More than 200,000 in east Sudan face hunger: aid groups

NAIROBI, Dec 24 (AFP) — More than 200,000 people face hunger due to acute food shortages in camps and villages in eastern Sudan, local aid groups said in an appeal in Nairobi on Friday.

Beja Rehabilitation Organization, Sudan Humanitarian and Relief Agency and Sudan Future Care said 10 years of fighting between the Khartoum government and an eastern rebel group largely constituted of members of the Beja community had exacerbated food shortages in the region.

This year, erratic rains have caused poor harvests in eastern Sudan, where there are no international aid groups.

The Beja, a grouping more than two million people drawn from several small ethnic groups, provides the core of fighters for two rebel groups, Beja Congress and Free Lions Movement (FLM), which took up arms in 1994 against Khartoum to demand an end to marginalisation and an equal share of national wealth. The uprising spawned a large displacement of people.

FLM, which appeared in the late 1990s, is made up note of Beja but of people from the Rashidiya tribe – pure Arab tribes who came to Sudan from the Arabian peninsula in around 1870.

Both movements have been negotiating with the Khartoum government in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, to end the conflict in east Sudan.

But they withdrew from the talks on October 23, demanding that their grievances be tabled at a forum similar to the ongoing African Union-sponsored negotiations being held in Abuja between Khartoum and rebels from the western Darfur region.

The eastern rebels maintain their region has suffered similar problems to those in Darfur, where rebels have been at war with Khartoum and an allied Arab militia since February 2003, including political and economic marginalisation.