What happened to the f***ing money

23 October 2004

Bob Geldof meant well when he launched Band Aid 20 years ago, says Daniel Wolf; whether he did well for the starving is another matter

As it turned out, Mengistu knew a hawk from a handsaw. In 1984–85, up to a billion dollars’ worth of aid flowed into Ethiopia. Thousands of Western aid workers and journalists flew in with it. The regime ensured that the visitors converted their Western dollars to the local currency at a rate favourable to the government: in 1985 the Dergue tripled its foreign currency reserves. It used this influx of cash to help build up its war-machine, it commandeered aid vehicles for its own purposes and, by diverting aid supplies, helped feed its armies. The UN in Addis Ababa, which was co-ordinating the aid operation, denied that the level of diversion was significant. Later on, it became clear that a significant proportion of the relief food in Tigray — the epicentre of the famine — was consigned to the militia. The militias were known locally as ‘wheat militias’.

Above all, the government used the aid operation to support its military strategy: it saw food aid as both a tool for consolidating control over disputed territory and as bait for luring people from rebel-held areas into government territory. Michael Buerk’s viewers did not realise — how could they? — that he was speaking to them from a government enclave. They did not realise — again, how could they? — that the Ethiopian government did not control much of the territory where the famine was occurring, and that a huge proportion of the famine victims, possibly more than half, were outside the reach of the international aid effort. Mengistu maintained that he could reach virtually every famine victim, and that therefore all the aid should be distributed on his side of the lines. It was nonsense, and you did not have to be unduly sceptical to trace the thread of self-interest in the claim. Yet the UN went along with it, and the great majority of aid agencies fell into line.