Starvation threat for Sudan again

Press, 21 October 1986, Page 12

Starvation threat for Sudan again

By

HAMZA HENDAWI

of Reuters Khartoum Mass starvation threatens Sudan for the second time in three years, and this time the problem is mostly manmade.

While eastern and western regions recuperate from the severe drought of 1984, people go hungry in the south, a vast area with about six million inhabitants. Relief agencies in Khartoum say a third of them are threatened by famine.

A three-year-old civil war in the area, and political issues connected with it, are major contributory factors. The struggle between rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and Government troops backed by militiamen has disrupted the lives of farmers and cattle drovers and driven tens of thousands to seek food and safety elsewhere. Up to 200,000 displaced people live in makeshift camps around southern towns. More than twice as many have fled north to seek refuge in Khartoum and areas along the rough “border line” between the Muslim north and the African — mostly Christian or pagan — south.

In 1984 and 1985 the problem was how to get food into Sudan. Now it is how to get adequate supplies already in the country to the places they are needed. After three weeks of delays, a two-plane airlift of food and medical supplies dubbed “Operation Rainbow” began on October 12. One plane was flying to the southern town of Juba, the other to Isiro in Zaire with supplies to be trucked across the border to Juba. But relief workers with experience in the south say the airlift, in its present dimensions, will not

end the suffering even if it can be extended to other towns.

They say there is reliable evidence that hundreds of thousands are on the brink of starvation in rural areas which are either inaccessible or unsafe because of dhe war.

They say the worst conditions are around Malakal, capital of Upper Nile province, and Wau, capital of Bahr al-Ghazal province.

“Starvation does not just disappear once food arrives. Deaths will still occur because the effects of three months of hunger do not go after a meal or two,” one worker said. “Rainbow” itself has generated prickly and complex political issues. One point of dispute is, simply: How many people really are facing famine or even seriously hungry in the south?

The’ S.P.L.A. says 3 million. Khartoum-based relief agencies say 2 million. The Sudanese Government says both figures are exaggerations. Steffan de Mistura, director of World Food Programme operations in Sudan, told Reuters: “You divide the food per head and you find that 2 million will have nothing to eat very soon.” Mr de Mistura, who takes pride in being the architect of a 1984 multinational air drop of food supplies in Ethiopia, upset the Government by negotiating a deal with the S.P.L.A. under which “Rainbow” planes would fly first to a rebel-held zone and then to Wau, an oasis of Government control in an area where rebels are thick on the ground.

This was after the S.P.L.A. threatened to shoot down planes flying over rebel-controlled areas without its permission. The rebels proved thriy meant what they said by' downing a Sudanese

airliner in August, killing 60 people. The Government vetoed the deal with the S.P.L.A., saying “Rainbow” food should go first to the Government-held towns of Juba and Malakal.

Both sides fear supplies meant for hungry civilians could end up in the hands of enemy troops. As the row spread, the official news media in Khartoum came out strongly against foreign relief agencies in general and many ordinary Sudanese began to express fear that the agencies were deepening the political rift between north and south by portraying the Government as the party hindering the airlift. Mr de Mistura has no regrets. “We tried the discreet and shy approach to get food through to the south but nothing came of it,” he said. “So, we had to use the bulldozer approach.” That approach, which he defines as getting the job done without heeding red tape, has also offended some other foreign relief workers, who say privately, that “Rainbow” could have jeopardised their own relations with authorities.

Mr de Mistura told Reuters: “After what I saw in Ethiopia, I can see no moral- justification for not being overreactive to the situation in the south.”

Mr de Mistura was previously in south Sudan as a United Nations official in 1969, towards the end of an earlier period of civil strife in the region. Then, he said, aid workers set up centres across ; the area and offered food to everybody who came.

“If a single bullet was fired, we closed down for three weeks as a punishment , ' • “It worked. But then they only had guns and speqrs, now they hfeve surface-to-air missiles?!