurrent years of no rain means that there is going to be alot of suffering. Even with the food coming, and also medicine,but we just hope. And we also hope that the world will pray for us, that we get the rain in June.
27:06
It's clearly untrue that there is no relation between the war and the drought. Everywhere in Tigray, people are praying. Many churches have special prayers every night at midnight.
Netsannet Asfaw :People at the churches yesterday, they had special prayers and very wonderful poems. One was against the war, yes, and for a just peace. The other one was a prayer for rain. In fact I cried a lot, when I heard it, because it was the first time that I had heard it, and it was a pledge, a plea to God to help the young ones not to die. And this had a connotation for the young Soldiers who are also at the border.
Prof Mariam: This is a country of miracles. We do not expect anything ratioanal planned or anything to actually happen.
Mammo Dudneh: We should not continue like this where it has to be stopped somewhere by some means. Still we need some consolation, still we need understanding eachother
Prof Mariam: And, maybe. And I have seen in my own life, many such miracles, and maybe, there will be, another miracle.
28:35
Ethiopia is on the offensive... and seems to have crushed Eritrea. And while the political and military leaders and the soldiers are celebrating their military victory, ordinary people continue to suffer.
END
29' 00"
CREW:
Camera - Jan de Klerk
Sound - Lincoln Kutwane
Narrator - Robin Smith
Written & Produced - Jacques Pauw