Word: bashir
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...foodstuffs. Distribution networks exist to allocate the food. Relief convoys stand ready to move it. All that separates millions of malnourished Ethiopians and Sudanese from the food that could save their lives is a handful of stubborn men: President Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia, Lieut. General Omar Hassan el Bashir, the head of Sudan's 15-man junta, and the rebel leaders opposing them. All are more intent upon winning their wars than feeding the people they are supposedly fighting for. "If people die this time, it is not going to be because of the drought but because...
SUDAN. Since seizing power in a coup last June, Bashir has found one pretext after another for preventing relief agencies from helping the hungry. In November his fundamentalist Muslim government stopped a grain train and banned all emergency relief flights bound for the Christian and animist south. Khartoum justified the blockade of food and medical supplies by claiming that aerial bombardments of two rebel-held towns in the south made it too dangerous for relief workers to operate. When the rebels, who have no aircraft, charged that the bombings were in fact the work of the government, an official % spokesman...
...early December former U.S. President Jimmy Carter tried to launch negotiations between Bashir's government and the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Movement, which seeks independence from Khartoum's harsh Islamic law. But the talks collapsed, and fighting has apparently intensified. On Jan. 4 a Sudanese guerrilla radio broadcast charged that 2,000 tribesmen were slaughtered by government-sponsored Arab militias in the Jebelein area, 250 miles south of Khartoum. The government claims that only 214 were killed, and that the deaths followed rioting over a farm dispute...
...political differences soon enough to allow a swift rescue of the people in peril. Ethiopia has recently claimed victories against the Tigre rebels, which may soften Mengistu just enough to permit some relief operations, at least for a time. But in Sudan, stiff rebel resistance threatens only to convince Bashir that his best course is to continue to block the already difficult lines of transport into the south -- and let starvation and disease do the rest...