For nearly seven years the starving, drought-stricken people of western Sudan yearned for rain. But when wet weather finally arrived this month, it proved to be yet another kind of curse. A heavy deluge produced flash floods that raced through long-dry riverbeds and rushed over brick-hard earth, turning airstrips into quagmires and rendering roads and rail lines impassable. The torrent washed out a vital railroad bridge that linked the region to Port Sudan, cutting off hundreds of thousands of famine victims from emergency food supplies.
The flooding was only the latest cruel irony of the severe famine that has plagued Africa....