People of Southern Sudanese Town Are Running Out of Food, Medicine and Hope

A promised cease-fire in the 5-year-old war ravaging southern Sudan may come too late for thousands of civilians trapped in the garrison town of Torit with food almost gone and little hope of relief.

“The people we are concerned with now are the children--they are starving,” said Roman Catholic Bishop Paride Taran in an interview by radio from Juba, the southern Sudanese capital on the banks of the White Nile.

“There are 1,000 children or more in our care and the food is running out,” said the bishop, who is struggling to keep the town’s 7,000 civilian residents from despair. “Without help they have only to die.”

The town, the last major garrison still in government hands in southeastern Sudan, is surrounded by rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. The rebels have driven local farmers into the town and mined their fields in a bid to starve out the 5,000 soldiers.

The bishop said food is so scarce that locally grown peanuts sell for 25 cents each. A spoonful of salt costs almost 50 Sudanese pounds--more than a week’s wages for the average citizen.

Medicine in the town’s hospital has run out entirely, he said.

“When you go to the hospital, you are waiting to die. That is the cemetery where people are living.”

The rebel force led by John Garang is seeking autonomy for the mainly black and Christian residents of the south, who resent the stranglehold on government by the white Arabic-speaking north. In particular they want an end to the harsh Islamic sharia law imposed by the government in Khartoum.

Hopes for peace soared this month when Prime Minister Sadek Mahdi agreed to the terms of a tentative pact between the rebels and the Democratic Unionist Party, a junior partner in his governing coalition, and said a cease-fire was possible within two weeks.

However a high-level government delegation Dec. 14 postponed its departure to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, for peace talks with the rebels and failed to set a new date for the trip.

The SPLA responded by hiking the stakes another notch. They told Mahdi they will not talk until he wins his Cabinet’s approval of the plan, where it will come under fierce opposition from officials of the pro-Libyan National Islamic Front.

Meanwhile the food runs out in Torit and dozens of other towns too small, or too threatened by rebel fire, to be served by the international airlift that is ferrying up to 90 tons of food a day into Juba.

Hungry Torit residents see relief planes flying overhead, but none ever land, said Bishop Taran.

“They think there is a plan to destroy Torit, both in the mind of the government and of the other side.”

Many frightened residents have begun to leave the town on foot to try to walk the 65 miles to Juba, risking rape, looting and forced conscription by the rebels or starvation on the hot, dusty road.

“But I know because of weakness they will die on the way,” the bishop said. “They are going out of desperation.”