A Country Awash with Bullets and Food Scarcity—why is the Amhara case ignored? 

Aklog Birara (Dr)

“No sustainable development, environmental harmony or lasting security will happen if we are unable to eradicate hunger and extreme inequality.”

                          Liuz Lula da Silva, President, Brazil 

President Donald Trump’s Executive decision to suspend or freeze USAID has sent a shockwave to aid dependent African governments and civil society organizations including Ethiopia. 

War and more war

Gullible Ethiopians and the international community believed the Pretoria Agreement of “Silencing the guns” would usher in a new beginning for the Ethiopian people, among the poorest in the world. Other devastating ethnic wars, this time in the Amhara and Oromia regions continue to rage. These wars compound Ethiopia’s intractable problems. 

It is impossible for farmers, pastoralists, businesspeople, and women to operate under these conditions. Foreign private investors do not feel secure to invest in Ethiopia. Domestic investors are fearful of losing their investment capital. Domestic investors in fear of such loss move their capital out of Ethiopia, a situation that began under the TPLF. 

War costs Ethiopia the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and tens of billions of dollars in investments. Most Ethiopians suffer from hyperinflation. The value of the Birr has depreciated drastically: from USD $1 to 57 Birr before reforming in 2924 to that of 145 Birr or more in the Illegal market today. 

I question the adverse impacts on Ethiopian society of IMF and World Bank advocacy of structural adjustment programs that had devastated Sub-Saharan African nations and that now affect ordinary Ethiopians. The Ethiopian economy is a mess. People are hurting. 

Sadly, while plagued by ethnicity-based war, slaughters of civilians and destruction Ethiopia is awash with drones, tanks, missiles, artillery, and bullets. Ethiopia is now a country with the capacity to manufacture or buy bullets but is unable to feed itself. The government has the capacity and the aptitude to use bullets to kill; but not the commitment or the willingness to respond to humanitarian needs. 

Because political elites divided Ethiopia along ethnic lines, it is impossible for Ethiopians to work together and solve their common problems. This is another reminder Why ethnic politics and division is corrosive, abominable and anathema to democracy, sustainable and equitable development. 

Regardless of the glitz we see in Ethiopia—corridor development, palaces, resorts and the like, Ethiopia is unable to feed itself. Ethiopia is still known as poverty stricken. 

How long has it been since my generation alone cried aloud concerning famine and starvation in Ethiopia? When does this horrendous problem end? Who would end it? 

On my part, I do not blame the donor community. No country that I know of relied exclusively on foreign humanitarian or development aid to conquer famine and let alone to prosper. None. Ask the Chinese. Ask the Vietnamese. 

It irks me to no end that the institutional solution after repeated slaughter of innocent Amhara civilians appears to be a never-ending strategy to reduce numbers and change Ethiopia’s demography. How can we not but find this Pathologically insane? 

On April 11, 2025, PBS News published a heart-breaking factual assessment under the title “In Ethiopia, the margins between starvation and survival narrow as food aid becomes scarce.”

Hardworking Ethiopians are dying because of human-caused wars and climate induced famine. “The Trump administration’s decision to freeze foreign aid supplies and shutter USAID has had seismic effects on global humanitarian efforts. The U.N. World Food Program is one of the organizations that has drawn vast portions of their budgets from the U.S. government. Historically, the U.S. has been the agency’s biggest donor by far.

The WFP’s largest network of food distribution is in Ethiopia, a nation that became a byword for famine in the 1980s. There, populations continue to suffer from frequent food shortages with a government that is often unable to fund emergency support for its own citizens.

In late 2023, PBS NewsHour special correspondent Willem Marx and videographer Edward Kiernan traveled across Ethiopia to understand the role that climate change and conflict were having on food supplies, witnessing first-hand the work that the World Food Program and its partners were conducting to confront such challenges. Even a brief monthslong pause in U.S. funding for food aid had a devastating impact on millions of Ethiopians.

With the current uncertainty of whether the Trump administration will offer waivers that allow emergency food aid to continue in some of the world’s most impoverished places, these three stories from Ethiopia highlight the heavy reliance that many communities have had on U.S. funding.”

 Would we think successive Ethiopian governments had ample time and opportunity to improve agricultural productivity and eliminate food aid dependency? Would we not think they have failed the Ethiopian people? Would we not think the Ethiopian people and the international community must hold Ethiopia’s rulers accountable for mismanagement of the economy?

Ethiopia can no longer afford to continue as a beggar nation. Ethiopia’s 130 million people deserve competent, capable, committed, democratic and all-inclusive leaders.

PBS puts the policy hurdle clearly and factually. 

“Across large parts of Ethiopia, many families rely on subsistence farming for their food needs and occasionally can sell some excess crops for cash that can pay for the other necessities of life. But violent local conflicts as well as climate change often cause farmers to lose crops that supply them with food, which in turn has a drastic impact on their health – and even survival. 

Aid organizations, including the World Food Program, have been working for years to strengthen food resilience among many Ethiopian communities. They encourage new planting techniques, introduce updated technologies, or teach people about different seed types, pesticide use and storage practices. These interventions help those living in rural villages to increase their crop yields and thus ensure that external factors in the future cannot so easily wipe out their household wealth, which is linked to what they plant and reap. 

At some Ethiopian schools — built with U.S. money — the World Food Program and its partners run feeding programs — reliant on U.S.-funded supplies — that also seek to strengthen resilience and improve educational outcomes by guaranteeing at least one daily nutritious meal for young children who might otherwise not eat.”

“Resilience” depends on peace, human security, and stability. It is the top officials of the regional and federal government, including the military who live abundantly well while tens of millions go hungry each day. In the two largest regional states in Ethiopia, Amhara, and Oromia, millions live in constant fear. This is where most of the Ethiopian population lives. Who has responsibility for this dismal condition? 

I suggest there is a direct correlation between civil war and socioeconomic catastrophe. The international community has an obligation to acknowledge this linkage and call for a political resolution of Ethiopia’s recurring wars. The situation in Tigray informs this reality. As does Amhara. As does the Oromia sector.

“After years of war, Tigray now faces a long wait for food aid.

A brutal civil conflict in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region ended in late 2022, leaving tens of thousands of people dead, but sporadic violence has continued in several parts of the country since.”  Why not be open and state the facts on the ground? Wars in the Amhara and Oromia regions. 

 Besides the immediate, deadly consequences in communities devastated by years of violence, limited food supplies and restrictions on aid support during the conflict affected not only Tigray, but neighboring regions like Afar as well. A reliance on foreign aid – much of it financed by the United States through UN agencies like the World Food Program – has been a feature of life for decades in much of Ethiopia, where changing Climatic conditions and conflict have made access to food difficult. But government instability in Tigray also led to widespread corruption and the diversion of foreign food aid, forcing the U.S. government to suspend funding for six months in 2023. The effects were severe in Tigray, Afar and elsewhere in Ethiopia; and at times, were deadly. The current curtailment of U.S. aid has already forced the World Food Program to close its office in South Africa, and threatens many more lives in nations like Ethiopia, where the margins between starvation and survival are already incredibly narrow.”

While the reality on multiple fronts is exposed; for reasons that I do not understand, the PBS analysis ignores the cataclysmic situation in the Amhara region that is devastated by daily Ethiopian federal government led drone strikes, artillery shells, closures of schools and hospitals, and massive destruction of economic and physical infrastructure. 

Don’t you think the international community, especially the government of the United States should speak up and stop the carnage? 

To understand the scale of annihilation of Amhara and the level of socioeconomic and physical infrastructure in the Amhara region, Ethiopians in the Diaspora and within Ethiopia must take the lead and shed light by speaking the truth. 

Lastly, the international community has at minimum, a moral obligation to demand cessation of the targeted Amhara annihilation now. 

Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com

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