NomadNet: In a War, Even Food Aid Can Kill

5 December, 1999

Friendly Fire;
In a War, Even Food Aid Can Kill

By JANE PERLEZ

AT a remote outpost in northern Kenya where nomadic herdsmen used to roam, a town with Western comforts has sprung up, its population composed of well-intentioned aid workers and hard-knuckle bush pilots. Lokichokio, as the place is known, is the springboard for United Nations food deliveries into southern Sudan. But to the cynical, this oasis in the desert has become the catering headquarters for the Sudan People's Liberation Army, a rebel group with Christian and animist beliefs that has been battling an Islamic government in Khartoum for 16 years.

When the first planes, loaded with sacks of American and European grain, were sent off with great fanfare, the goal was to alleviate mass starvation among civilians trapped by war in desolate regions. It was assumed that some food would be confiscated by the combatants but that this was a small price compared to allowing innocent civilians to die.

Now, a decade later, some of the aid officials who run the programs acknowledge that the food has wound up fueling the war and has failed to stop the misery. And so Lokichokio has taken on a standing its founders never envisioned -- a symbol of the terrible ways in which good intentions can backfire in a war zone, where even food aid can, in the long run, contribute to death.

So far in the Sudan war, according to relief organizations, two million people have died, four million have been internally displaced and nearly 400,000 have fled to neighboring countries as refugees. More than $2 billion has been spent on the food program, Operation Lifeline Sudan, half of it from the United States. Yes, civilians have been kept alive by the Western food, but the longer the war goes on, the more it seems that these people are simply living on death row in the scrubland of southern Sudan.

And so a sharp debate has emerged within the Clinton Administration, the outcome of which could have profound consequences for the future of food aid to the starving. Finally, officials are confronting the fact that in conflict zones relief assistance is rarely neutral.

In this conundrum, Sudan has become the case study.

One side of this impassioned argument is led by the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Susan Rice, who believes that the Khartoum government is evil incarnate (a suppressor of freedom of religion, a force that supports enslavement of Christian southerners) and must be defeated. Ms. Rice supports the idea of giving food directly to the combatants so they can better fight the regime.

On the other side stands the State Department's Bureau of Refugees and a growing number of aid organizations, led by CARE USA, who argue that their food aid has made a bad war worse. Some of the relief groups are weary of the leader of the southern rebels, John Garang, who has asked -- on and off -- for food to go directly to his bases. Sometimes Mr. Garang asks for this assistance, calculating that it will boost his fighters. But on other occasions, he has had second thoughts, calculating that the food he gets directly may add up to less than what he is currently siphoning from deliveries to civilians.

The notion that food aid perpetuates war is not new. But these days, aid organizations are excrutiatingly more aware that their benevolence can have unintended consequences. In Goma, Zaire, five years ago, two relief organizations, Medecins Sans Frontieres, which won the Nobel Peace Prize this year, and the International Rescue Committee, stopped providing food and medicine to Rwandan refugees. It was a wrenching but necessary decision to walk away, they said.

Why? Because it was clear that the camps were providing shelter not only to women and children but to the armed militia of the Hutu tribe who had fled Rwanda after slaughtering untold numbers of Tutsi. The Hutu were preparing, with the aid of Western food, to launch more Tutsi-killing raids back across the border, the groups said.

An extreme solution to the dilemma of whether to continue food aid in the face of continued war was suggested recently by Edward N. Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In an article in the journal Foreign Affairs, Mr. Luttwak said that war should be given a chance and allowed to run its natural course without the intervention of well-funded relief organizations, many of whom receive large amounts of money from the United States government. (Charities, which advertise on television with emotive images from Africa, get substantial funding from the government as well as from individual donations).

Sudan is not of vital national interest to the United States but the Clinton administration considers its Islamic government to be a major supporter of international terrorism. This is one of several reasons cited by some in the administration for being cautious about negotiations with Khartoum. In 1995, the Sudanese government made what were considered credible threats against the life of Anthony Lake, then the national security adviser, and he had to be guarded. Soon afterward the American Embassy in Khartoum was closed. Last year, the administration attacked a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum with cruise missiles on the suspicion that it was involved in the manufacture of chemical weapons.

NOW, some of the aid organizations are pushing the administration to shift strategy and enter into serious diplomacy with Khartoum in an effort that would focus on ending the war. Under this pressure, the State Department has appointed a special envoy to Sudan, Harry Johnston, who is a former chairman of the House Africa Subcommittee. Mr. Johnston recently visited all the capitals in the region -- except Khartoum, an exclusion that was intended to signal Washington's continued displeasure but also seemed to suggest a lack of commitment to real negotiations. The American Embassy remains closed despite an effort by Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering to reopen it. Mr. Pickering suggested that staffing an embassy did not confer approval but did provide a listening post. He was opposed in his efforts by the State Department's Africa bureau.

Even with Mr. Johnston's appointment, Washington has restated its determination to isolate Khartoum. But this may prove difficult given Khartoum's renewed ties with the moderate Arab world and its neighbor, Ethiopia. A Canadian oil company has invested heavily in the government's new oil industry, and Britain sent its ambassador back to Khartoum last month.

Along with some vigorous diplomacy, another way to curb the war has emerged. It has to do with slowing the growth of the northern oil industry.

The China National Petroleum Corp., one of China's largest state enterprises, has invested in Sudan's oil fields and is planning a new listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The Treasury Department is now conducting a review to determine whether American investors would violate sanctions against Sudan if they purchased the Chinese company's stock.

If the answer is yes, Khartoum would be deprived of lucrative income which could be used to buy more bombs and planes -- the instruments most often thought of as the foodstuffs of war.

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