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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 2, 1984
food shortage. What would happen to the civil service if Sikh bureaucrats
try to emigrate en masse?
Will the "Indian Union," as it is often called, be able to hold to the cen
ter? Or will the centrifugal forces of religion, language and ethnicity
ultimately cleave the nation into several warring regional ethnic commun
ities, some of whom could be ripe for communist subversion and control? The
tremendous load of trying to keep India together falls on the largely un
trained shoulders of Mrs. Gandhi's 40-year-old son, Rajiv, who was quickly
appointed Prime Minister. Rajiv Gandhi has been active in politics only
since 1980.
He is considered soft-spoken, not tough-skinned like his
mother, not yet possessing darshan, that curious Asian combination of grace
and charisma. Mrs. Gandhi was widely accepted as India's "mother," a lofty
status that will be hard for any successor to approach.
Sikh extremism may be hard to root out. Said the leader of one radical fac
tion, months before even the Golden Temple action: "We have finished with
the organizational stage and are now involved in propagation. Next will
come direct action and then, finally, full-scale confrontation. Like the
P.L.O., we are seeking international recognition, and at home we are pre
pared to� terror, the political language of the 20th century-:-"
Ethiopia's Plight--and Political Cynicism
The Western world has been responding generously to the widening famine in
Ethiopia, which afflicts up to six million people. Latest figures estimate
that nearly one million are in serious danger of starvation. Public cam
paigns in Britain and the United States have resulted in an unprecedented
response of charitable funds to buy grains from stockpiles to ship to the
stricken East African country. Schoolchildren in both countries have been
especially moved at televised news accounts of the famine conditions.
Will the emergency action, however, be successful? Frustrated aid agencies
now wonder. Already food is piling up at Ethiopian entry ports. Primitive
facilities at the main Red Sea port of Assab can unload 3,000 tons a day,
but the maximum amount that can be trucked into the drought-stricken
northern interior is only one-third that amount. Poor roads, a lack of lor
ries (trucks) and four-wheel drive vehicles necessary to deliver the grains
over the rugged terrain pose additional problems. Ethiopia's only railroad
does not run anywhere nearby.
The famine is further complicated by the various wars between the central
government of Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and several rebel
armies who are fighting against Mengistu's hard-line communist rule. Many
of the starving people are caught in the contested areas, especially in the
north. These wars not only set more and more refugees in motion, they dis
rupt any orderly program to distribute relief aid. Until very recently,
the central government's army had resisted diverting personnel and vehicles
from their task of battling the insurrections. The rebels in turn have cut
vital roads and trails inland from the port. They have not allowed govern
ment relief vehicles into their areas, believing Mengistu's forces will use
the opportunity to infiltrate these areas. (Some rebel leaders have called
for a cease-fire to aid relief columns.)
The Marxist central government, a radical and doctrinaire regime, very much
in Moscow's hip pocket, was reluctant to even admit the growing crisis. It