In mid-1986 the government halted the resettlement program, largely to fend off the negative reaction from the international community. Richard Pankhurst, in his review of the book "Politics and the Ethiopian Famine, 1984-1985", notes that some critics of the regime at the time compared "the resettlement centres to Hitler's concentration camps", and having visited them noted that Ethiopia is "a poor and economically underdeveloped country. Resettlement is therefore being carried out 'on a shoe-string', and the centres, like the country at large, face many difficulties." But in November 1987 the program resumed, and in March 1988 Mengistu Haile Mariam spoke of the need to move at least 7 million people; 100,000 - 200,000 were resettled when the program resumed in 1987 and March 1988 when it was suspended. He claimed resettlement would resolve the country's recurring drought problem and would ease population pressure from northern areas where the land had been badly overused. Western donors and governments, whom Addis Ababa expected to help with the program, remained apprehensive of the government's intentions, however. Some believed that the plan to resettle 1.5 million people by 1994 was unrealistic, given the country's strained finances. Others argued that resettlement was a ploy to depopulate areas of unrest in the ongoing conflict, particularly in Eritrea and Tigray. Additional arguments against resettlement included charges of human rights violations, forced separations of families, and lack of medical attention in resettlement centers, which resulted in thousands of deaths from malaria and sleeping sickness.