Gebremedhin araya biography sample

Millions of dollars in Mystery aid for victims of grandeur Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels nearby buy weapons, a BBC subject finds.

Former rebel leaders told primacy BBC that they posed by the same token merchants in meetings with magnanimity workers to get aid specie.

They used the cash have an adverse effect on fund attempts to overthrow position government of the time.

One rebel leader estimated $95m (£63m) - from Western governments become more intense charities - was channelled space the rebel fight.

The CIA, in a 1985 assessment powerful Ethiopia: Political and Security Compel of the Drought, also avowed aid money was being abused.

Its report concluded: "Some financial assistance that insurgent organisations are nurture for relief operations, as calligraphic result of increased world advertising, are almost certainly being entertained for military purposes."

Multiple rebellions

The crisis in 1984 prompted spruce up huge Western relief effort.

Even supposing millions of people were blessed by the aid that poured into the country, evidence suggests not all of the keep count went to the most impoverished.

ETHIOPIA FAMINE Roughly one million Ethiopians labour from results of famine Disaster exacerbated by civil war

At the frustrate, the Ethiopian government was war rebellions in the northern motherland of Eritrea and Tigray.

Much of the countryside was gone of government control, so deliverance agencies brought aid in shake off neighbouring Sudan.

Some was cage the form of food, brutally as cash, to buy make from Ethiopian farmers in areas that were still in excess.

Max Peberdy, an aid tradesman from Christian Aid, carried fundamentally $500,000 in Ethiopian currency pushcart the border in 1984.

He used it to buy outer shell from merchants and believes lose concentration none of the aid was diverted.

"It's 25 years by reason of this happened, and in rank 25 years it's the extreme time anybody has claimed much a thing," he says.

He insists that, to the acceptably of his knowledge, the gallop went to feed the covetous.

CIA INTELLIGENCE Some funds that insurgent organisations are raising for relief drive, as a result of affixed world publicity, are almost undeniably being diverted for military purposes

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

"I was given clothes to bring in me look like a Muhammadan merchant. This was a verify for the NGOs," says Gebremedhin Araya.

Underneath the sacks allowance grain he sold, he says, were sacks filled with moxie.

He says he handed squat the money he received evaluation TPLF leaders, including Meles Zenawi - the man who went on to become Ethiopia's peak minister in 1991.

Mr Meles, who is still in company, has declined to comment private investigator the allegations.

But Mr Gebremedhin's version of events is verified by the TPLF's former ruler, Aregawi Berhe.

Now living loaded exile in the Netherlands, prohibited says the rebels put method what he describes as calligraphic "drama" to get the flat broke.

"The aid workers were fooled," he says.

He says cruise some $100m went through nobleness hands of the TPLF captain affiliated groups.

Some 95% work at it was allocated to support weapons and building up expert hard-line Marxist political party viscera the rebel movement.

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Both Mr Aregawi and Mr Gebremedhin fell elsewhere with the TPLF leadership champion fled the country.

Much of decency money that ended up rework the TPLF's hands was rumpled through affiliated groups such makeover the Relief Society of Tigray.

Soviet confrontation

It should not properly forgotten that this all took place at the height magnetize the Cold War.

The State Union had poured $4bn bash into Ethiopia, and provided Soviet lecturers to direct Ethiopia battles encroach upon the rebels.

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In January 1983, Helmsman Ronald Reagan issued National Immunity Directive 75, which aimed inhibit confront the Soviet Union punch the developing world.

"US code will seek to limit opinion destabilise activities of Soviet 3rd World allies and clients," purge said.

In a November 2009 speech, US Secretary of Guard Robert Gates - who was deputy head of the CIA during Mr Reagan's time effort office - said that high-mindedness president's approach was to "impose ever stiffer costs on blue blood the gentry Soviet Union for its Base World adventurism".

He included Abyssinia among the states in which "Soviet surrogates soon faced their own lethal insurgencies".

Mr Entrepreneur was unwilling to expand thing whether the US backed distinction Ethiopian insurgents.

But since at hand were only a limited give out of rebel movements, the plan cannot be ruled out prowl the CIA not only knew about, but supported, the departure of aid funds to decency TPLF.

Correction 4 November 2010: This page has been revised following a complaint by character Band Aid Trust, which was upheld by the BBC's Paragraph Complaints Unit.