Stranded villagers could be out of food

Catholic missionary Sister Ruth has set off on a five-hour trek over river and ocean in a dugout canoe stocked with food and fuel for villagers utterly cut off by recent armed clashes and landmines in northern Guinea Bissau. The wooden boat will make its way from the northern city of Cacheu down the Cacheu River and out onto the Atlantic Ocean before arriving at the town of Suzana. Communities around Suzana and Varela in the far northwest have been stranded since last week when fighting between the national army and Senegalese rebels shut down the road linking the two towns to the main border city of Sao Domingos about 40 kilometres to the east. And that means people are likely running out of food, aid workers say. “The main problem is that the city of Suzana is totally isolated,” said Sister Ruth, who is with the Adorers of the Blood of Christ order and based in Suzana. “There is nothing left to eat. People have already eaten any food reserves they had. Since vehicles can no longer travel there to supply markets and shops, the population is in distress.” Sister Ruth started out in the capital Bissau with a truckload of supplies, making the 80-kilometre trek to Cacheu where the rice, fuel and other goods were transferred to the boat. Aid workers say it is not yet clear exactly how many people are in trouble in Suzana and Varela. “That is still a question. We’re trying to find out,” said a worker with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Guinea Bissau, which is already helping thousands of people displaced by the recent fighting. At least 5,000 men, women and children have been forced from their homes since last week, when fighting broke out between the Guinea Bissau military and a faction of the rebel Movement for the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC). The MFDC faction crossed over into the country from Senegal’s southern Casamance region after an attack by a rival bloc. An estimated 2,000 displaced people are in the city of Cacheu, some 1,500 in Ingore, according to aid workers in the region. Many people are also thought to be holed up in the area's dense forest. The UN refugee agency UNHCR has provided tents and drinking water to displaced families, an official with the agency's regional office in Dakar said. UNHCR’s West AFrica representative made a trip to the area this week. The UN World Food Programme to date has provided five tonnes of food – including rice, vegetable oil, corn-soya blend and sugar – as well as some supplies for the displaced, including about 500 people who fled north across the border into Senegal. Guinea Bissau is struggling to climb back from years of crippling civil war. The people of the tiny West African country depend mainly on agriculture, with cashew nut the main crop. But the fighting comes just as villagers need to prepare their fields for the harvest, worried residents told IRIN. Throughout the Senegal-Guinea Bissau border region, for years fighting and rampant landmines have blocked people from tending to their fields – for most the sole source of income. Farmers south of the border have also been hampered by two decades of sporadic fighting triggered by the MFDC’s 1982 rebellion calling for an independent Casamance. Since a peace deal was signed in December 2004 between separatists and the Senegalese government, people hungry for stability have slowly begun to return to their crops. “We really want to go out there and cover all our land, but we’re still afraid,” Djilang Yaffa, a farmer in Casamance said. “We don’t know whether there are still mines in many places.” In Guinea Bissau military sources say the MFDC faction is laying fresh anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines. “This latest unrest comes at an extremely bad time for Guinea Bissau, as aid organisations in the country were working to help the country get back on its feet,” said Marcus Prior, WFP spokesperson for West Africa. “Our main concern is for the safety of the people caught up in the violence and to ensure they receive what they need in the coming days and weeks.”