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A hidden food crisis in the heart
of Africa
By David White, Africa editor Published: February 11 2003 20:57 | Last Updated: February 11 2003 20:57 After the bridge over the Nile, where the waters come hurtling down from Karuma Falls, everything changes. The signs of normal small-farming activity, visible along the three-hour drive up from Kampala, the Ugandan capital, peter out. Instead, the roadsides are largely deserted except for baboons, monkeys and small detachments of soldiers. Swathes of ground are burnt or burning. var html = getInAdHTML("box",FTSite,FTSection,FTPage,FTIndustry); document.write(html); This is the route into a hidden African emergency. Until recent appeals by Uganda and the United Nations' World Food Programme, the food crisis that has erupted in Uganda was largely neglected, obscured by the scale of famine sweeping other parts of Africa. The problem is the same but for a different cause: not drought, but a bizarre and cruel guerrilla war. It is still early morning, and the army has just opened the road north to the dusty town of Gulu. Aid workers and opposition Ugandan politicians say that the army, in its frustration at not being able to eliminate the region's marauding rebels, has burnt the scrub and fields to clear the zone and deny food to its enemy. For more details of the crisis in northern Uganda from the World Food Programme Click here The Lord's Resistance Army, a quasi-religious group, has been conducting an intermittent campaign among the Acholi people of northern Uganda for 16 years. Its leader, Joseph Kony, is an altar boy turned self-styled prophet who claims to have supernatural powers. His declared aim is to overthrow Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's president, himself a former rebel commander, and install a government run according to the Ten Commandments. It has abducted thousands of children, indoctrinating the boys as soldiers, using the girls as concubines and disfiguring those it wants to punish. At nightfall, thousands of youngsters walk up this road into the dusty town of Gulu seeking safety, sleeping on the verandahs, and returning home at dawn. Opposite the barracks, the children lining up for porridge in a reception centre are former captives, ex-combatants or young mothers. Some were born in captivity. The LRA's war is waged mainly against civilians, away from where soldiers are. The first protected camps for displaced people were built seven years ago during a resurgence in the fighting. Then, in March, came Operation Iron Fist. The Ugandans flushed out the LRA's bases in Sudan, with the agreement of the Sudanese government. In the vicious reaction that followed, the army ordered everyone in conflict zones into the camps, setting up new ones in districts previously untouched by the fighting. There are by now almost 800,000 people in 60 camps, and 150,000 refugees outside the region. Instead of returning home as planned, camp-dwellers are hemmed in, caught between two sides. Outside, the army is pursuing people. Inside, the rebels consider them as hostile. In the camps, their round grass-roofed huts are packed close together like giant mushroom patches. Drunkenness is common, HIV/Aids on the rampage. Child malnutrition rates are causing alarm. The Uganda Red Cross has suspended operations in the region after a team was attacked at the weekend. "The people are on the verge of starvation," says Ken Noah Davies, World Food Programme director in Uganda. "This used to be a cattle- keeping culture. Where are the cattle? They're dead, too." Two successive harvests have been lost. If people cannot sow or plant crops in March or April there will be none this year, and even if they can, they cannot be certain of being able to collect it. The WFP, backed by volunteers of the Norwegian Refugee Council, up to now has aimed to supply 30 per cent of basic food needs, but now sees itself providing the lot. Contributions in response to the WFP appeal, mainly from the US and Britain, so far come to just over $20m (�12.8m), a quarter of what is required to supply food for the year, according to officials. The aid convoy from Gulu to Cwero, 30km to the east, is escorted by about 70 Ugandan troops, an armoured personnel carrier in the lead and a vehicle mounted with a machine gun and mortar in the rear. This is the minimum protection for any aid delivery. The soldiers have motley uniforms, some with Wellington boots, and an assortment of automatic rifles and rocket-launchers. Most are teenagers, here to fight a child army. At the side of the dirt road are human remains, apparently rebels killed in a skirmish two months ago, and several burnt-out vehicles, one of them an ambushed police car. The rebels have no use for motor transport, preferring to move on foot through the bush, where the high grass gives cover and they can achieve remarkable distances. "There are no tactics in this war that prevent the enemy from attacking us," says the lieutenant in command of the convoy. Cwero houses the population of 33 villages and is receiving new arrivals daily. Part of the camp has been destroyed by a blaze the previous evening. The health centre is not functioning. Camp representatives say the LRA moves in close every night. People who used to go out to pick crops from their homes no longer dare. In an open space outside the camp the food distribution - kidney beans, maize, blended foods, vegetable oil - is almost finished. A burst of gunfire echoes from the next valley, followed quickly by the thuds of mortar fire. The soldiers fan out, fearing the attack may be a diversion. The womenfolk who have patiently been sorting their rations scurry back towards the camp. None of them leaves the food behind. |
