On 12 January, 2000, the Sudan People's Liberation Army
(SPLA) (1) issued an ultimatum to the 39 humanitarian aid
agencies active within SPLA-controlled areas of southern
Sudan. The SPLA demanded that all these NGOs sign an SPLA-drafted
'Memorandum of Understanding' strictly controlling their
activities and dictating their relationship with the SPLA's
'humanitarian' wing, the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation
Association (SRRA), or leave southern Sudan by 1 March.
The SPLA Memorandum included, amongst other contentious
items, demands that SPLA permission had to be sought before
any NGO interaction with local communities; for SPLA control
over the distribution of
humanitarian assistance; a requirement to work "in
accordance with SRRA objectives" rather than solely
humanitarian principles; SPLA control of whom NGOs could
employ as local Sudanese staff; the payment of "security
fees" and a swath of additional taxes and charges,
including charges for the landing of aircraft carrying humanitarian
aid and for NGO movement within SPLA-held areas; that the
SPLA would be entitled to use NGO transport on certain occasions;
and that aid agencies submit their budgets to the SPLA for
approval. The SPLA also stipulated that any NGO "assets
and supplies" would have to be left to them should
there be any "interruption" in the NGO's work,
which the SPLA reserves the right to order.(2) In previous
attempts to negotiate aspects of this memorandum with the
NGOs, the SPLA had specifically refused a provision that
would have discouraged the diversion of aid for military
purposes.(3)
The SPLA stated that those NGOs that failed to sign the
document by 1 March would cease to be the security responsibility
of the SPLA. Those NGOS were also told that their organisations
and staff would be
considered a "military security problem" and would
be "dealt with accordingly".(4) The European Commission
publicly condemned this "explicit threat made by the
Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) to the safety of humanitarian
agencies".(5)
Eleven international humanitarian aid agencies felt themselves
unable to remain active in southern Sudan under the conditions
demanded of them by the SPLA. On 1 March, 2000, the United
Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirmed that
149 staff members of non-governmental organisations working
under the umbrella of Operation Lifeline Sudan had been
evacuated from areas of southern Sudan controlled by the
Sudan People's Liberation Army.(6) The eleven non-governmental
organisations in question, groups such as CARE, Oxfam, Medecins
sans Frontieres, Medecins du Monde, Save the Children, World
Vision International, Healthnet, Veterinaires sans Frontieres
(Belgium and Germany), and the Carter Center, handled about
75 percent of the humanitarian aid entering southern Sudan.(7)
The withdrawal of these NGOS directly affects US$ 40 million
worth of aid programs. (8) The expelled aid agencies stated
that one million southern Sudanese were at risk as a result
of the SPLA's decision to expel the NGOs.(9)
All the NGOs in the OLS consortium, including those who
did sign the Memorandum, declared in a joint statement to
the SRRA on 23 February, 2000, that "the decision to
sign or not sign is made under duress, with grave implications
for continuing humanitarian support to the people of south
Sudan'.(10)
The United Nations stated that the SPLA's expulsion of
the NGOS:
"[R]epresents the temporary loss of a significant
proportion of the humanitarian resources provided by OLS
NGOs. This has created a void in the OLS consortium's ability
to provide adequate humanitarian assistance
to the people of southern Sudan, already made vulnerable
by decades of war and deprivation. Emergency response, health,
nutrition, household food security, and water and sanitation
programmes will be hardest hit."(11)
The SPLA and the diversion of humanitarian aid
The organisation presented by the SPLA as its 'humanitarian'
wing, the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association, is
openly known to be both totally controlled by the SPLA and
to have been closely identified with the systematic theft
and diversion of emergency food aid intended for famine
victims and refugees. The SPLA has repeatedly used food
aid, and its denial, as a weapon in their war against the
Sudanese government. In so doing it has been at least partly
responsible for the famines that have resulted in the deaths
of so many Sudanese civilians.
In July 1998, for example, the Roman Catholic Bishop of
the starvation-affected diocese of Rumbek, Monsignor Caesar
Mazzolari, stated that the SPLA were stealing 65 percent
of the food aid going into rebel-held areas of southern
Sudan. Agence France Presse also reported that:
"Much of the relief food going to more than a million
famine victims in rebel-held areas of southern Sudan is
ending up in the hands of the Sudan People's Liberation
Army (SPLA), relief workers said." (12)
An insight into the SPLA's attitude towards humanitarian
assistance prior to its proposed Memorandum is described
by a SPLA national executive council member, Dr Peter Nyaba:
"(S)ince humanitarian assistance is only provided
for the needy civil population, the task of distribution
of this assistance fell on specially selected SPLA officers
and men who saw to it that the bulk of the supplies went
to the army. Even in cases where the expatriate relief monitors
were strict and only distributed relief supplies to the
civilians by day, the SPLA would retrieve that food by night.
The result of this practice led to the absolute marginalisation
and brutalisation of the civilian population." (13)
The proposed SPLA memorandum makes it even easier for the
SPLA to engage in massive food aid diversion. The human
rights group, African Rights, has reported that:
"On the whole, SPLA commanders and officials of the
Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association (SRRA, its humanitarian
wing), have seen relief flows as simple flows of material
resources. The leadership has also used aid for diplomatic
and propaganda purposes." (14)
Douglas Johnson, a prominent academic writer on Sudanese
affairs, has said of the SRRA that:
"Most of its field representatives had been selected
not only from the military wing of the movement but from
the security wing as well. Throughout OLS the SRRA often
gave the impression that it was the procurement department
for the SPLA, as least as far as food and medicines are
concerned...Its representation of itself as the humanitarian
wing of the SPLM was undermined by its subordination to
the SPLA." (15)
African Rights made it clear that the SRRA:
"naturally became part of the mechanism for controlling
and manipulating information...And it had to conceal this.
The basic techniques of deception were already well-practised;
they were similar to those that
had been used in the refugee camps in Ethiopia: exaggerate
the numbers of accessible people in need; make up ambiguous
and false distribution reports; strictly limit the movements
of the foreigners; do not let them
talk to anyone without security clearance; use interpreters
to censor the information from innocent interviewees; punish
SPLA officials who are indiscreet." (16)
American development aid expert John Prendergast has documented
the SPLA's earlier capacity for systematic deception in
his 1997 book Crisis Response: Humanitarian Band-Aids in
Sudan and Somalia:
"A late 1993 SRRA directive in Maridi and Mundri stated
that visitors were forbidden to talk to local people, but
rather must speak to the SRRA. The recent SRRA law reads
more like a police directive. 'It is an inept framework
for humanitarian activities', according to one aid official.
'Its practicalities are abhorrent.'...There are SRRA minders
following wherever NGO representatives go. It is consequently
very difficult to monitor and follow up on aid diversions."
(17)
The SPLA's Memorandum unashamedly seeks to replicate the
situation described by Prendergast throughout rebel-controlled
areas of southern Sudan.
The Memorandum's implications are very serious. The credibility
of all those aid agencies that sign the Memorandum, accepting
its dictated constraints, and knowing that they are designed
in part to facilitate
large-scale humanitarian aid diversion, can only but be
undermined. One way or the other these agencies will merely
serve as adjuncts to the SPLA, wittingly or unwittingly
providing the SPLA with the means with
which to continue the civil war. Along with an equally cowed
civilian population, these non-governmental organisations
are in danger of becoming the SPLA's quartermasters. There
are clear dangers in the
SPLA's demand to control NGO assets and even use NGO transport.
Human Rights Watch, for example, has warned that the assets
of relief agencies could become legitimate military targets
if the SPLA were to take control of them: "The bright
line between civilian and military
activities has go to be maintained".(18)
It must be said that a number of the NGOs that have willingly
signed the Memorandum are already partisan supporters of
the SPLA. Norwegian People's Aid is one such organisation.
NPA has been a conduit for
American assistance to the SPLA. An open recipient of millions
of dollars from the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), a branch of the American government, it was revealed
in 1999 to have flown
in tons of weapons and landmines to SPLA combatants inside
Sudan. An independent consultancy commissioned by the Norwegian
government to investigate Norwegian People's Aid, and which
had also received
Norwegian aid funds, concluded that this aid was being used
to support the SPLA's war effort.(19) Such partisanship
can only but endanger the activities of other non-governmental
organisations in southern Sudan,
particularly in the wake of the Memorandum.
The SPLA obviously wish to accelerate an already vicious
circle.
Humanitarian assistance supposedly provided by the international
community to alleviate the suffering of victims of the Sudanese
civil war and war-related disasters will be diverted and
used to sustain, fuel and perpetuate the war itself on a
bigger scale than had been possible for the SPLA to effect
prior to the Memorandum. Those who will suffer in any event
will be the already grievously disadvantaged southern Sudanese
civilians living in rebel-controlled areas of Sudan.
Notes
1. The SPLA is sometimes also referred to as the SPLM/A,
a reference to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, ostensibly
the political component of the organisation. The Economist
states that "the rebels
have always, in theory, been a political movement as well
as an army. In practice, the army was the movement"
(March 1998). This publication refers to the movement as
the SPLA.
2. "Care, Other NGOs. Withdraw from South Sudan",
News Article by Agence France Presse on 24 February, 2000.
3. "Seven Aid Agencies Urge Renewed Negotiations for
Relief to Southern Sudan", Associated Press, 1 March,
2000.
4. "Sudan Focus on NGO Pullout from SPLA", Integrated
Regional Information Network, United Nations Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Geneva, 29 February,
2000.
5. "A Statement by the European Commission on Southern
Sudan", 29 February, 2000, available at ReliefWeb .
6. "OLS Evacuates NGO Staff from Southern Sudan",
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs, Geneva, 1 March, 2000.
7. "Rights Group Urges More Talks on Sudan Relief",
News Article by Associated Press on 1 March, 2000.
8. "Seven Aid Agencies Urge Renewed Negotiations for
Relief to Southern Sudan", Associated Press, 1 March,
2000.
9. "Expelled Aid Agencies Say Million at Risk in Sudan",
Reuters, 1 March, 2000.
10. "Humanitarian Agencies Call on SRRA to Reopen
Negotiations", Statement by OXFAM, 1 March, 2000.
11. "OLS Evacuates NGO Staff from Southern Sudan",
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs, Geneva, 1 March, 2000.
12. "Aid for Sudan Ending Up With SPLA: Relief Workers",
News Article by Agence France Presse on July 21, 1998.
13. Peter Nyaba, The Politics of Liberation in South Sudan:
An Insider's View, Fountain Publishers, Kampala, 1997, p.
53.
14. Alex de Waal, ed., Food and Power in Sudan, African
Rights, London, 1997, pp. 5, 7.
15. Douglas Johnson, "Destruction and Reconstruction
in the Economy of Southern Sudan", unpublished memo,
1992, p. 7, cited in John Prendergast, Crisis Response: Humanitarian
Band-Aids in Sudan and Somalia, Pluto Press, London, 1997,
p. 62.
