Sudan Regime Balking, but U.S. Will Go Ahead With Food Aid

The United States has decided to ship food to famine-threatened Sudan even though the Sudanese government has not agreed to permit distribution and has hindered and even bombed other relief efforts, Bush Administration officials said Tuesday.

The Agency for International Development and the United Nations have warned that, because of poor rainfall, Sudan’s harvest will fall as much as 1 million tons below minimum needs and the country this winter can expect a famine of “catastrophic” proportions.

But the Sudanese government, which came to power in a military coup in June, 1989, has refused to admit that a famine is brewing and is hindering international relief efforts, State Department and disaster relief officials charged in a hearing Tuesday before a Senate subcommittee.

The Sudanese government, preoccupied with fighting a two-year-old civil war against rebels in the country’s southern regions, has bombed towns that are hubs for food distribution, the officials said.

“The government of Sudan’s top leadership refuses to acknowledge the size of the disaster it faces,” Andrew S. Natsios, director of AID’s office of foreign disaster assistance, told the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on African affairs. “If we wait until the Sudanese acknowledge the crisis, it may be too late to respond.”

Food from the United States should arrive in February or March, Natsios said, by which time relief organizations hope the Sudanese government “will be willing to work with us to see (that) the food goes to those in need.”

Famine has been a recurring problem in Sudan. In 1988, 250,000 people died of starvation after massive crop failures.

Ironically, 75% of the people threatened by famine are in the government-controlled northern half of the country, relief officials said. Rebel leaders in the southern regions are significantly more willing to cooperate with international relief organizations.

“The government named food self-sufficiency as a principal objective when it took power (in 1989),” Natsios said. “For them to admit (that) they are facing a massive famine is an admission that their principal policy goal has failed.”

Despite diplomatic pleas, officials from U.S. and private relief organizations said, bombing attacks by the Sudanese army on key food distribution points have continued in recent months.

Sudan’s refusal to denounce the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait last August has further complicated U.S. diplomatic efforts to gain the cooperation of the Sudanese government, said Herman J. Cohen, assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Iraq has been a major arms supplier to Sudan.