The Sudan Handbook

thE intERnational PREsEnCE in sudan 281

Juba, its main garrison town. In 1985 it formed the Southern Relief and

Rehabilitation Association (SRRA) with the aim of making it the SPLA’s

humanitarian wing; this also served as a mechanism to support the

armed struggle.

The next, more severe, famine occurred in Bahr al-Ghazal in 1988.

Khartoum’s counter-insurgency strategy against the SPLA depended

upon arming and mobilizing proxy militias and depopulating rebel-held

areas. At this point international relief was mostly flowing to Khartoum,

to government garrison towns in southern Sudan, and to refugee camps in

Ethiopia, with the inadvertent effect of assisting the Sudan government’s

efforts to depopulate parts of the south. In 1988, relief to SPLA-held

areas remained a sensitive subject in UN and donor discussions. This

was influenced by fears of possible government retaliation against

international development operations in northern Sudan, a prevailing

deference towards government priorities, and an unwillingness to

question Khartoum’s definition of the problem. Moreover, the UN’s legal

mandate for working with war-affected displaced civilians was confined

to a definition of refugees as those crossing international borders. This

resulted in the lack of clear responsibility for assisting famine victims and

those displaced within Sudan, including large numbers of southerners

who had moved to the north in and around Khartoum.

Nevertheless, efforts were made to access the south during the famine.

UNICEF made small-scale attempts to facilitate relief to SPLA territory.

It opened a Coordinating Office in Nairobi in June 1988 to assist private

relief agencies wanting to work in SPLA-held areas, but this closed in

October following criticism by the Sudanese government. With certain

exceptions, including ICRC operations and relief flights by the Lutheran

World Federation starting in 1988, no significant relief was provided to

rebel-held areas in southern Sudan until 1989 – after the worst of the

1988 Bahr al-Ghazal famine was over. The defining aspect of international

responses in this period was the lack of a concerted donor reaction to

famine as a political phenomenon: famine was largely defined as a nutri-

tional crisis, disconnected from its political origins and designs.

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors The year 1989 saw the creation of two important and very different

(www.riftvalley.net).