[dehai-news] A view from asmara; No one will be hungry in 2010


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From: Thomas mountain (thomascmountain@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Dec 09 2009 - 07:00:23 EST


The Eritrean leadership has said twice now on eri-tv that "no one will be hungry in 2010". This is really good news, for though no one is starving here, after last years complete failure of rainfed agriculture and this years partial failure, there are many in Eritrea's villages who havent had a full stomach for much to long. How this pledge is going to be carried out has many speculating on possible explanations.One scenario is that Assab is about to be opened for Ethiopian aid shipments and that Eritrea will recieve a usage fee that will be enough to feed the over one million Eritreans affected by the drought.It is a well known fact that the port in Djibouti is overwhelmed with Ethiopian shipping, with aid shipments waiting up to three weeks to be unloaded. The road from Djibouti to Addis is very dangerous, beset by both banditry and a low level Ethiopian Afar insurgency.There have been reports for the last year or two about the port in Assab being
 completely upgraded and that it is now ready for operation. Some have been wondering why desperately needed hard currency has been spent on Assab during a drought, and this scenario would answer that question. Also reports have spoken of Russian technicians repairing and upgrading the old Assab oil refinery. Back before the weyane aggression Eritrea was recieving a large amount of essentially free diesel, gasoline and kerosene as a usage fee for the Assab refinery by Ethiopia. Ethiopia now imports almost all of its refined fuel needs and the Assab refinery would make sure that the aid shipments had the fuel they needed to reach the millions of starving Ethiopians suffering from the ongoing drought.The Aid agencies must be very frustrated by the high expenses they face when aid transport ships sit waiting for weeks at a time to unload in Djibouti, on top of that the dangerous trip from Djibouti to Addis. Assab would seem to be able to immediately handle
 almost all of the aid shipments and Eritrea has always been very principled about allowing aid to get to Ethiopia's hungry, going back to the Dergue days and allowing Massawa to be used for aid shipments even when it helped feed the Ethiopian army. The Ethiopian people are not our enemy and feeding the starving is not a political issue but a humanitarian one. Eritrea has always stood at the forefront when it comes to such matters of principle and today would be no different.The last piece of the puzzle in this scenario would be the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops and the demarcation of the Eritrean-Ethiopian border...?selam and rain for Eritrea,Thomas C. MountainAsmara, Eritrea

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