The UN has found it difficult to keep the “food pipeline” open to the people in Darfur, thanks to a lack of security along the roads and in the villages. The Sudanese government does not provide reliable escorts, and UN workers have had their trucks hijacked and their stations robbed. Thanks to the rainy spring, the crisis could escalate into a deadly famine — and all of this may sound familiar to Americans:
The World Food Programme is to halve food rations for up to 3 million people in Darfur from next month because of insecurity along the main supply routes. At least 60 WFP lorries have been hijacked since December in Sudan’s western province, where government forces and rebels have been at war for five years. The hijacks have drastically curtailed the delivery of food to warehouses ahead of the rainy season that lasts from May to September, when there is limited market access and crop stocks are depleted.