JUBA: Fifty-kilo sacks of food hurtled out the open hatch of the cargo plane, scattering in the wind on their 1,000-foot descent to the northeastern flatlands of South Sudan.
For the past three weeks, an American company run by former U.S. soldiers and officials has airdropped hundreds of tonnes of maize flour, beans and salt into one of the world’s most desperate pockets of hunger, Rueters reported.
The campaign, which South Sudan’s government says it is funding, has brought lifesaving aid to areas ravaged since February by fighting between the military and local militiamen.
It also offers a window into a debate about the future of humanitarian aid in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) and cuts to aid budgets around the world. The South Sudan contract is one of a growing list of business opportunities
for Fogbow.
Fogbow president Mick Mulroy said the company – which is owned by a former U.S. diplomat, a Marine Corps veteran and an American businessman – now has five project requests in conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East.
Mulroy attributed the rising demand to donors looking to support humanitarian projects but increasingly hard-pressed to find implementing partners due to aid cuts.
“There’s a substantial and growing need from people around the world at a time when we decided collectively to reduce the support,” said Mulroy, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defence during Trump’s first term.
For some aid sector veterans, the demand for Fogbow’s services points to a worrying shift toward a more politicised aid model that they say sacrifices humanitarian principles like neutrality and, by extension, its credibility with beneficiaries.
In Gaza, a U.S.-backed outfit that Israel has authorised to distribute food in the Palestinian enclave, the Gaza Humanitarian
Foundation (GHF), has bypassed the U.N.-led aid system and been accused by some critics of weaponising aid in service of Israel’s war aims.
Asked for comment, GHF said it had found a “better model” to ensure food was delivered in Gaza.