comrnenr The Kampuchean emergency

’ To provide bare survival rations for more than two million people (half the nation! said to be critically short of food, about 30000 tonnes of rice would have been needed each month. The country’s sea and river ports could together handle hundreds‘ rather than thousands, of tonnes per day: some 10 000 tonnes were offloaded from ships in October and the largest for November was 20000 tonnes. At the same time, the shortage of vehicles for inland food movement was judged so severe that a UK voluntary agency arranged in November to fly in 70 Leyland ‘seven-tonners’ from Izmir, in Turkey, at a cost of some E750 000 for the vehicles and a similar amount for the flights. * Earlier in the 1970s there had been a spectacular failure to prevent a major peacetime famine in Ethiopia and the West African Sahel, where populations finally succumbed to several consecutive years of drought. Here, last-minute attempts at emergency relief could achieve only minimal success.

The political issues surrounding the plight of the Khmer nation have been well aired. The issue of famine has not. This statement may seem strange in view of the massive publicity aroused by starvation in Kampuchea and amongst refugee camps in Thailand; the Western public has responded generously and relief agencies have tried to solve political and logistical problems not all of their own making, But since September 1979 it was ‘accepted’ that a nation was dying of starvation, and little of substance could be gleaned from media reports. A reconsideration of those months raises important questions about the timing of emergency food aid.

If famine had truly struck Kampuchea at that time, very few people could have been saved.’ Fully fledged relief distribution appeared impossible before January. With regard to intensive feeding and other emergency treatment, Kampuchea had only about 50 doctors and the government was slow to accept foreign medical teams. Drug donations soon vastly outstripped the local capacity to use them,

But as agency reports began to reach the outside world it became possible to piece together a clearer picture of conditions in the country. There were acute medical and, to some extent, nutritional problems among displaced people, orphans and refugees from the war-front, tragic groups who had been the focus of media attention. More generally, malaria, gastroenteritis and other diseases were taking a high toll of the population. However, reports from the field did not indicate widespread starvation. The end of 1978 harvest, together with a certain amount of Vietnamese and Soviet aid, had sustained (though certainly not overfed) the nation during 1979. This was, however, another year of appalling upheaval in Kampuchea, and at the end of it the most pressing problem was a serious deficit in the new harvest. But the spectre of famine in 1980 has receded in the face of food pledges which amount to some 160 000 tonnes for the period up to May.

As an example of Western food aid intervention, the Kampuchean case arouses mixed feelings. On the one hand, response to a supposed famine in 1979 may well have prevented a real famine in 1980; it may be that funds in excess of food aid requirements can be turned to much needed reconstruction and training programmes for a sorely battered country.

On the other hand, the principle of massive response only when it is believed that famine has already struck is dangerous, particularly since this is not confined to the peculiar political and military circumstances of Kampuchea. In many poor and famine-prone countries in peacetime, the problems of bulk imports, logistics, administration and medical services are not as far removed, as may be supposed, from conditions in Kampuchea after 10 years of warfare and upheaval. As we enter the 1980s it is disturbing to think that famine relief, rather than famine prevention, is still the order of the day.

Julius biolt,

~~ter~at~~na~ Disaster institute,

London, UK

2 FOOD POLICY February 1980