Memorandum from Mr Bona Malwal, Editor
and Publisher of Sudan Democratic Gazette
Mr Chairman, Honourable members of this august committee,
I would like to make a few opening remarks if you will allow.
My name is Bona Malwal. I am a former Minister of Culture and
Information of Sudan. In view of the political situation
in my country, I currently live here in the United Kingdom where
I and my family have been granted leave to stay, for which
we are most grateful. In Sudan I was also a publisher of
newspapers and my English language daily, The Sudan Times, was
one of the newspapers which the present military dictatorship
in Sudan disbanded when it overthrew a democratically elected
government in a coup d'etat nine years ago. Currently, I publish
a monthly newsletter on Sudan out of London called the Sudan
Democratic Gazette, which advocates a return to multiparty democracy
in the country and a negotiated, comprehensive peace to end
the current civil war. I would like, Mr Chairman, at the
beginning of these few remarks to express my gratitude and appreciation for
your initiating the hearings on the situation in Sudan by your
distinguished committee and for according me and my colleague,
Colonel Stephen Madut Baak, the representative of the Sudan People's
Liberation Army (SPLA) in the United Kingdom and Ireland,
the opportunity of sharing with your committee some of our concerns
about the situation in our country. Mr Chairman, I would
like to address four very specific issues that came up repeatedly
recently from the statements made to your august committee
by the Secretary of State for International Development, the Right Honourable
Clare Short, and in her many aggressive public and media contributions
over the past two months to the debate on the famine situation
in Sudan. The four issues of concern are:
1. - the cause of the current famine
in Sudan;
2. - the question of access to the famine
stricken people in my country;
3. - the question of the linkage between
relief efforts and a possible cease-fire in the ongoing conflict
in Sudan; and
4. - the political efforts to settle the
conflict in Sudan.
I make the following remarks from an informed personal knowledge,
having been into Southern Sudan four times in the past two
months. I make these trips back to that part of my country regularly
two or three times each year to keep in touch with the situation
there. As you can see, I too am very concerned about the terrible famine
afflicting my people.
Causes of the Famine
Mr Chairman, the Secretary of State for International
Development tried to create the impression that both sides
in the conflict in Sudan share equal responsibility for causing
the current famine in Southern Sudan. This has become, unfortunately,
a rather traditional attitude which has been adopted by humanitarian
agencies in an attempt to show even-handedness in a difficult
situation. This may not necessarily always do full justice to
the situations in question. The truth of the matter,
Mr Chairman, is that when it became publicly evident in September
and October last year that rains had failed all over southern
Sudan during 1997 and that there would be a severe famine, particularly
in Bahr El Ghazal, currently the worst affected area of the South,
this information was shared widely with the international
community_which may or may not have done enough, early enough,
to help. The present National Islamic Front (NIF) military
dictatorship in Khartoum quickly moved, however, to take advantage
of that difficult situation and use the famine as a weapon
of its ongoing war of genocide against the people of Southern
Sudan. From January this year, the regime banned relief flights
into Southern Sudan; and the international community, through
the United Nations Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), went along
with that ban, even though it knew that the so-called government
of Sudan did not by any means control much of the territory of
Southern Sudan where food was needed. While the international
community obeyed the ban, the NIF regime beefed up its military
preparations to send in its army and militia to finish off the
weakened population of the South. The Khartoum regime
only allowed flights to come to very restricted areas of Bahr
El Ghazal after April, by which time its army and militia
were now ready to attack the civilian population of this famine
stricken province. We all know, for instance, that the regime
set alight OLS food supplies on the airstrip in places like Maper
in northern Gogrial in early June to prevent this food being
distributed to the more than 3,000 people who had gathered
there to receive the food. The UN personnel on the ground to supervise
the distribution narrowly escaped capture by the regime's
militia. I have not seen this information provided to your committee
in the testimonies that I have so far read, either by the
Secretary of State or by the others who have testified before you.
This is an example of the kind of impediment which the NIF regime
uses to obstruct the distribution of food to the needy population.
I was in both western and eastern Aweil for six days in
mid-May, another devastated area of northern Bahr El Ghazal.
Between 17 and 19 May, I witnessed 17,000 people who had been
displaced by the NIF militia from Aweil west to Aweil east
five days before. These people were sitting starving on the airstrip,
where a UN food consignment of some hundreds of tons had
been piled up after being dropped there two or three days earlier. The
OLS official in charge would not distribute this food to the people
waiting there because, according to him, this food was not
intended for them but for some other people who were yet to arrive
on the scene to receive it. My efforts to persuade the young
UN officer to divide the food between the starving people right
in front of him and those for whom it was intended, and to
then do the same when the food intended for these people eventually
arrived, were not successful. As a result of this seemingly heartless
intransigence of the OLS official, at least 12 children from
this group starved to death, including two who died before my
very eyes. It was the fear that many more of these starving
people might die in a stampede over the food that restrained me
from ordering the starving people to overpower the UN official
and take the food. Contrary to the Secretary of State's assertion
that there is enough food, or enough money to buy food, and that
the problem is only one of access; I can only say in astonishment
that there is clearly scarcity of food and not enough is
reaching even those areas that are reachable by the OLS operation.
Much more food and many more funds are needed to help even
the severely underestimated numbers of people in need that have
so far been admitted at your hearings here. Still on
the question of delivery and distribution, one perhaps should
understand the misplaced confidence of world governments
in the OLS, but I believe that concentrating international support
on the OLS is part of the problem. The OLS is a big road
show which seems attractive for publicity, but it is not the most
efficient way of providing famine relief because it goes
only to centres of its own creation and not to the countryside
and the pockets of very severe starvation where people are
no longer physically able to get themselves to the OLS-created
centres. I have personally gone to these places, which are the
natural homes of the starving. The OLS and the NGO agencies
that are bound to the rules of the OLS do not reach these people. We
very much appreciate the generous contribution made by the Secretary
of State for International Development towards relief in
Sudan on behalf of the British people and Government, but concentrating
this aid in the hands of the OLS defeats the purpose of this
aid. If there is something your committee can do, Mr Chairman,
to hand some of this aid over to small UK NGOs, especially those
operating outside the OLS, this would be most helpful to
the people now in need in Southern Sudan. Some of these small
do-gooder agencies already go with small quantities of food
to areas where it matters most and where the OLS and the larger agencies
working under the OLS umbrella dare not go.
Access
On the question of access, the Secretary of State
made much of the need to have access, to go to places by land.
The problem about this type of access, Mr Chairman, is not the
fighting at all. The areas suffering famine are largely outside
the NIF regime's control and are controlled by the SPLA. The SPLA
representative may tell us if his organisation has any problem
with allowing land access to the famine areas. I do not think
so. The real problems here are two: first, the international
community does not want to deal directly with the SPLA in the areas
under its control and wants to introduce the so-called government
of Sudan into the equation where it does not exist_the sovereignty
thing! If the international community wants to do relief free
of politics, which it claims it wants to, it should deal
directly with the SPLA on land access as a practical issue . The
other and real problem with land access is the roads. As stated
before your committee in the previous testimonies, many of
the roads in Southern Sudan have fallen into terrible disrepair
over the entire period of the war_15 years now_and are therefore
not passable by motor vehicles. In any case, even if the roads
were passable, the many rivers in Bahr El Ghazal, the worst
famine affected area, cannot be crossed at this time of the
year. Almost all of these rivers have no bridges and are heavily
flooded by now as they are every year in this season. If
we mean to help 7feed the people worst off in this area between
now and January next year, it will have to be done by planes.
Cease-fire
Mr Chairman, the only reason why the regime in Khartoum
induced this famine is political. It is to gain political
leverage over their adversaries and to ignore the political causes
for the civil war in the country, which the regime has no
intention of addressing. The Secretary of State for International
Development has played into the hands of the NIF regime on
this issue in a most unfortunate way. Of course there is
a need for a cease-fire_when it is linked to the discussion of
the causes of the war and not just to famine, as the Secretary
of State for International Development has been campaigning for.
It is a political matter and should be kept as such. But
when the regime in Khartoum claims it wants to stop the war in
order to get relief to the people that it helped starve in the
first place, the result will be to place the people of Southern
Sudan in double jeopardy: not able to obtain relief for the famine
and not able to receive redress of the grievances that forced
them to take up arms against the regime in the first place. I
think it would be helpful to keep the two separate_humanitarian
relief aid apart from settling the causes of the conflict, even
while admitting that the conflict has had a very large role
in causing the famine. No one in the world would ever dare demand
their political rights if repressive regimes like the current
one in Sudan continue to be allowed to use famine-against
their own civilian population in order to avoid addressing political
grievances.
In any case, you probably already know by now that the SPLA
has agreed a limited cease-fire in Bahr El Ghazal to allow
food to reach the people. Let us hope that the Secretary of State
for International Development will make good use of the opportunity
this offers. Resolving the Conflict Mr Chairman, no
people will be happier than those people of Southern Sudan if
the British Government were to play an active role in bringing
about the resolution of the long running conflict in Sudan. Britain,
more than any other country in the world, understands what
is at issue in the Sudanese conflict. Britain is the best living witness
to the causes of this conflict. Certainly Southern Sudanese would
appreciate a leading role by Britain in making in clear to
the world how the country we now call Sudan came to be what it
is today. Mr Bona Malwal Editor and Publisher of Sudan
Democratic Gazette 16 July 1998
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