Hallmark of Clan Warfare: ‘Death Carts’ : Somalia: Starvation can be the fate of members of the wrong family. To have food is to be a target of killers.

They are the skeletal people who haunt the garbage pits that pass for Somali refugee camps. Most are old people or children. They lie in the dirt like piles of rags, cast aside as if they had no purpose. They seem to wear swarms of flies like an aura, a clogging, buzzing halo around their eyes, nose and mouth.

They are the result of the evil that exists here, a death war between clans in which the people are starved because they have the wrong family name or belong to nomadic tribes rather than being farmers.

They are walking carrion and die in daily lots of 50 in some places, 300 in others. Seldom are there mourners. Their deaths are either a relief for equally famished relatives or a matter of total indifference. Their bodies are simply hauled away on “death carts” and dumped in nearby gullies.

These people also are the symbol of President Bush’s new doctrine of American military intervention on grounds of morality. Or, as the President described it in his televised address: “The people of Somalia, especially the children of Somalia, need our help. We’re able to ease their suffering. We must help them live. We must give them hope. America must act.”

Large-scale death by starvation is neither new nor unique in East Africa. But Somalia’s famine has a cast of its own. People have no food to eat because, here, to have food or to grow food is to be a target for looting and murder.

“All of the 300,000 people who have died in the last few years are the victim of a famine caused entirely by men,” said Sean Devereaux, a U.N. Children’s Fund relief expert here. His words have special meaning because this section of Somalia’s Juba Valley is fertile. Its rivers are overrun because of recent, plentiful rains. The flowers bloom, the countryside is green with grass and lush vegetation.

But what is not growing or even being planted here is food--the rice, wheat and sorghum that make up normal diets.

Of the estimated 120,000 people who make up the population in the Kismayu region, 63,000 are displaced farmers, forced off their land by the warring hordes of the rival clans. Those who stay are systematically robbed and their crops looted. Finally, they are killed.

Some of the misery has abated since the U.S.-led military coalition has intervened. But most of the relief is going to populated areas with many scattered, starvation camps still not reached.

Now, there are “more pockets (of starvation), rather than nationwide hunger,” said David Kaatrud, a spokesman for the World Food Program, which is coordinating much of the private relief work.

It doesn’t take much to save the starving. International Red Cross officials say about three-quarters of a pound of grain products daily will restore health. UNICEF’s Devereaux said that “the nutritional level of people in camps which have received aid has improved. The children are happy and fat.”

But that is still more the exception than the rule, and it could prove temporary unless the regions still not reached by the military security forces are not soon protected.

“That is what is necessary. If we can do that,” said Kaatrud, “we can get control. But it has to be soon so as to get the farmers back to their homes because this is the planting season.”

Kaatrud said he is worried about the U.S. Marines “pulling out soon . . . because we want to have an institutionalized system of security.” He expressed a lack of confidence that a multinational, U.N. peacekeeping force will replace the Marines and other combat units in the next three or four months.

But even with the Marines still active, much of the famine belt is still under siege. The worst area “that we know of,” he added, is in the region of Bardera, an inland city in southern Somalia that is on the American military’s target list.

This man-made famine has led to other equally deadly health problems. There is almost no potable water in the country, and, in many sections, there is no water at all because pumps have been stolen or destroyed.

Mark Thomas, a UNICEF spokesman in the capital of Mogadishu, told of a pump that provided 30,000 gallons of water a week to a town near Bardera. “It was stolen last week,” he said.

Another major target for the clans has been so-called cold chains, devices for keeping medicine cold. “We are having a measles epidemic is some areas because we can’t preserve the vaccines.”

But for 35 people kept in an isolated camp only 12 miles from a U.S. Marine post at the Kismayu airport, none of this is important.

They died Sunday of starvation.

The Global Effort to Feed Somalia

In the last year, dozens of countries have contributed to the care and feeding of Somalia, where feeding centers scattered throughout the countryside distribute the food. Though short of goods, these centers have improved the situation in place where nearly everyone faced starvation six months ago. The centers vary by relief organization. Here’s a typical layout:

DISHING OUT THE FOOD

Cooking area: The hungry are fed Unamix, a dry mixture of 50% corn, 30% red beans, 10% sugar and 10% oil. Water is added to the dry meal and then it is cooked over an open wood fire in 55-gallon drums, which are cut in half.

Feeding procedure: Adults and children sit in rows and relief workers fill their bowls by ladling the gruel from a bucket.

Medical attention: Children are weighed each day to keep track of their weight. Medical facility provides first aid and immunization against water-borne diseases.

Hired armed guards make up nearly one-half of the center’s staff.

Sources: U.N. World Food Program, World Concern, Associated Press