The Challenges of Famine Relief: Emergency Operations in the Sudan (review)

Book Reviews 145 sympathetic observer, has much to tell the NLF, though as he is aware, they are not necessarily interested in listening. On a less positive note, the book suffers from a surfeit of social science jargon that frequently obscures the author's points. Factual errors abound, often due to the author's misunderstanding of Sudanese history and ethnology: reference is made to "Rizaygat and Baqqara nomads" (p. 41) [emphasis mine], the Baqqara are called "one of the key ethnicities" (p. 113), vAbd al-Rahman is identified as the Mahdi's sole surviving son (p. Ill), and Imam al-Hadi is mistakenly called Ahmad al-Mahdi (p. 154). The histories of Islamization and colonial rule are generally misrepresented. Some errors are laughable: "Kairo" (from the Arabic al-Qahira, The Victorious) is cited among "African towns" incorporating the phoneme "ka" in their names "in order to represent the encapsulation of the essential life force" (119). Typographical errors are beyond enumerating. Almost worse is the wildly irregular system of transliteration, which renders the definite article as both "el" and "al," sometimes strictly Arabicizing, often not. Such errors will not bother generalist readers; on the other hand, it is specialists to whom the book is directed. All of which makes one wish the author had consulted a Sudanist (or a reliable editor) before bringing his original insights to press. Robert S. Kramer St. Norbert College The Challenges ofFamine Relief: Emergency Operations in the Sudan Francis M. Deng and Larry Minear Washington, D.C: The Brookings Institution, 1992. Pp. 165. Given the large number of humanitarian emergencies that have required international intervention and assistance in the last twenty years, it is frustrating and sad that little has been done to improve their management in order to prevent them from becoming full-scale disasters. International relief operations are chronically plagued by shortages of funds, delays in logistics, and general lack of coordination between governmental, nongovernmental, and international organizations. Independent assessments of such relief operations are desperately needed to build up an "institutional memory bank" to mitigate the effects of future disasters. 146 Book Reviews The Challenges ofFamine Relief: Emergency Operations in the Sudan, by Francis M. Deng and Larry Minear provides a detailed, useful, and timely analysis of international relief programs undertaken in response to two disasters that occurred within the space of a decade in the same country. The first tells the story of how the United Nations Emergency Operations in Africa (OEOA) sought to deal with the famine that affected Sudan's northern, western, and eastern regions in 1984-86. The second concerns the food emergency that affected the war-torn south from 1987-91 and involved the creation of Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), a United Nations initiative which continues to this day. The book synthesizes the findings of two project assessments. Deng, then Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and now Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary General on Displaced Persons, was commissioned by OEOA to carry out the first study. Minear, co-director of the Humanitarianism and War Project, conducted the OLS study independently with a team of African and American researchers. Taken together, these two case studies seek to increase institutional memory by illuminating both the unique and common strengths and weaknesses of the United Nations' relief operations. Deng and Minear try to synthesize from the two experiences a collection of lessons learned in the hope that future assistance programs can be improved with fewer lives lost. By presenting the two experiences together, the importance of having institutional memory and the disastrous consequences of working without it, are vividly illustrated. Lessons Learned: This book must not be mistaken for an explanation of Sudan's experience of the two famines. Famine is not the major character in either of the case studies. Rather, it is the justification for the existence of the main character: the international relief system. Largely missing from the description are those who suffered, those who died. Also absent are those national and international governmental and nongovernmental relief workers who were busy on the ground, outside the capital, delivering food and humanitarian assistance to the needy while the expatriates in their offices...