In helping Sudan's refugees, a fight against truck-eating rivers

Sitting at his desk, his office door shut tight, Robert Gillenwater doesn't have time for distractions. As his air conditioner hums weakly in the heat of Chad's capital, he's focusing hard on getting thousands of tons of cereals, vegetable oil, and a highly nutritional corn-soya blend to the 180,000 refugees who've fled across the border from fighting in neighboring Sudan.

This former Canadian military officer is chief of logistics for the United Nations World Food Program here. It's his 11th humanitarian crisis. He avoided rebel fire in Liberia and enlisted armies of elephants to get food to refugees in Cambodia.

But the logistics situation in Chad and Sudan's Darfur region is the worst he's ever seen. "We're fighting against the clock and mother nature," Mr. Gillenwater says.

With about 100 trucks at his disposal, Mr. Gillenwater and his team must navigate a barren land with only a handful of paved roads and with bridgeless rivers that appear from nowhere after big rains. Their rush- ing currents have already claimed two trucks. He's ordered platoons of porters stationed at riverbanks: When trucks arrive at a river, porters will ferry the cargo on their backs, to trucks on the other side. With ideas like this, and international support growing, he's confident refugees in Chad will get what they need.

"One way or another we'll do it," Gillenwater says, in his clipped military tone.

But others aren't sure the 1.4 million displaced people in Chad and Sudan will have enough. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan pleaded this week for donor nations to make good on $191 million in unfulfilled pledges to help in the crisis. US officials have said that up to 350,000 people could die in Sudan if immediate aid isn't sent.

In fact, The World Food Program in Sudan reportedly distributed 8,460 tons of food trucked in from places like Port Sudan in the north to 523,415 people in Darfur this month, far short of their goal of reaching 1 million people. That's raising concerns that at least 100,000 more refugees could join those already in Chad, and overwhelm aid groups.

Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts center on a US-sponsored UN Security Council resolution that threatens sanctions against Sudan's government if it doesn't help improve the situation in 30 days. In Egypt Wednesday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to rally Arab support for the measure. But Egypt balked, saying it will fight the resolution and that Sudan's government needs more time to deal with the situation on its own.

Yet in Darfur, attacks by Arab militias, called Janjaweed, apparently continue. UN staffers have interviewed 38 women and girls who say they were raped by militia men in the past week.

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