By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, May 22 1998 (IPS)

European Union aid teams warn that heavy rains are blocking emergency aid deliveries to famine-stricken rebel held Southern Sudan, less than a fortnight after the Sudanese government lifted restrictions on the shipments.

“The rainy season started a few days ago and the water is already completely impeding food deliveries by road,” said Patrick Lambrecht, head of projects in Sudan at the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO) in Brussels.

The rains are also handicapping deliveries by air, as many of the rough dust airstrips in the area become too waterlogged to use safely, he added. “Whereas planes could land in the Bahr el- Ghazal area until a few days ago, now food deliveries have to be airdropped.”

The northern part of the Bahr el-Ghazal province, which marks the northern most areas of rebel-held southern Sudan is also the area worst affected by the rains. The ECHO funded flights are ferrying food, medicine and other supplies to the region which has been hit by both war and drought.

More than 1.5 million people have reportedly died in the south of famine and famine-related disease in the 15 years since the Sudan’s People Liberation Army (SPLA) began its fight for autonomy for the South. In late 1997 it was reported that hundreds of thousands more Sudanese could die without food aid, especially during the worst food shortages between April and August.

Southern Sudan, covering a third of the country has only six miles (nine kilometres) of tarmaced road, one development worker said in London. “The distance from Nairobi to northern Bahr el- Ghazal is a 1,000 mile (1,500 kilometre) trip — that’s the sort of aid pipeline are talking about.”

A spokesperson for Save the Children Fund in London said the rains have been “unusually heavy” this year and that Lake Victoria had burst its banks, which would make getting aid in by road very difficult.

The rains also severely limit the number of air strips where aircraft can land, says the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), forcing the agencies to rely on parachute dropped aid.

“Some 70 percent of the dirt airstrips in Bahr el-Ghazal are now waterlogged and temporarily unusable,” warned the WFP this week. “There are only two all-weather airstrips, the remaining being impracticable,” added Lambrecht.

Tim Waites, the Sudan desk officer for the aid NGO Oxfam, said most of its food aid was already in position. “We always get it in before the rains come,” he said. He said ongoing efforts in Eastern Bahr el-Ghazal include working with communities to keep two all-weather airstrips going.

“We cut the grass and do some drainage work, so the water does not sit on the airstrip. Sometimes we give incentives to communities,” Waites added.

NGOs must tread carefully with such work. The Sudanese government is suspicious of any efforts to upgrade the bush strip airfields with tarmac runways. They fear the SPLA will make use of them to supply their forces later, said Ama Anand of Christian Aid in London.

In any case, Anand added, “we are humanitarian agencies, not construction workers. We don’t have the skills to build roads.”

The smaller dust strips cannot handle heavy duty planes like the C-130s (Hercules transports, in British parlance), only smaller Buffalo transport planes, which can ship in seven tons of aid at a time only.

“The government is not worried about Buffalos, but they are worried that if Hercules can carry large amounts of food, they can also carry guns and weapons,” one aid group representative said.

In addition to four C-130 transport aircraft now operating from Lokichokio in bordering Kenya, arrangements are being made to quickly deploy an additional C-130, to be based in El Obeid, south of Sudan’s capital Khartoum. Each aircraft flies three sorties a day and each is capable of carrying 16 tons for airdropping from a low altitude.

The people of the region require assistance to cope with the effects of war and displacement, including malnutrition and diseases caused by a severe shortage of health care and a lack of clean drinking water, sanitary facilities and adequate shelter.

More than 351,400 people are in need of help. An extra 103,000 people displaced by the fighting were recently added to the 248,200 reported in need of emergency food assistance last February.

ECHO has provided 7.4 million dollars to the WFP for their work in the region. More funds are expected in the near future.

Lambrecht cites reports from the worst affected areas, east of the southern city of Wau, which raise fears that some of the hungry are too weak to get to the feeding centres. One out of three children who go to feeding centres does not come back, he says.

“We are sure they do not reach other nutritional centres, because they are too far and because the children are not strong enough to walk three or four days without stopping,” says Lambrecht. “Some 35 percent of them are severely malnourished.”

Most children are treated for an average of one month before they are healthy enough to leave the feeding centres. The NGO Medecins Sans Frontiers, which runs ten feeding centres in the province, estimates that the mortality rate among children in the region is around 30 percent.

The NGO remarked in a statement that, traditionally, the two months before the late summer harvest are the ‘hunger gap’, when people are most dependent on aid. “But this year it began as early as March because of the drought and fighting,” it said.

In a U.N. inter-agency appeal for Sudan issued last February, the WFP estimated that 75,530 tonnes of emergency food aid would be required in 1998 for 2.4 million Sudanese, mainly women, children and the elderly.

But during 1997, the United Nations received only 40 percent of the more than 120 million dollars it says it requires for emergency activities in Sudan — a direct consequence of ‘donor fatigue’ in the view of some relief workers.

“From the moment air drops started, the situation has improved. But it remains critical, very critical,”said Lambrecht. “Food deliveries should continue at least until August”.

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