Famine Is Almost As Certain As Civil War

The New York Times, February 4, 1990.

 

Summary:  Sudan is one of the most prosperous agricultural spots in Africa, but has been surprisingly plagued by famine.  This time Sudan is facing a civil war.  The warring parties that infest the Sudan are preventing any relief from reaching the starving victims in Sudan.  An accurate estimate of just how many people are starving cannot be made because of massive migration, but the number is certainly in the millions.  Neighboring Ethiopia also has its own civil war to deal with and cannot accommodate all the starving refugees.   Although, unlike Sudan, Ethiopians are accepting humanitarian aid because they realize that the aid could help one force dominate the other.    American aid to the Sudanese will soon halt.  The United States has watched food supplies stand idle, and humanitarian plains shot down by the Sudanese Government.  The rebels have forced the people of Southern Sudan to the countryside where they receive no aid and starve.  It is predicted that as war intensifies and a truce becomes less likely famine aid will dwindle to nothing and most of the Sudanese peasants will eventually face starvation.