Sudan Faces Mass Starvation but Blocks Food Aid, U.S. Officials Say

Starvation of “apocalyptic” proportions is endangering as many as 11 million Sudanese, but their government is blocking international food deliveries, U.S. relief officials said Thursday.

Administration officials, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, said Sudan’s military government has derailed a U.S.-led rescue effort under U.N. auspices that would have saved many Sudanese from hunger.

“The government in Khartoum has been increasingly indifferent if not overtly hostile to the relief efforts,” said Andrew Natsios, the Administration’s top relief official.

Due to drought and civil war, this year’s harvest could fall short by as much as 1 million metric tons, leaving up to 8 million Sudanese to starve, he said.

Other relief organizations put the number of those in danger as high as 11 million, said Roger Winter, director of the private U.S. Committee for Refugees.

About 75% of the Sudanese at risk live in government-held territory and the rest are in rebel-held lands in southern Sudan, Natsios said.

However, the government in Khartoum on Thursday said that no famine exists in government-controlled areas of Sudan.

“No, it is not a famine,” Agriculture Minister Ahmad Ali Geneif told reporters. “We speak about a gap that can be bridged.”

U.S. officials have accused the government, which seized power in a military coup 16 months ago, of keeping food from the south.

The rebels, too, have used food in their war, shooting down relief planes and attacking trains and truck convoys carrying food.

The United States, Natsios said, is willing to provide one-third of an emergency 300,000-ton food shipment needed to avert mass starvation.