The New York Times

Monday, December 6, 1999

Misguided Relief to Sudan

For reasons of history, geopolitics and rampant criminality, Sudan has been at war for most of this century. The latest phase of fighting between the Arab and Muslim north and the long-subjugated black African south is in its 16th year. Two million Sudanese have died in what may be the world's worst sustained humanitarian catastrophe since World War II. Now the Clinton administration is edging toward deeper engagement in this conflict as it debates sending food aid to rebels in southern Sudan. This is likely to prolong the war, ally Washington with one of Sudan's pre-eminent war criminals and enlist America in the conflict's most pernicious tactic -- the use of food as a weapon of war.

President Clinton signed a foreign assistance bill last week that includes language authorizing food assistance to armed opposition groups in southern Sudan, including the Sudan People's Liberation Army. No decision has been made on whether to proceed, but the strategy is being pushed by some in Congress and the State Department. The aim would be to further isolate a militant Islamist regime, which Washington accuses of backing terrorism, and pressure it to end the war.

Khartoum's National Islamic Front deserves little sympathy. It is a cynical gang of generals and theocrats who have plundered Sudan since seizing power in a coup in 1989. The threat it poses for the rest of the world through terrorism pales in comparison to the terror it inflicts on its own population, from purges and torture to state-induced famine. Khartoum's war aim is to perpetuate a long tradition of northern Arab subjugation of the predominantly Christian and animist south, not least so as to exploit the development of southern oil deposits.

But providing direct support for Khartoum's armed opponents is likely to strengthen its hand. This was the unintended consequence of the American bombing last year of a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, which galvanized popular support in northern Sudan and across much of the Arab world for the regime. Moreover, channeling assistance to southern rebels would ally Washington with a brutal and predatory guerrilla army. One of the tragedies of Sudan's war is that John Garang's S.P.L.A. has squandered a sympathetic cause. Though its members claim to be "Christians" resisting Islamization, they have behaved like an occupying army, killing, raping and pillaging.

Both sides have used food as a weapon, taxing, stealing, blocking and diverting emergency deliveries in order to control people and territory. The international agencies that provide food to the south under the United Nations' Operation Lifeline Sudan have long anguished over the inescapable fact that their well-intentioned efforts were fueling the war by feeding its armies. But their alternatives are limited. Now Washington is poised to promote this distortion of humanitarian purpose. In doing so it would forfeit its ability to criticize those who use food as a weapon.

Instead of propping up a discredited insurgency that can do little but prolong the current stalemate, the United States should use its influence to discourage allies seeking partnership with Khartoum in an effort to profit from its fledgling oil industry. They include France, Britain, Saudi Arabia and, most conspicuously, Canada, whose Talisman Energy Inc. hopes to secure 25 percent of Sudan's potentially lucrative oil and pipeline development. These countries should not be allowed to profit from the ravages of someone else's war.