Operation Lifeline Sudan

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OLS
operation area Sudan
German name Action Survival Bridge Sudan
English name Operation Lifeline Sudan
French name Operation survie au Soudan
Type of mission humanitarian aid
Beginning April 1989
The End Gradual transition from humanitarian aid to development aid after 2005
Operation Lifeline Sudan.jpg

Cargo planes and warehouses in Lokichoggio

The Operation Lifeline Sudan (short OLS ), German  Operation Lifeline Sudan , was a humanitarian operation United Nations in Sudan . The OLS was decided in March 1989 in view of a famine looming in South Sudan from the mid-1980s at the height of the Second Civil War . Aid from various humanitarian organizations was coordinated under the leadership of UNICEF . The OLS became known through daily food flights from the Lokichoggio base in Kenya to various places in South Sudan. It was the first large-scale relief operation in which the population was supplied during a civil war within the combat area.

prehistory

With the peace agreement of 1972 in Addis Ababa (Addis Ababa Peace Agreement), which ended the first civil war in southern Sudan, the hope was linked to economic development of southern Sudanese. Some development measures were carried out in the following years, but these were far too few and unevenly distributed regionally. Money for infrastructure improvements was only used for road construction in the districts of Torit , Yambio and Yei in the southern Equatoria provinces and, above all, for the construction of the Jonglei Canal, which was rejected by the local population . The export of cattle and dried fish to the north, which had a high market share for some regions, could be increased, but the fundamental underdevelopment and dissatisfaction of the south was not eliminated.

After a decade of peace, the second civil war in South Sudan began specifically with a revolt by Battalion 105 stationed in Bor in May 1983. Colonel John Garang , dispatched from Khartoum to investigate the matter, sided with the mutineers on arrival in Bor. On July 31, 1983, the SPLA was officially founded, which initially carried out attacks on government institutions with only a few weapons, but was supported by Muammar al-Gaddafi and Ethiopia's head of state Mengistu from 1984 onwards . The background to the resurgence of the civil war was the Islamization of the state with the introduction of Sharia law in September 1983 by President Numeiri , which was primarily directed against the Christians in the south. In the years that followed, the government provided Arabic-speaking Baggara nomads (Islamic militias in general: Murahileen ) with weapons and encouraged them to plunder and conduct atrocities against the black African population ( Dinka and Nuer ). Likewise, drunken military officials behaved. A mass exodus of the population to the SPLA began and with it an expansion of the fighting.

The state vaccination programs for the millions of cattle in South Sudan were discontinued in 1983, and the previous cattle trade came to a standstill. In the absence of money, cattle were exchanged for millet in private transactions. Animal disease and theft reduced livestock. Government soldiers destroyed village wells classified as strategically valuable. In 1983 the precipitation in South Sudan was lower than usual, in the summer of 1984 almost no precipitation fell apart from the southernmost provinces. Six million residents of Kordofan and Darfur began to starve, a USAID commission investigated the crop failures, found the situation in the two regions desperate and arranged for 82,000 tons of sorghum to be shipped , little of which came into the country via Port Sudan from November onwards . Because of the drought, in the winter of 1984 only half of the grain was harvested in the mechanized agricultural areas of the Gezira plain . In May and June 1985, 400,000 tons of Durra were unloaded in the port of Port Sudan, which was completely overwhelmed with this amount. Further transport by train or truck was slow due to insufficient transport capacities, poor roads and widespread corruption. For example, at the height of the famine in central Sudan, a completely empty freight train arrived in Nyala (Darfur). USAID was criticized for these losses, even though the organization hired and paid for the 425,000 tons of food it provided to other transport companies. Around 250,000 people were fed, and the death toll could have been just as high. Possibly some 10,000 were saved from death.

Such warehouses for cotton in the port of Port Sudan were rented as transfer points for relief supplies. In 1985, 15,000 tons of food could be unloaded every day, the railroad could only carry 2000 tons away.

President Numairi has been accused of indifference and mismanagement in connection with the famine; none of the southern provinces had received aid from Khartoum. That was one of the reasons he was overthrown on April 6, 1985. The other reasons were: the dismissal of the Muslim Brotherhood under Hasan at-Turabi from the ruling coalition, the high inflation and an army that was demoralized by the ongoing fighting. Sadiq al-Mahdi , who was elected as his successor in April 1986 , was similarly indifferent to the famine in the south, stating that famine relief was "the responsibility of the rich West, not any Sudanese government." The "rich West" was, apart from USAID, represented in South Sudan by the aid organizations Oxfam , Band Aid , Norwegian Church Aid, ACROSS (African Committee for the Relief of the Southern Sudanese) and Protestant churches. It can be seen as a preliminary stage of the OLS that these organizations coordinated under the title CART (Combined Action Relief Team) from 1985 onwards .

How fights for scarce resources were fought along ethnic dividing lines in the course of the civil war is particularly evident in the example of El Diein (Ed Daein), a small town on the railway line east of Nyala. The place used to be one of the transshipment points for slaves, was classified by USAID as particularly dangerous for aid organizations because of the Darfur conflict that broke out in 2003 at the end of 2007 and was the scene of a massacre 20 years earlier, in early 1987. By May 1986, 17,000 Dinka had fled from the south to the supposedly quiet El Diein, where there were occasional disputes with the local Fur and Zaghawa at the scarce water points . It escalated when Baggara attacked Dinka villages in January 2007. SPLA fighters then attacked these Arab militias, killed over 150 Baggara and brought 4,000 cattle back into Dinka possession. On March 27, 1987, a group of armed Baggara Dinka attacked who had gathered in a church. A mob formed that raged through the Dinka district and hit those fleeing with sticks. The next day, a fire was set on a train that was fully occupied with Dinka and prepared for departure. UNICEF estimated the death toll at up to 1,500, Amnesty International later confirmed 426 Dinka killed. Most of them were women and children.

In 1987, hindered by bureaucracy and the security situation, only a few food deliveries reached the cities in the south; At the beginning of the year famine was reported particularly in the Aweil district . Sadiq not only adhered to his statement that the supplies for the population were left to the relief services, the government also took targeted measures against this aid. In February 1988, OXFAM-trucks worth $ 600,000 were on the instructions from Khartoum 20 should bring the food in the southern region, in Juba seized by the army troops for an attack on property located in the extreme southeast Kapoeta to transport which had recently fallen to the SPLA. The vehicles had been bought by the UK government and given to OXFAM, which made headlines in the UK press.

When a flood disaster struck the entire center of the country in August 1988, in which 80 percent of the area of ​​Khartoum was under water and hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless, emergency aid arrived from mostly Arab countries in a very short time. Saudi Arabia flew in food with 42 military and 19 civilian aircraft, which the army distributed and some diverted to parts of the city with government supporters. USAID also donated 7,100 tons of food that was sent to flood victims in the outskirts of the capital through church organizations.

OLS - preliminary talks under President Sadiq

The arduous international negotiations at the beginning of 1989 up to the introduction of the OLS relief operation happened at a time when Sadiq was in a crisis domestically and because of the ongoing war and, above all, when the National Islamic Front (NIF) was involved in Turabi in February Ruling coalition also dwindled its legitimacy abroad. Although Sadiq's government had a sufficient majority, it was accused of inability to implement economic reforms to combat inflation (80 percent in February) and external debt (economic output has been falling since 1982). Due to increasing exhaustion from the war, the army issued a week-long ultimatum in February calling for peace talks with the SPLA. In the south, 1.6 million refugees needed help in March 1989, over a million refugees were in Khartoum.

In March 1989 a UN conference took place in Khartoum, at which James Grant, the director of UNICEF and head of the planned OLS, was able to assert his positions. The government concessions included the exchange rate for Sudanese pounds for donation transfers and guarantees for safe transport routes, which Sadiq promised a month's rest to set up. The SPLA under John Garang also agreed to the establishment of corridors on which aid could be transported from Malakal on the Nile, via the rail link from north to Aweil and by truck from Uganda, but opposed a ceasefire. The start of the action was set for April 1st and, under the direction of UNICEF, should last six months. The main concession forced on Sadiq was the approval of a peace process, which also found a majority in the government he formed on March 25, 1989 (the fifth government in three years). Turabi left the government and turned down a scheduled meeting between Sadiq and Garang.

OLS after al-Bashir came to power

This meeting never happened again. After a coup by Islamist officers on June 30, 1989, Omar al-Bashir took power. Bashir told James Grant the day after the coup that the OLS would continue. Nevertheless, the travel permit for helpers was suspended for a month. A flight ban was imposed until August 1989, after which security procedures were tightened to such an extent that aid flights from Khartoum were drastically reduced. In general, relief supplies only partially reached their destination and after delays. In November the government again suspended all aid flights and made their continuation dependent on the condition that in future 80 percent of all aid supplies must go to the areas controlled by the army. Before that it was 50 percent. A haggling over quotas began. Only the Lutheran World Federation left the consensus of the aid organizations, accepted this condition and flew relief supplies to the garrison town of Juba. Bashir also wanted to position army officers at the loading points for aid supplies in Kenya and Uganda, but this was rejected.

The original contract had expired in October and Bashir had not extended it. Direct negotiations for a continuation as OLS II took place in November 1989 with the mediation of Jimmy Carter in Nairobi . They were unsuccessful. There was no extension of the contract, instead the OLS was continued without precise agreements. In March 1990, the international donors declared the second phase of the OLS to be open. This time the refugees in Khartoum should also be included. By the official end of October 1990, $ 118 million was available. The first aid flights started from Lokichoggio in April. The start of OLS II was hesitant, especially after the Sudanese government declared its support for Iraq: when it invaded Kuwait in August 1990, US interest completely waned. Sudan had now also politically isolated itself from the Arab countries. Looking ahead, Bashir proclaimed the country's self-sufficiency in February in order to “preserve the honor and dignity of Sudan.” The fact that in September 1990 the government in Kosti confiscated 40,000 tons of relief supplies from USAID's possession does not fit into this picture , which became international Protests led. A continuation of OLS therefore seemed questionable, but it was decided for the coming year despite less interest from donors. In the early 1990s only a few foreigners were given permission to review the situation on site.

At the beginning of 1991 the military situation shifted to the disadvantage of the SPLA. In Ethiopia, after the overthrow of the socialist government ( Derg ), the Sudanese refugee camps, which had been a supply base for the SPLA, were closed and 100,000 Sudanese were forced to return to Sudan. Their supply now had to be decentralized and in the middle of the war zone.

At the end of 1992 there was a robbery in which three western helpers and a photographer were killed in eastern Equatoria. As a result, all foreign NGOs, with the exception of Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) and World Vision Germany and World Vision Sudan, temporarily withdrew in protest until the warring parties had agreed to a first version of an agreement (“Ground Rules”) in early 1993, which essentially the inviolability of helpers and their property. This was the first time that the OLS exerted direct political pressure. The OLS's only means of political power was the threat of withdrawal, but the OLS exerted further pressure through public perception: the warring parties were able to demonstrate their humanitarian intentions by working together and thus strengthen their legitimacy.

Since its inception, apart from the complicated negotiations, the OLS has had to contend with poor and partly mined roads and with attacks on these roads and waterways, mostly committed by the SPLA. The supply therefore had to come largely from the air. The airfield in Lokichoggio, Kenya, became the transshipment point for supplies and the base for aid organizations . In 2004, the World Food Program estimated the share of transport costs at 38–43 percent of the annual project costs and thus at around twice as much as the value of the goods. Flying in via Lokichoggio made aid deliveries three to five times more expensive. Around 1990 the transport of a ton of aid supplies from Kenya to the crisis region cost 700 US dollars. In some cases, a million US dollars were spent a day.

Under the direction of UNICEF, the individual aid organizations in South Sudan were assigned sectors: AICF (Action Internationale Contre le Faim) around Kadugli ; CARE International in an-Nahud ( West-Kordofan ); CONCERN Ireland in Kosti and Malakal ; ICRC in Wau ; LRCS (League of Red Cross Societies) in Abyei ; MSF in El Meiram (west of Abyei); WFP in Malakal, Nasir , Kosti, Torit , Nimule (on the Uganda border) and Wau; UNICEF in Kapoeta and UNDP . From mid-1993 the situation in the regions of Bahr al-Ghazal and Eastern Equatoria was practically always uncertain, longer-term projects could only be carried out in the extreme southwest ( Western Equatoria ). The most unsafe areas were mainly supplied by the WFP.

After the end of the civil war in 2005, the relief organizations focused on mine clearance and the expansion of the infrastructure, and the costly transport of goods by air has decreased significantly. In recent years, numerous other non-governmental organizations have been added, whose activities are now understood as development aid. The projects are no longer summarized as an OLS.

Hunger as a strategy in war

Hunger as a means of waging war has been exploited by both sides. Famine was brought about specifically to direct aid deliveries, aid deliveries were deliberately prevented, and hunger was a means of demoralizing the population. The assurance of unhindered transports was only granted if the various rulers saw their area adequately taken into account in the distribution. Even before the OLS began in 1986, the aid organizations made special efforts to supply the population in the cities held by the army in order not to annoy the government; for the SPLA precisely this was the reason to refuse a ceasefire to provide assistance in June 1986. As a demonstration against unsolicited aid flights, the SPLA shot down a Sudan Airways passenger flight near Malakal on August 16, 1986 . There were 60 dead. Aid flights were discontinued afterwards. The government was equally hostile and in October expelled the UN staff responsible for the flights. The so-called silent diplomacy was unsuccessful.

If the population was expelled into refugee camps, the warring party in question forced the concentrated delivery of relief supplies to one place, with the appropriate control options. Such population concentrations were also misused as protective shields: In 1993 the population of the Juba government garrison had risen to around 300,000. This had to be supplied from the air, as the government had the access roads mined to prevent the population from fleeing to rebel areas.

Criticism of OLS

The main allegation is that the OLS provided direct or indirect support to the conflicting parties in such a way that this aid contributed to prolonging the war. Indirect support enables triangular deals: in 1990 Sudan exported 98,000 tonnes of millet as fodder to the European Union, while food of a similar size was flown to Sudan at the same time. A belligerent party was given foreign currency in this way. The famine could have been prevented without these exports. In the ongoing Darfur war, hunger is again a war strategy and aid deliveries and food exports by the government can also be offset against each other. There were agreements that also had the effect of supporting the government: aid organizations were forced to exchange the funds earmarked for their projects at poor rates for Sudanese currency and to buy relief supplies in local markets. Their vehicles had to be registered as the property of the Sudanese authorities so that they would be guaranteed to go to the state after the end of the mission.

The SPLA on the other side is said to have used part of the aid supplies for its own purposes, since it believed that the supply of the population by others was secure: “Since the UN launched Operation Lifeline Sudan 18 years ago, the rebels have been used to it that the civilians are fed with relief supplies. Help saves lives, but it also leads to a fatal loss of personal responsibility. "

Under the heading Aid fueling the war, a study summarizes three ways in which aid supplies benefited the warring parties: Direct theft was only carried out by local warlords who operated for the Sudanese government and who had no relationship with the NGOs wanted to maintain. Theft of relief supplies in remote areas that were not accessible to foreign aid workers was less noticeable. This happened on a larger scale during the 1980s in the refugee camps in Ethiopia under the supervision of the SPLA. The thefts in the camps were supported by the Derg regime, which restricted the movement of UNHCR employees.

The warring parties had their own aid organizations that were nominally independent but still part of the respective movements. The Relief Association of the southern Sudan (RASS) belonged to the Nasir faction of the SPLA, and the Fashoda Relief and Rehabilitation Association (FRRA) was also founded by the Nasir faction. The Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association (SRRA), founded in 1985, was (and is) part of the SPLM . Due to the high risk for foreign aid workers, the aid supplies delivered to certain central locations were redistributed by these organizations. After 1991 this was the most common path for food to disappear.

The fact that the SPLA was able to become a political organization that received international attention was also due to the negotiations on the introduction of the OLS. John Garang had been upgraded by the insurgent to a recognized interlocutor who traveled to the USA on his "peace tour" in May 1989, where he tried to get rid of the previous assessment of his organization as communist.

There was general complaint about the lack of political pressure on the organizations and that the inclusion of civilian objectives in the war, including the attacks on the OLS itself, was not criticized enough by either side. During the 17-year civil war, an estimated 2 million people were killed and 4.3 million became refugees.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.unicef.org/french/lifeskills/index_8400.html
  2. ^ Douglas H. Johnson: Deconstruction and Reconstruction in the Economy of Southern Sudan. In: Sharif Harir , Terje Tvedt (Ed.): Short-cut to Decay. The Case of the Sudan. The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala 1994, pp. 125–142 ( limited preview in Google book search)
  3. ^ Burr and Collins, p. 17
  4. ↑ Burr and Collins, pp. 26f
  5. ^ Robert Kaplan: Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea. Vintage Books 1988, p. 15. Translated from: Burr and Collins, p. 45
  6. ↑ James Astill: Sudan's stolen children. Guardian, March 3, 2002
  7. ↑ Situation Report 6, 2007. ( Memento from September 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 82 kB) USAID
  8. ↑ Rainer Tetzlaff: Ethnic conflicts in Sudan. In: Sigrid Faayth, Hanspeter Mattes: Wuquf 7–8. Contributions to the development of the state and society in North Africa. Hamburg 1993, pp. 156-158. / Burr and Collins, pp. 92-97
  9. ^ Burr and Collins, p. 113
  10. ↑ International Notes Health Assessment of the Population Affected by Flood Conditions - Khartoum, Sudan. MMWR, January 6, 1989
  11. ↑ Burr and Collins, pp. 124f
  12. ↑ Abdel Salam Sidahmed and Alsir Sidahmed: Sudan. Routledge Shorton, New York 2005, p. 101
  13. ↑ Figures from USAID Sudan, quoted in: Burr and Collins, p. 176
  14. ↑ Ulrich Delius: The conflict in South Sudan - No hope for peace. In: Sigrid Faayth and Hanspeter Mattes: Wuquf 7–8. Contributions to the development of the state and society in North Africa. Hamburg 1993, pp. 189-204
  15. ↑ Radio Omdurman, 17 15 GMT February 4, 1990. And ". We will eat what we grow and wear what we make" Bashir on 4 February 1990 in Hasahisa before cotton and grain farmers. Both based on: Burr and Collins, p. 273
  16. ↑ Burr and Collins, p. 310
  17. ↑ Øystein H. Rolandsen, p. 52
  18. ↑ Special Operation. Emergency road repair ..., World Food Program, 2004, p. 3
  19. ^ Burr and Collins, p. 275
  20. ^ Based on a map in Burr and Collins, p. 180
  21. ↑ Øystein H. Rolandsen, p. 47
  22. ↑ Ulrich Delius, pp. 197-199
  23. ^ Plague or cholera. Christian Wernicke spoke to Helga Henselder-Barzel. Die Zeit, February 17, 1989
  24. ↑ Ulrich Delius, p. 200
  25. ↑ Sidahmed, p. 102
  26. ↑ Jeffrey Gettleman: Sudanese crops thrive as Darfur goes hungry. International Herald Tribune, August 11, 2008
  27. ↑ Kurt Pelda : New beginning with obstacles in South Sudan. Wrong incentives through the benefit of money from the relief services. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, May 4, 2005. According to a UN employee, the “SPLA is said to have diverted up to 50 percent of its aid for itself during the war.” Quoted from: Thilo Thielke: War in the land of the Mahdi. Darfur and the disintegration of Sudan. Essen 2006, p. 270.
  28. ↑ Øystein H. Rolandsen, p. 48 f
  29. ↑ Øystein H. Rolandsen, p. 50
  30. ^ Burr and Collins, p. 191
  31. ↑ Continued critics against "Operation Lifeline Sudan". ( Memento from September 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) afrol.com, August 29, 2000 (at Internet Archive)

literature

  • J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins: Requiem for the Sudan. War, Drought, and Disaster Relief on the Nile. Westview Press, Boulder (Colorado) 1995
  • F. Grunewald, J. Been and B. Thompson: Program Design Consultancy: Sudan OLS (Draft 3). Guidelines on Humanitarian Operation Planning & technical Indicators, Accion contra el Hambre 1998
  • Ataul Karim et al. a .: Operation Lifeline Sudan. A review. Operation Lifeline Sudan, Geneva 1996
  • Larry Minear: Humanitarianism under Siege. A critical review of Operation Lifeline Sudan. Red Sea Press, New York 1995

Web links