400,000 Flood Into Malawi, Fleeing War

In the gnarled branches of ancient baobab trees hundreds of pelicans from Mozambique peacefully nest, giving rise to a local joke that even the birds have fled the civil war next door.

During one of the incessant deluges that turn the rich farmland into marshes this time of year, Manuel Thomo and his family, human refugees from the war in Mozambique, huddled around a campfire beneath the branches of another baobab tree, a temporary home for them and several other families.

Rag-clad and diseased, hungry and frightened, more than 400,000 Mozambicans have crossed into neighboring Malawi in the last 17 months to escape fighting at home between guerrillas and the government.

The refugees have abandoned the poorest country in southern Africa for refuge in the region’s second-poorest nation.

‘Major Refugee Problem’

“This is the major refugee problem in Africa south of the Sahara, excluding Sudan and Somalia,” said Raymond Mkanda, a Tanzanian who heads the United Nations High Commission for Refugees operation in Malawi. “The pressure on the land is pretty heavy.

“Malawi doesn’t have adequate land for its own people, and the refugees are occupying land normally used for farming.”

For generations, Mozambicans have been welcomed visitors across the 1,000 miles of unguarded border they share with the Malawians.

But fighting between government troops and the rebel Mozambique National Resistance, more commonly known by the Portuguese acronym RENAMO, have sent waves of Mozambicans fleeing into Malawi. Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975 and has a government based on Marxist theory.

Strain on Resources

The refugees have put a strain on Malawian resources and caused security problems.

Drought last year has forced Malawi, once one of the Africa’s few food exporters, to look elsewhere for food to feed its own people.

Increasingly, men suspected of being RENAMO fighters have crossed into Malawi to steal livestock and relief rations from the refugees. A cattle raid in January ended with the deaths of three Malawian villagers who resisted the raiders, officials said. They were the first Malawian casualties of the cross-border intrusions, which also have cost the lives of several Mozambican refugees.

Landlocked Malawi is one of Africa’s smallest and most densely populated countries--nearly 8 million people in the country about the size of Pennsylvania.

‘Very Big Problem’

The U.N. High Commission for Refugees estimates that the number of Mozambican refugees in Malawi will reach 500,000 by the end of the year.

“Half a million refugees in a small country like Malawi is a very big problem,” said S. S. Kamvazina, principal secretary in the Ministry of Health and the chairman of the joint committee responsible for the refugees’ care.

An estimated 330,000 more Mozambican war refugees are in nearby Tanzania, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to the commission.

Most of the refugees arrive with similar stories of abuse from both sides in the Mozambican conflict.

Civilians Caught in War

Government troops accuse civilians of collaborating with the rebels and take reprisals. RENAMO fighters, in turn, frequently force villagers to carry supplies on long marches. The civilians who falter or weaken are beaten or killed, some of the refugees have charged.

“Some of the refugees take weeks wandering through the countryside to avoid fighting,” Mkanda said.

For others, it’s a short walk across an asphalt ribbon known as M1, Malawi’s major north-south road connecting the capital, Lilongwe, with Blantyre, the country’s largest town.

For 60 miles, M1 serves as the border between Malawi and Mozambique.

Crops Along Road

Lush fields of maize and other crops crowd both sides of the road.

But while mud huts dot the landscape on the Malawian side, abandoned buildings and deserted huts line the Mozambican side.

The former owners have fled, taking tin from the roofs and windows from the buildings to use in building new homes on the Malawi side of the road.

During the day, some Mozambicans venture across the road to work their old fields, but never too far inland to risk running into a rebel or government patrol.

First to Flee

Mozambicans living along M1 were among the first to flee the fighting. That first mass movement--in September, 1986--brought 40,000 refugees to Malawi. Three months later, the number had nearly doubled, and by March, 1987, it reached 100,000.

Over the next 12 months, the refugee population quadrupled.

“It’s very difficult for the government to cope with the problem,” said Kamvazina, the Health Ministry official. “We get no notice that tomorrow so many people are coming in.”

More than 168,000 Mozambicans have settled here in the southernmost district of Nsanje, the largest refugee concentration. Refugees now outnumber the local population, and the surrounding mountainsides are being denuded by the newcomers who fell trees for firewood and huts.

Malnutrition, Tuberculosis

Because of the influx--as many as 100 a day--it takes up to 10 days for officials to build even temporary shelter for the new arrivals. Many of the refugees in the teeming camp near Mangkokwe wear clothing fashioned from burlap sacks that once held their rations.

“Those who are coming in now are in terrible condition--malnutrition, no clothes, tuberculosis,” said District Commissioner Geoff Mwanja, the chief government officer for Nsanje. “War has reduced human beings to beasts. If there was a way of ending this thing, it would be very, very nice.”

The U.N. refugee commission has budgeted $13 million for Malawi in 1988--a “seriously conservative figure,” Mkanda said.

International aid has started to pour in, including $1.2 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“Repatriation is the most durable solution,” Mkanda said.

Nobody expects that soon.

“They might be here for some time--five years, 10 years,” Mkanda said. “Even if there is change tomorrow in Mozambique, that doesn’t mean that everybody will leave.”

EDITOR’S NOTE--Little noticed by the rest of the world, a guerrilla war in Mozambique has created a new and serious refugee problem in Africa, along with its toll in human life and economic loss since it began in 1977. But it also is having a deep impact on Mozambique’s black-governed neighbors in southern Africa and holds the seeds of an even wider regional conflict, swallowing people already struggling with poverty and drought.

Mozambique, Africa’s poorest nation, is on the Indian Ocean and provides its black neighbors their only trading outlet, except for nearby South Africa. But the neighbors’ efforts to cut their dependence on South Africa for trade routes by using a corridor through Mozambique have been disrupted by the guerrilla conflict.

“The survival of Mozambique is our survival,” Prime Minister Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe says. “The fall of Mozambique certainly also will be our fall.”

Here are reports by Associated Press correspondents on how the war is affecting two of Mozambique’s closest neighbors.