From: Jim Rosenfield <jnr@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Date: 05 Oct 92 21:36 PDT
Subject: Re: 9/25 Wire stories on hunger
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1471700147:cdp:1471700148:000:6836
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jnr    Oct  5 21:36:00 1992


/* Written  8:36 pm  Sep 25, 1992 by jnr in cdp:hunger.general */

 Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

 By REID G. MILLER

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- The U.S. military airlift of food to
starving people in Somalia, begun a month ago with great fanfare,
is proving disappointing to some international aid officials.

They have accused the Americans of being overcautious about
flying to unstable areas, unnecessarily slowing the delivery of
vital food, medicine and other supplies.

Some members of Congress also have called for a more active U.S.
military role in Somalia, where more than 100,000 people already
have died from war and starvation.

Two million more are critically at risk, and aid officials say up
to 500,000 people could die by Christmas unless food and medical
aid gets to them first.

Many private aid workers are angry and frustrated with the pace
of the relief effort, which has been bedeviled by marauding local
gunmen and transportation delays. Exhausted by the sight of
children, mothers and the elderly dying every day, they have
lashed out in many directions, including at each other -- and
recently at the U.S. airlift.

Such criticism, however, draws a sharp response from Washington.

"This airlift has saved lives and has moved a lot of food that
would otherwise have not been moved," James Kunder, the head of
the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, said Thursday in
Washington.

"It's difficult enough to work in these utterly chaotic
conditions. For people who are supposed to be relief
professionals to take potshots doesn't save any Somali lives and
just makes this operation all the more difficult."

The real villains in Somalia, he said, are "the thugs on the
ground" who threaten relief shipments.

U.S. aircraft are an important part of the relief effort. But
criticism of the airlift grew after the Americans temporarily
suspended flights to the western town of Belet Huen on Friday
when one of their C-130 Hercules cargo planes was struck by a
stray bullet.

"The least little thing and they stop," said Bob Koepp, whose
Lutheran World Federation has been flying food to both Somalia
and the besieged southern Sudan city of Juba in chartered C-130s.

"When they got shot at, I think that scared them half to death,"
said Koepp, a veteran aid worker whose planes have landed at Juba
under threat of shellfire by surrounding rebels.

"We're very disappointed the Americans haven't been able to fly
food aid into the most desperate areas of Somalia," said Ian
MacLeod, a U.N. Children's Fund official in Mogadishu, the Somali
capital.

Most U.S. aid flights have been to the towns of Belet Huen,
Baidoa, Uejit and Hoddur, all considered relatively safe
destinations. MacLeod asserted that Germany, using two military
Transall cargo planes similar to the C-130s, was doing a better
job of getting food to where it is needed than the Americans with
their 14 C-130s.

"We would like them to go to more places, but they have their own
operational restraints," said Paul Mitchell, spokesman for the
U.N. World Food Program in Rome.

"What they do in relationship to the others flying, the others
are going more places," Mitchell added.

The World Food Program is using two C-130s chartered from
Southern Air Transport of Miami to fly food to places the
Americans haven't gone, including the southern town of Bardera.
The Germans also fly to Bardera.

U.S. and private aid officials in Nairobi and Somalia, who spoke
on condition of anonymity, said the Americans haven't flown to
Bardera because it is the field headquarters of Gen. Mohamed
Farrah Aidid, one of Somalia's chief warlords. The Americans
scratched the town from their list of destinations for fear of
appearing to favor him, according to these officials.

In Washington, however, Kunder said U.S. planes are preparing to
fly to Bardera, and "the idea that we are playing politics with
it is absolutely silly."

The C-130s leased by the World Food Program cost it about $7,200
a flight, Mitchell said. He said Southern Air Transport "is one
of the few Hercules outfits worldwide that will go into combat
situations."

The operational differences between the civilian Southern Air
Transport crews and the military crews flying the American C-130s
are striking.

The chartered Hercules carry more tons of cargo per flight,
including combustible fuel for power generators and ground
transportation that U.S. military planes refuse to haul. German
planes transport fuel.

When the chartered planes land on one of the dirt strips that
serve many Somali towns, their flight crews turn off the engines,
getting out to chat with aid workers while they're being
unloaded.

The Americans land, keep their engines running for a quick
getaway and don't get out of their planes while Somali workers
toil in the wash of their four giant propellers.

"There is a view that the Hercules should normally carry about 18
metric tons and the Americans are only carrying nine metric
tons," said Mike McDonna, field director for Irish Concern in
Somalia.

U.S. officials said the size of the relief shipments on U.S.
military aircraft is determined by how much Red Cross officials
in Somalia believe they can absorb.

"If the ICRC says we can handle only X number of tons a week,
that's what we provide," said Steve Hayes, an Agency for
International Development official in Washington.

Also, some military C-130s are armored or carry other military
equipment, and therefore can handle less weight than commercial
C-130s. Some aid workers said it was unfair to compare the size
of military payloads to the size of those carried by commercial
operators contracted to fly in aid.

"It's not that they (the American military) are being
conservative, they're operating on different payload parameters,"
said Stephen Tomlin, the field director for the Los Angeles-based
International Medical Corps.

But McDonna said without loading the U.S. aircraft to the
maximum, food shipments will inevitably be delayed.

"Let's say things are slow and we're not getting in enough still
and there's 145,000 metric tons to move. If you divide that by
nine, you're going to get an awful lot of flights," he said.

A more active U.S. military role in Somalia was urged on Herman
J. Cohen, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, by
members of the House Subcommittee on Africa last week.

"We ought to be using the military to clean out those marauding
gangs stealing the food out of babies' mouths," Cohen was told by
Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.

Burton was referring to the clan militias and heavily armed
freebooters who have raided the ports and food warehouses,
hijacked truck convoys and killed and wounded scores of aid
workers.

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Used with permission of the Associated Press


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