SUDAN-FOOD: WFP Resumes Use Of Large Plane For Food Relief

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jul 23 1996 (IPS) - For the first time in 10 months, the World Food Programme (WFP) this week resumed using a large aircraft for food deliveries to people facing starvation in Southern Sudan.

Some 700,000 people in Southern Sudan need emergency food aid, the WFP says.

The relief operation follows last week’s announcement that the Sudanese government had agreed to allow the WFP to use the C-130 aircraft for food deliveries into the South.

In late September last year, the Sudanese government stopped the agency from using the large aircraft, alleging that arms rather than food, were being ferried to the rebels in the South. The WFP denied the charge.

Negotiations to resume use of the large aircraft began this month in light of the urgent food crisis in the South.

At first, according to a WFP statement of Jul. 16, the government had limited the airdrop operation with the large aircraft to the end of July. But the WFP argued that it would not be able to meet the food requirements needed in such a short period.

The agency appealed to the government to allow it to use the aircraft for an unlimited period, given the urgency of the situation. On Sunday, the Sudanese government said in a statement that it had not set a time limit on the operation.

In two sorties, WFP Monday delivered 32 tonnes of food to 30,000 people in the area of Akobo, Upper Nile Province and to the town of Panthou in the hard-hit Bahr el Ghazal area. An estimated 500,000 people in Bahr el Ghazal are described as “seriously hungry”.

“Use of the C-130 will enable WFP to more than double the amount of food aid currently supplied by smaller aircraft to Southern Sudan,” WFP said in a statement made available to IPS Tuesday.

According to the agency, relief food deliveries to Southern Sudan during May and June covered only one-fifth of the assessed need.

“Large quantities of relief food are therefore urgently needed in Southern Sudan as June, July and August mark the ‘hunger gap’ period, when local food stocks are at their lowest and farmers await the harvest,” the WFP statement added.

The current heavy rainy season makes dirt airstrips unsuitable for landing and renders overland transport virtually impossible. Airdrops are often the only means available to WFP and other aid agencies to deliver food to thousands of people.

Pressure has come from various quarters to get the Sudanese government to allow the WFP to resume use of the large aircraft. The UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali also stepped in to urge the government to exercise some flexibility.

The UN Secretary General’s appeal followed an outburst by the WFP director Catherine Bertini in early July, when she warned that thousands of people could die from hunger.

“We are already seeing stick-like legs, bloated bellies and hair that is taking on the reddish hue, indicating serious malnutrition,” she said.

Bertini warned that if food shortages persisted, there was a real danger of gradual and widespread starvation.

More than 300,000 people died of famine-related diseases in the South in 1987, forcing the UN to launch a relief agency known as Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS).

Since its formation in 1988, the OLS has run into a series of obstacles as both the government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) have been using food aid as a political weapon in the current civil war, which erupted over 13 years ago.

In a statement carried in Sudan’s state-run “Al Sudan al Hadith” newspaper on Sunday, Lt-Gen Omar Hassan al Bashir’s government denied that it has obstructed the flow of humanitarian aid to the war-torn South.

Earlier this month, the SPLA leader John Garang also appealed for relief aid when he visited Norway, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

He said the food crisis in the South required immediate humanitarian attention by the international community.

Dr Justine Yac, in charge of SPLA’s department of health, said the situation was particularly appalling in Northern Gogrial, Bahr el Ghazal, a stomping ground for Arab Murahileen militias from Northern Sudan.

“The population is wandering in the bushes with virtually nothing to eat, because of the activities of government militias who raid villages for cattle…and sheer destruction of the area,” Yac said in the latest edition of the “SPLA Update” newsletter.

According to him, survivors are living on green leaves, when they can get them, and on roots.

“The people have been looted of their livestock and granaries destroyed. The villages of Pakor, Akat, Turalei, Maper, Agok, Thiekthou have been devastated,” he said.

According to Yac, the bulk of the displaced from the six villages have moved to Panthou town where the WFP began its airdrop of food rations on Monday.