Politics Of Hunger.(A)(EDITORIALS)

Africa: 2003 has barely begun, yet we're already hearing about its first disaster: famine on the Dark Continent. Sadly, it's true. Sadder still, it's politicians' fault.

The World Food Program, an arm of the United Nations, says drought, war and HIV/AIDS have "put more than 38 million people on the frontline of Africa's hunger crisis."

In Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique alone, some 14 million people are going hungry as these words are written.

But in fact, drought, war and AIDS are really only secondary in Africa's hunger problem. The real problem is the growing number of nations that have killed off free markets, replacing them instead with a sickly mixture of despotism, corruption and Marxism -- a toxic brew guaranteed to kill off any economy.

The World Food Program estimates that 5.3 million metric tons of food aid will be needed this year just to stave off mass death due to hunger. We won't quibble with the number. Nor will we quibble with the aid itself -- it's good to save lives.

But even if you doubled the aid and ended the near-perpetual "drought" we hear about afflicting Africa, that poor continent's ills wouldn't be cured. Because its problems ...