After all it was less than a decade ago that the whole world mobilized to help the starving masses in Ethiopia. Yet now. just a few years later. relief officials report that the Hom may be encountering a famine more devastating than that of 1984. And so. in our newspapers and on our television screens the scearing. indelible images are returning: The bloated bellies. the parched soil. the overflowing refugee camps. and old women and children desperately searching for a few leaves. a blade of grass. simply anything to fill their stomachs. To many. these enduring images have become synonymous with the Horn of Africa. To many. the region seems fated to disaster.