Starving for help

Hunger, despair great in Sudan

Thursday, May 1, 2014

The situation in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan, has gone from bad to worse. Instead of “simply” facing daily bombings by Government of Sudan (GoS) Antonov bombers, MIG jets are utterly destroying entire villages.

Furthermore, instead of a battle between two foes (the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army-North and the GoS) in the far reaches of the desert, the war has morphed into one with at least six different groups fighting on as many fronts all across the state of South Kordofan, the home of the Nuba Mountains. And the civilians of the Nuba Mountains are facing ever-increasing malnutrition, severe malnutrition and outright starvation due to the destruction of their farms.

As far back as January 2012, the international community knew for a fact that civilians fleeing the fighting in search of sanctuary were suffering from malnutrition and starvation. At that time, the United Nations and the United States, seemingly independently, considered the possibility of opening up a humanitarian corridor from the Republic of South Sudan into the Nuba Mountains.

Such consideration came to naught. As a result, deaths due to severe starvation and hunger have increased inexorably. Last May a small group of my colleagues who were carrying food up into the Nuba Mountains came across 20 dead bodies along the dirt road they were traveling. All had perished from starvation.

Now that the rainy season (May through November) is setting in, even more people face possible starvation. Farmland will be under water, people will be stuck where they sit due to impassable wadis (rivers) and roads, and will attempt to exist on the little they have managed to harvest or forage.

How bad is the hunger the people are facing? When I was last in the Nuba Mountains (December 2012/January 2013), during which there were 55 bombings by the Antonovs, I met with the only surgeon, Tom Catena, in the only hospital in the Nuba Mountains. He told me that little boys are so desperate for food that they climb tall trees and wiggle out across the thinnest of branches in search of fruit and seedpods, only to fall and shatter their shoulders and arms. Almost unbelievably, the damage is often so severe that Catena has no choice but to amputate those little arms.

But who cares? I mean, who really cares? That is, who cares enough to put themselves out there in an attempt to cajole and prod the international community to do all in its power to halt the killing in the region? Who cares enough to attempt to help provide desperately needed humanitarian aid to those with empty stomachs and body systems that are shutting down due to severe malnutrition and starvation because the international community abides by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s refusal to allow humanitarian groups entrance to the region?

Who cares enough to take the time to consider the fact that with each passing day that the international community procrastinates, dithers, and hems and haws it literally means individuals like you and me-with family members they love, with hopes and aspirations, with the desire to simply be left alone so that they can provide for themselves and their families-are gruesomely murdered or left to die excruciatingly painful and horrific deaths due to starvation?

That question, “Who cares?” is aimed at each and every individual who reads this piece, from the editors of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to the typesetters and copy editors, to the subscribers of the newspaper. I posited the question because I have begun to sense that only a minuscule percentage of the readers who have read my earlier commentaries (and there have been about 30 of them since 2004) seem to truly care. The rest, it seems, either read them and then go their merry way or look at the title and/or the name of the author and simply skip reading the piece, thinking: “Not this guy again!” or “Here we go again.”

I find that most unfortunate.

Fortunately for the Nuba people, there are a few, a very few, who have not only read the articles but reached out to ask how they could help to try to address and/or ameliorate the situation in the Nuba Mountains. Such individuals, I believe, are true beacons of hope. Among them are Rev. Lowell Grisham and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church; Dick Bennett and Gladys Tiffany of the Omni Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology; The Fayetteville Quakers; and Linda Shearer of Little Rock.

I am leaving in two weeks to head yet again into the Nuba Mountains to haul several tons of traditional food (sorghum and beans), special highly nutritious food (Plumpy’nut) that helps combat severe malnutrition and starvation, and medication (worm medicine) in an attempt to provide at least some concrete hope for those in desperate need. Anyone who is interested in learning more about this effort should feel free to contact me at [email protected] or (479) 927-0318.

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Samuel Totten is Professor Emeritus at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He is the author of the book, Genocide by Attrition: Nuba Mountains Sudan.

Editorial, Pages 15 on 05/01/2014