Aid Workers Plan New Attack on Famine

Like so many of the dedicated foreigners trying to help save starving Somalis, Rick Grant has felt bitterly angry and helpless for months.

The veteran CARE official deeply resented the bribes he was forced to pay at gunpoint, the convoys of food robbed with impunity and the frightening risks his workers were taking to save lives here.

But Thursday, the stocky, bearded American was a man transformed. After months of fighting one of Africa’s worst modern famines with their hands tied behind their backs, Grant and other aid workers were euphoric, bubbling with reports of big grain shipments arriving and plans for the first food convoys in weeks.

The future, thanks to U.S. Marine armored vehicles roaring through the streets and helicopter gunships thumping constantly overhead, was bright.

“We can move food wherever we want now,” Grant said. “The extortion is finished. CARE is not going to pay extortion again.” He paused, then added: “I’ve become sick and tired of seeing kids dying when I know thieves are taking their food.”

The closely knit community of foreign famine relief workers in Mogadishu, responsible for distributing millions of dollars worth of food and medicine received by the United Nations from the United States and other countries, have never been happier than they were Thursday; for the first time since the famine made world headlines in August, they were outlining ambitious plans for food distribution, aimed at saving the 2 million Somalis still at risk of starvation.

The efforts added up to a second major assault on the famine that already has claimed 300,000 lives.

More than 83,000 tons of food was being loaded on ships bound for Mogadishu. At the port, ruled until Wednesday by Somali thugs, 9,000 tons of food was being put onto trucks for shipment today across the Green Line that separated the city’s warring factions. And the U.N. World Food Program approved an additional 113,000 tons of food for the effort--almost doubling the $21 million in food donated for Somali relief this year.

Until this week, an estimated 50% to 90% of the relief food arriving in Somalia was being looted by warring factions or renegade gunmen. Relief agencies were forced to hire armed guards for their personnel, pay bribes to further guarantee safe passage and pay exorbitant sums to trucking companies controlled by the warlords.

But all that had changed Thursday, a day after U.S. Marines, on a U.N.-approved mission, came ashore in a massive show of force to reopen corridors for relief food and restore a sense of calm to this country; it lacks a government and has been operating under control of rival clans.

The bribe-takers had disappeared Thursday along with the armed bandits. Unarmed men for the first time stood guard at the relief agency compounds. In fact, few guns could be seen anywhere in Mogadishu, except in the hands of the Marines and the newly arrived contingent of the French Foreign Legion.

“We are extremely pleased with the way the (military) operation has gone, so far,” said Ian MacLeod, spokesman for the U.N. special representative to Somalia.

And MacLeod said relief agencies have high hopes that soon, with the help of Marine escorts, they will be able to reach the inland areas most affected by the famine.

The next phase of the relief effort, and the most important one, will be a convoy, expected to begin rolling within days, to Baidoa, in the heart of the worst-hit region, about 160 miles northwest of Mogadishu. A relatively small amount of food, about 50 tons, is planned for that operation, which relief officials describe as a symbolic trial run.

Before the convoy gets under way, the Marines plan to take the airport at Baidoa. Once the Marines control the airport, the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division--the Ft. Drum, N.Y., unit that provided relief to hurricane victims earlier this year in Florida--will arrive to open roads to feeding camps.

More than 200,000 of the 750,000 residents of the Baidoa area have died in the famine. And the current death rate is 50 a day in Baidoa and 100 daily in Bardera, about 100 miles southwest of Baidoa.

In recent weeks, Baidoa has been ravaged by armed gangs. U.N. officials have evacuated all expatriate staff, and the number of foreigners working for private relief agencies has dwindled from 70 to 30.

Relief agencies in the area are often targeted because they have typewriters, fax machines and other valuable equipment in their offices.