Not enough aid reaching communities stranded by fighting

Fighting and the planting of lethal landmines in the northwest of Guinea Bissau has isolated some 20,000 people who are struggling to survive on dwindling food reserves and occasional deliveries of food and medicines by canoe. Residents say at least three people have died from treatable illnesses as the sole road that links the farming and fishing communities of Suzana, Varela and the surrounding villages with the nearest hospital about 40 kilometres east in Sao Domingos remains closed and mined after fighting between Senegal rebels and Guinea Bissau troops. “There are about 20,000 people cut off [from the rest of the country]. The situation is very serious,” grey-haired priest Jose Fumagali, head of the Catholic mission in Suzana, told IRIN. Some medical and food aid had managed to get through by dug-out canoe but the amount was only a “drop in the ocean” compared to what was needed, he added. Many of the impoverished residents, unable to travel to market or trade their produce, have eaten up food reserves that should sustain them until the beginning of the raining season two months away. Clashes between Guinea Bissau soldiers and a faction of the Senegalese secessionist group, the Movement for the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) from the region that borders Guinea Bissau, erupted in mid-March. Some 7,000 people on both sides of the border have been displaced by the fighting, said the International Committee of the Red Cross, (ICRC) on 31 March. Most of the displaced and refugees have taken refuge with family and friends constituting a substantial burden for their impoverished hosts. But 700 people – half of whom are children – are living in a makeshift camp in Senegal with little hope of returning home in the near future, said the ICRC statement. On both sides of the border, residents and officials are appealing for help from their governments. In Suzana Fumagali said that no representative of the Guinea Bissau government had travelled to the region to assess or assist the residents who live in traditional mud structures with no electricity. “The local representative fled on the very first day of the trouble, and since then no one from the Guinea Bissau government has been to see how people in the area are coping,” said Fumagali. The government of Guinea Bissau has made no comment on the problem of communities displaced or isolated by the fighting. Over the border Mayor Robert Sagna in Ziguinchor, the main city in Senegal’s Casamance region, told IRIN he had appealed to Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade to stop the fighting. “I have challenged the Senegalese authorities and President Wade to address this situation through dialogue as it will not be solved by more fighting,” said Sagna. On Saturday, Abdoulaye Balde Secretary General to the Senegalese Presidency said while on an official visit to Ziguinchor to reopen a fish plant, that President Wade’s government had been marked by conciliation with the rebels, but that his government could not intervene across the border in Guinea Bissau. Casamance is separated from the rest of Senegal by a sliver of land that makes up the Gambia. For two decades the MFDC has led a secessionist battle that has waned in recent years. And in December 2004 MFDC political leaders signed a peace deal with President Wade’s government. The current up-surge began on the 14 March when hard-line MFDC faction leader Salif Sadio clashed with government forces from Guinea Bissau. Though the gunfire has calmed, the two sides remain locked in their positions and some Sadio-loyal fighters have taken control of territory inside Guinea Bissau, say residents and MFDC insiders. The International Campaign to ban Landmines said that Sadio-loyal rebels had laid fresh landmines in Guinea Bissau territory in one of the most worrying aspects of the surge in trouble. According to ICRC a landmine killed 14 people and seriously injured 13 last month and over the years hundreds of people have been maimed or killed by landmines - many of them farmers and children.