c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Larry Brown is president of the Feed the Children, the international humanitarian aid group.)

(UNDATED) Who defines compassion or what moves us to act? Who would stop our hand when we reach to dial 911?

I have just returned from Ethiopia, ground zero for countries in the Horn of Africa on the sun-caked cusp of a famine that threatens to outstrip the gruesome disaster of 1984-85. I personally witnessed hundreds and hundreds of twig-thin people past the point of help _ dying _ and am astounded at the neutral response in the international community.

I flew first to Gode (pronounced go-dee), in the Ogadan region of Ethiopia,and later drove 33 miles from there to Bargun, a town originally of 2,200 people. The Bargun population is doubled by rural people migrating to towns and cities for food, water and medical treatment, but at present, no Bargun feeding center or clinic exists and the wells are three-years-no-rain dry.

Most of the families reaching the town have already lost loved ones, as well as livestock. One man we visited had lost his wife and four of his children, also 100 sheep and goats, and 30 cows. His fifth child was in a coma; the sixth had been taken to a clinic the father did not know how to find.

Gode does have a feeding center, originally set up for 500, extended to serve 2,700. The problem is that a mother who brings her child to a feeding center also brings her other children. The Gode center is now trying unsuccessfully to help 6,000 famine-struck. Another 200 families nearby were unregistered at the center, because there was not enough food for them.

A recently reported remark that a famine is when a country has no food _ and that Ethiopia has food _ is misleading and irresponsible.

In an agriculture-based country that has not seen rain for three years, how many people must die before it ranks as an emergency that demands a moral response? There is food in Ethiopia _ albeit less of it _ but it is not reaching the dying.

The Ethiopian government’s current war with Eritrea drains its citizens of $500,000 to $1 million a day, along with food and supplies. The war is another issue and something I cannot affect, but neither can I sit while the war’s most innocent victims languish and die.

In 1984-85, in the famine that received attention with Bob Geldoff’s highly publicized Band-Aid, and the multistar hit song “We are the World,” approximately 1 million people perished largely because of the delay in international response.

I can mouth the words that pandemic death needn’t happen again, but as I write, distractions delay well-fed countries from giving simple food and water to people traveling days in search of help. (The long-distance prize goes to a woman who walked 135 miles, during which she lost her husband and four children. A fifth child may be dying; a sixth may make it.)

Should Ethiopian politics and war _ and a diplomat’s specious definition of famine _ steer our pity from a potentially massive international disaster?

Once a legal expert asked Jesus to define “neighbor.” Jesus answered with the story of a Jew, whom the Samaritans despised, who was robbed, stripped and left by the road. A Jewish priest and a holy man both passed by and ignored the wounded man, but a Samaritan walked by and felt compassion.

The Samaritan didn’t parse words or let cultural bias color his conscience. He took the Jew to an inn and paid for everything he needed to heal. Jesus told the questioner to go and do likewise.

The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy said, “My bread belongs to me only when I know that no one starves while I eat.”

Yes, it takes seven to 10 days for a truck to reach Gode from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. No, the Ethiopians do not at this time have a usable port; but there are ways to reach them with food, medical personnel and supplies, and water-drilling equipment.

Yes, as it turns out, we have the privilege of being a neighbor and our brother’s keeper.

The Horn of Africa is on the brink of large-scale deprivation and suffering, and we can prevent thousands, maybe millions, from protracted hunger, sickness and death.

Some experts predict 12 million people will be affected. For a country too poor, weak and war-ravaged to pick up the receiver, here is the 911 call, the wild shout into the mouthpiece. May the international community respond as they would have others, if the situation were reversed, respond to them.

DEA END BROWN