Africa Death by Starvation

By Jill Smolowe

Of all the obscenities of war, none is as inexcusable as the deliberate slaughter of civilians. Yet much of the world is silent now, though millions of innocent Africans stand in jeopardy of extinction. These people will not die by the sword or the other traditional implements of war. Instead, they will be slain by one of the cruelest weapons of any era -- starvation. They will die slowly and painfully; in a world of abundance, they will die hungry.

And most of the dying will be done in the Horn of Africa. In Ethiopia upwards of 4.5 million people, more than four times the number wiped out by the great famine of 1984-85, may starve this year if food relief is not provided -- and soon. In Sudan, where as many as a quarter of a million people died of hunger in 1987-88, the most dire estimates suggest that 3 million could suffer the same fate by the middle of this decade. Once again the world may see those sickening images: skeletal children too weak to swat away the flies that swarm around their eyes; old people slumped against herding sticks, too weary to take another step.

Famine in Africa may seem like yesterday's news. This time, however, the prospect of mass starvation is not just the caprice of nature but is largely the work of man. Drought and crop failures have not gone unnoticed. Wealthy donor nations have pledged hundreds of thousands of tons of foodstuffs. Distribution networks exist to allocate the food. Relief convoys stand ready to move it. All that separates millions of malnourished Ethiopians and Sudanese from the food that could save their lives is a handful of stubborn men: President Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia, Lieut. General Omar Hassan el Bashir, the head of Sudan's 15-man junta, and the rebel leaders opposing them. All are more intent upon winning their wars than feeding the people they are supposedly fighting for. "If people die this time, it is not going to be because of the drought but because of the military and political situation," says Father Michael Schultheis, an American Jesuit based in Nairobi.

ETHIOPIA. The last time famine visited, the rains had failed for three years and people were already dying before the world awakened to the tragedy. This time most of the country had a better than normal harvest in 1988 and crop failures are confined to the northern provinces of Eritrea, Tigre and Wollo. Moreover, there is food in the relief pipeline; last week the United Nations' ) World Food Program announced an additional $8 million in emergency food aid, and the European Community raised its pledge $12 million.

Yet a hunger crisis may hit as early as March because most of the people at risk are trapped behind lines controlled by the three insurgent armies battling Mengistu's troops. Mengistu so far refuses to let relief convoys enter rebel-controlled territories for fear the food may go toward feeding the insurgents or the trucks may be ferrying arms to them. His obstinacy follows a year of humiliating defeats for his forces in Eritrea and Tigre.

The military situation shows no sign of improvement in either province. Following an attempted coup against Mengistu by members of his own army last May, the government opened peace negotiations with the secessionist Eritrean People's Liberation Front. They arranged a cease-fire, but a subsequent round of talks ended in stalemate last November without any agreement for the movement of food to drought-stricken areas. To the south in Tigre, two rebel armies have managed to drive out all troops and representatives of the civilian government. Since August the rebels have been pressing an offensive through Gondar and Wollo provinces, seizing towns within 85 miles of the capital, Addis Ababa.

What makes this situation doubly frustrating is that distribution networks now exist in Eritrea and Tigre -- if only the government would put them to use. But the organizations are controlled by the rebel fronts. The Mengistu government might be less obdurate if the food were funneled through the Joint Relief Partnership, a group of five Ethiopian churches without ties to any of the rebel groups. In response to heavy international pressure, Mengistu hinted that the government might work with the churches to open "corridors of safe passage" through the hardest-hit regions. But he has yet to give formal approval.

SUDAN. Since seizing power in a coup last June, Bashir has found one pretext after another for preventing relief agencies from helping the hungry. In November his fundamentalist Muslim government stopped a grain train and banned all emergency relief flights bound for the Christian and animist south. Khartoum justified the blockade of food and medical supplies by claiming that aerial bombardments of two rebel-held towns in the south made it too dangerous for relief workers to operate. When the rebels, who have no aircraft, charged that the bombings were in fact the work of the government, an official % spokesman vaguely promised an "investigation." The blockade has also made it difficult for the U.N.-sponsored Operation Lifeline Sudan to supply farmers with seeds and tools for planting, just when plentiful rains hold the promise of a bumper harvest.

In early December former U.S. President Jimmy Carter tried to launch negotiations between Bashir's government and the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Movement, which seeks independence from Khartoum's harsh Islamic law. But the talks collapsed, and fighting has apparently intensified. On Jan. 4 a Sudanese guerrilla radio broadcast charged that 2,000 tribesmen were slaughtered by government-sponsored Arab militias in the Jebelein area, 250 miles south of Khartoum. The government claims that only 214 were killed, and that the deaths followed rioting over a farm dispute.

Reporters have not been able to get into the region to verify these reports, but many accounts from witnesses on the scene suggest that the government is bent on crushing relief operations. On Dec. 21 a plane carrying volunteers from a French medical-relief organization was shot down, and three French medics and a Sudanese relief worker were killed. Since then, the French organization has temporarily recalled two of its teams from the area.

There is little hope that either country will settle its political differences soon enough to allow a swift rescue of the people in peril. Ethiopia has recently claimed victories against the Tigre rebels, which may soften Mengistu just enough to permit some relief operations, at least for a time. But in Sudan, stiff rebel resistance threatens only to convince Bashir that his best course is to continue to block the already difficult lines of transport into the south -- and let starvation and disease do the rest.

With reporting by David Cemlyn-Jones/Nairobi and William Dowell/Cairo