Africa Death by Starvation

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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.