Saving South Sudan

VICE MAGAZINE VOLUME 12 NUMBER 4

FREE VOLUME 12 NUMBER 4

SAVING SOUTH SUDAN

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Nuer soldiers loyal to rebel leader Riek Machar display the bizarre 80s kung fu photo pose that is endemic to South Sudan.

VOLUME 12 NUMBER 4 Cover by Tim Freccia

MASTHEAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

THE BOG BARONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

EMPLOYEES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

FLYING IN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

HOW SOUTH SUDAN GOT LOST . . . 14

THE PARK RANGER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

SAVING SOUTH SUDAN . . . . . . . . . . . 22

I DIDN’T EVEN TAKE MY PURSE . . . 66

THEY’RE ALL COMING HERE . . . . . 28

THE WHITE ARMY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

THE DARK CONTINENT . . . . . . . . . . . 34

DEAD CALM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

BRIGHT SHINY NATION . . . . . . . . . . . 40

MACHOT’S MELTDOWN . . . . . . . . . . 78

THE LOST BOYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

AFTERWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

8 VICE

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EMPLOYEES OF THE MONTH

ROBERT YOUNG PELTON

TIM FRECCIA

Robert Young Pelton has made a career out of being on the inside of dirty wars and getting to know the leaders as well as the people who actually fight in them. At the age of 40, he quit his job in marketing to focus on conflicts and dangerous regions, and the resulting book, The World’s Most Dangerous Places, told people how to get into war zones and dictatorships all over the globe, whom to bribe, and how to get out. The book is now in its fifth edition, and since writing it Robert’s unique access, independent point of view, and intense experiences have generated a following among journalists, NGO workers, spies, mercenaries, and assorted adventurers. In addition to making immersive articles, books, and documentaries, Robert is an inventor who has more than a dozen US patents for DPx Gear, a company he founded to make survival equipment.

He has worked for 60 Minutes, CNN, National Geographic, Men’s Journal, Businessweek, Foreign Policy, and many other outlets, and he’s the author of, in addition to The World’s Most Dangerous Places, Licensed to Kill and The Adventurist. His latest book, Finding Kony, explores the recent scramble for Africa and will be available from St. Martin’s Press in 2015.

Tim Freccia is a photographer and filmmaker who was raised by wolves in Seattle, Washington. He began his working life as a commercial fisherman in the north Bering Sea, but he got inspired by Robert Young Pelton’s cult classic The World’s Most Dangerous Places and ran off to take pictures and make films in Haiti. He covered Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s brief, meteoric tenure as the country’s only democratically elected president. After Haiti, Tim made his way to West and North Africa and has covered conflicts and crises ever since. Though he’s gone through brief stints as a creative director at an ad agency and a furniture designer, Tim has returned to Africa again and again to cover what he calls the “new scramble” for resources and land—he estimates he’s spent more than half his life on the continent.

Tim’s been working for VICE as a freelancer ever since finding company co-founder Suroosh Alvi weeping in a mud puddle in the Congo, but this is by far the most extensive project he’s ever undertaken with us. He told us he thoroughly enjoyed the suffering involved in traveling with Robert (a.k.a. King Rat).

Tim is based in New York, is represented by the snobbish Chelsea art gallery Ricco/Maresca, and has plans to marry a famous classical cellist.

OLE TILLMAN Ole Tillmann grew up wandering the forests of rural Belgium. He moved to the US to attend the Rhode Island School of Design and later worked for Disney, but then his visa ran out and he was asked to leave the country because America is unkind to immigrants, even the insanely talented ones. He packed his bags and relocated to Berlin, and now he spends his days drawing and smoking cigarettes in an attic in the Kreuzberg neighborhood. We asked Ole to illustrate the time line of South Sudan’s history that opens the issue because we needed an exacting eye, a steady hand, and a dependable guy who could meet deadlines. He exceeded our expectations and even made a brandnew font for us based on the region’s hand-painted signs, which he calls Sudanese Barbershop.

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BACHELOR OF ARTS (SCREEN) aftrs.edu.au/bas

,PDJH 6WLOO IURP $)756 VWXGHQW ÀOP The Twin. Photo by Jessica Craig Piper

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How South Sudan Got Lost A Brief History of Lost Boys, Lost Income, and Lost Opportunities in the World’s Newest Nation

By VICE Staff

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Illustrations by Ole Tillmann

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Design by Joe Burger

760–656 BC The Kingdom of Kush, located in what is later known as Sudan, reaches its apex as it conquers Egypt, builds massive pyramids, and influences the ancient Greeks, who visited Egypt during this period. There are more pyramids in Sudan than in Egypt.

700s–800s AD Muslims convert the residents of the northern part of Sudan to Islam.

The southern region remains largely unexplored by outsiders and populated by pastoralist tribes.

1500s The Funj people approach from the south and conquer the entire region.

Some tribes are converted by the Funj to Islam and adopt Arabic as their official language.

1898

1880s A man named Muhammad Ahmad, commonly known as the “Mahdi,” declares himself supreme ruler of the Muslim world and stages a successful uprising against Egypt. This provides the impetus for Sudanese nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

The British, who have taken a more active role in the region now, conquer Sudan—brutally defeating Ahmad’s successor in the process— in order to keep the Nile from falling to other Western powers. The British and the Egyptians establish joint rule over Sudan.

1820 Muhammad Ali Pasha, who rules Egypt under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire, invades Sudan, though the presence of the Sudd, a massive swamp, makes it impossible for him to conquer the far south. Under Ottoman rule, the slave trade thrives until the mid 19th century, when slavery is largely outlawed in the Western world.

Mid 1800s Ivory traders and Arab slave traders wreak havoc among the southern tribes. Christian missionaries are forced out.

The foreign ruler of Egypt sends various governors to wipe out slaving. They don’t succeed.

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Sudan was once home to a great civilization that was the most advanced in all of Africa—but centuries of colonialism and conflict, and a post-independence period ravaged by coups, dictatorships, and incompetent rule, mired Sudan in a series of never-ending wars.

Following a violent, decades-long struggle for independence that began in 1953, South Sudan became the newest country in Africa. Its people voted for independence in 2011, but by 2013 the oil-rich, fertile nation was falling apart.

1924 The British decide to split northern and southern Sudan into two administrative areas, primarily to prevent the Arab slavers and traders from exploiting the less developed, black south.

They consider merging southern Sudan with ethnically similar, Englishspeaking British East Africa, whose territory includes what is today Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.

August 18, 1955 Soldiers from the Equatoria region in southern Sudan revolt against the British.

Their rebellion is violent and short-lived, but its survivors band together as the Anyanya, or “Snake Venom,” guerrilla movement. The First Sudanese Civil War officially commences.

1944–45 As part of government projects designed to meet the food demand of army units in the British colonies of eastern Africa, Sudan pioneers mechanized rainfed farming in the country’s fertile clay plains—a practice still in use today.

1926–44 The British have little control of southern Sudan and make the region off-limits to outsiders. Missionaries return to educate and convert the population, most of whom also retain their traditional animist beliefs.

November 1958 General Ibrahim Abboud leads a coup in Khartoum and overthrows the civilian government. Under Abboud, the north dominates the south politically and economically, and the government attempts to convert the entire Sudanese population to Islam.

Tensions between the two regions continue to rise.

After the ousting of Abboud, the new civilian government lasts only five years before the ruthless but effective Gaafar Muhammad al Nimeiry leads another coup, seizes control of the country, and is declared president.

October 1964

January 1, 1956 Independence from Britain and Egypt creates a volatile union of the north and south under the control of the Arabic-speaking, Islamic city of Khartoum. The British decide not to merge the south with British East Africa, because of tribal uprisings in Kenya. Southern Sudan feels betrayed. A series of mutinies and uprisings begins.

1969

Student-led protests result in the collapse of the Abboud regime.

1960 Sudan participates in the Olympic Games for the first time.

1959 Agip, an Italian oil company, secures a concession to explore for oil. None is found.

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1970s February 27, 1972 The Addis Ababa Agreement is signed, bringing an end to nearly two decades of civil war. Under the terms of the treaty, the south is granted a level of autonomy and self-rule, with the Anyanya rebels integrated into the national army and police.

1970 The Africa Cup of Nations, the continent’s most prestigious international soccer tournament, is held in Sudan. The hosts beat Ghana 1–0 in the finals.

1971 Rebel groups in the south, who until this point have been disorganized and splintered, unite under the banner of General Joseph Lagu’s South Sudan Liberation Army (SSLA).

1974 After US spy satellites notice potential petroleum deposits, Chevron secures concessions to explore for oil in southern Sudan.

None is found. Yet.

1978 Egypt starts the Jonglei Canal project to drain the swamps of the Sudd, severely affecting the farmers of southern Sudan. The 224-mile-long drainage system would bypass the Nile and provide more water to thirsty Sudan and Egypt. The world’s biggest bucket excavator, nicknamed “Sarah,” starts digging in 1978. In 1984, Sarah will be ambushed by rebels led by John Garang, who wrote his PhD thesis on the effects of the canal.

Helped by an influx of foreign capital due to the anticipated discovery of oil in Sudan, the country attempts to modernize its agricultural industry and export cash crops to the wider world, but falling commodity prices and the nation’s growing debt send the economy into a tailspin.

1979 Chevron finally discovers oil in central and southern Sudan. The government starts planning to build refineries and a pipeline into the north, which intends to reap most of the economic benefits of the oil and remove southern villagers from the area—a scheme that doesn’t generate much enthusiasm among people in the south.

September 1983

1983 1980s Government-recruited Arab nomads attack southern villages, killing the residents and slashing and burning their way through the country—on horseback— in order to clear land for oil development.

After numerous previously established agreements are violated under the new Islamist government, former Anyanya rebel and now army officer John Garang is sent by Khartoum to suppress the rebellion in the south. However, he joins the revolt and creates the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which sparks the Second Sudanese Civil War.

President al Nimeiry, who has increasingly pushed a religious agenda, institutes Sharia as the law of the land and ends agreements that support the south’s quasi-autonomy.

1984–85 A terrible drought hits the region, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 150,000 Sudanese.

1985 Fed up with the terrible state of the economy and al Nimeiry’s strict laws, protesters take to the streets and eventually topple the Khartoum government.

1986 Elections for the new government are held in Sudan, but because of violence, voting doesn’t take place across much of the south.

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We invited people in Miami (USA), Sydney (Australia) and Dunedin (New Zealand), to steal 150 of our sofas on the same day.

First in first served, with no strings attached.

All 150 sofas were taken in less than 7 minutes.

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July 30, 2005 Garang is killed in a helicopter crash while on a secret trip to the home of Uganda’s long-standing president, Yoweri Museveni. Shortly afterward, skirmishes between northerners and southerners break out in the capital of July 9, 2005 Khartoum. Salva Kiir, Garang’s secondThe former rebel leader John in-command, takes over as leader of Garang is sworn in as vice president of Sudan. A coalition the SPLA. government is created, and a referendum for southerners to vote on independence is planned for 2011.

May 2008 Fighting erupts in Abyei, an extremely oil-rich town wedged between the boundaries of the north and the south. The border straddles ethnic and oil areas and is hotly contested.

January 2005 Finally, the north and the south sign a peace treaty, brokered by the Bush administration. The terms dictate that the two regions will split oil revenues 50-50 for six years, at which time the south will be permitted to vote on secession from the north. Though the war is officially over, tensions remain high, and clashes between the two groups continue to erupt.

1999 Chevron begins exporting oil from Sudan. China is its main customer.

The Khartoum Peace Agreement is signed by the north and a few rebel regions in the south, but it doesn’t have the support of all the southern factions. The war continues.

1980s–90s The north attempts to divide the southern rebels by secretly offering arms to some of them if they agree to battle the other groups. Consequently, rebels in the south split into pro- and anti-government factions and spend a lot of energy killing one another as they vie for power. The war descends into apocalyptic anarchy.

Approximately 2.5 million civilians are killed.

1991

1989 1988 A peace plan between the north and the south calling for an end to Sharia law is adopted. Then the governing coalition in the north falls apart, and the treaty is never implemented.

1997

Omar al Bashir leads a coup in the north. He reimposes Sharia, cracks down on the opposition and the press (which was until now one of the freest in Africa), and dismantles the judiciary.

He is not interested in autonomy for the south and aggressively attacks the rebels.

The SPLA splinters, mainly along the lines of the Dinka and Nuer tribal factions, the two most dominant ethnic groups in the south. Riek Machar leads the Nuer; John Garang commands the Dinka. Osama bin Laden shows up in Khartoum, training and dispatching thousands of foreign jihadists against the south.

An estimated 20,000 Dinka and Nuer boys are forced to flee the fighting, walking to refugee camps in neighboring countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Chad, and Eritrea. Aid workers call them the “Lost Boys” because of their epic treks in search of safety.

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July 9, 2011 As expected, the south votes overwhelmingly for independence. Although the north and the south are now officially separate nations, they’re still interconnected by trade, oil, and ethnic groups. Landlocked South Sudan produces the vast majority of the region’s oil but must rely on the north’s pipeline to export it to the outside world.

Salva Kiir becomes president, and Riek Machar—a former rebel leader with a bloody past—is named vice president.

Elections are held in Sudan, but many ethnic factions contest the results and the implementation of a one-party system, and rebel against the government.

The north occupies Abyei. Rebels soon begin fighting in areas not defined by 1997’s Khartoum Peace Agreement, namely Darfur, Blue Nile, Kordofan, and other border regions. These areas also happen to contain much of the region’s oil.

The two countries’ oil-profit-sharing arrangement falls apart. The north wants $36 a barrel in transit fees, while South Sudan wants to pay a dollar a barrel. The pipeline is shut down. The north seizes $861 million worth of oil as payment.

Kiir fires his entire cabinet and replaces them with mostly Dinka members. He then eliminates the position of vice president entirely. Machar says he will challenge Kiir in the 2015 elections.

December 2013

A ceasefire is signed between the South Sudanese government and the rebels, but fighting continues as major cities are taken by rebels, lost, and ultimately returned to the government.

Political tensions in South Sudan finally boil over, and fighting breaks out in military barracks in the South Sudanese capital of Juba. Kiir claims Machar is planning to lead a coup against him.

Machar responds by fleeing the capital, setting up a command post in the bush of eastern South Sudan, and directing loyalists, including the rebel group the White Army, to attack Kiir’s forces.

May 2012 The north promises to pull out of Abyei as peace talks begin.

March 2013

July 2013

January 23, 2014

Unhappy with government policies, warlords battle in the southern state of Jonglei, resulting in the displacement of more than 100,000 residents.

January 2012

May 2011 April 2010

2011–12

South Sudan agrees to continue pumping oil and transporting it north. A pipeline through Kenya to Lamu and internal refineries are proposed to service local needs. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement becomes fractured as all sides toss around accusations of corruption and tribal favoritism.

October 2013 Abyei byei by ei uni unilat unilaterally l tera rally ally votes tes to eparate fro rom m tthe hee nor north. separate from

April 2014 February 3, 2014 From his secret bush camp, Machar announces that he’s forming a new resistance group, an ethnic Nuer movement against the Dinka-led government.

Since the civil war began, an estimated 900,000 00,0 0,000 00 people throughout South Sudan have abandoned ndon doned ed their homes. The country remains in a deepp state of crisis. The rainy season has arrived, ed, ed flooding refugee camps that are home to thousands who have fled ethnic violence. CCrops rops rop a ne ami cannot be planted, and the potential for famine throughout 2014 and beyond looms.

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B Y

R O B E R T

Y O U N G

P E L T O N

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P H O T O S

B Y

T I M

F R E C C I A

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Former Lost Boy Machot Lat Thiep in Nairobi, Kenya

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hey’re all coming here. Maybe not now, maybe not next year, but they are coming.

Halliburton, Monsanto, Nike, Samsung.

They’re all coming.”

Our driver’s name is Edward. He’s in his mid 30s, white, and born in Kenya, with rosy cheeks and blond, curly hair. His English accent is the kind that some might call archaic. Others might say it’s colonial.

Hours earlier, Edward told me that he’d finally found a pilot who had agreed to fly our motley crew into war-torn South Sudan, specifically the volatile rebel-held region. South Sudan is Africa’s—and the world’s—newest sovereign nation.

It was granted independence on July 9, 2011, following a referendum that passed with more than 98 percent of the vote.

Weeks before our arrival, the government had imploded after a series of events that resulted in deep schisms within the administration, perhaps most critically the ousting of former vice president and current rebel leader Riek Machar at the behest of President Salva Kiir. Current reports have Machar running for his life, hiding somewhere deep in the bush. I was determined to find him and was fairly sure I could—if only we could charter a goddamn plane and find a pilot with the nerve to fly in.

Edward is telling me what he would do if he had a million dollars to “invest in Africa.” All the while we’re driving at breakneck speed on a dark Nairobi highway, with our low beams barely revealing the road ahead or anything that could be obstructing it.

Accompanying me is Machot Lat Thiep, a Lost Boy and former child soldier and now a manager of a Costco in Seattle, who insists he wants to “save his country.” The third member of our party is photographer and filmmaker Tim Freccia, an old hand at covering Africa. Persuading these two to come along was easy.

What has been a real bitch is finding a pilot in Kenya who wants to smuggle us into South Sudan. This is mostly because of the risk of being tagged as conspirators with the rebels, which could easily result in the pilot’s being burned to a crisp after dropping us off. We had been in the country for ten days, had met with a dozen charter companies and tried to convince half a dozen pilots, and those who didn’t turn us down outright had bailed at the last minute. It was getting to the point where we were considering a flight back to the

T

States instead. But Edward insists that he’s found our man.

“This guy’s a cowboy. He does hostage extractions out of Somalia,” says Edward. “The Somalis tried to grab his helo last year, and he just buggered off. He was shut down for a month, but that’s the price you pay.”

Edward is an animated fellow. He occasionally stares out the windshield, narrowly avoiding potholes and speed bumps, his headlights still set low at dim yellow. We drive past a semi that has rolled off the highway. “Gimme your camera,” he says. He pulls closer to take a photo in the fading light. The locals try to block his view, swatting at the lens. He pulls forward until he gets his shots of the mangled cab and rig. “Nasty one.”

The brand-new country of South Sudan fell apart a few weeks ago, and Machot wants to get in. I want a scoop interviewing Machar, and Tim is along to capture it all.

We are on the way to our aircraft. This pilot is our last option.

But we have three hours to kill as we drive north to the private airfield. In my pocket is a wad of crisp Benjamins totaling $15,000. We talk about Africa and opportunity.

“You open a corporation, file everything, create a website, the whole thing… and you wait,” Edward says.

He dodges a belching fuel truck and returns his attention to me.

“Sooner or later they have to come to you. The president’s son stole the Vodafone name. Vodafone put him up for two weeks at the Intercon, but he wouldn’t budge. So they had to call it Safaricom.”

He is talking about the son of President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, himself the son of the nation’s founding father, Jomo Kenyatta.

On a continent known for poaching, this is an odd, hightech form of legal trickery. It’s like squatting, similar to what tribal chiefs used to do when they met white explorers, eager to sign away thousands of acres of land they didn’t own. Back then, all the deal took was a bolt of cloth and a few trinkets.

“It only costs $240 to register a company. Names like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs… you know they are coming.”

Edward is quite sincere, apologetic for revealing his greed.

We careen north from Nairobi through the maze of matatu minibuses, giant potholes, and rambling pedestrians in the Kenyan night. Our hurry to the airstrip is part of some yet-tobe-explained intricate game of timing, something that always seems odd in this laid-back continent.

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Opportunity in Africa is a two-way street, and corruption is akin to patronage: Make the right friends, grease the right palms, and things happen.

I chose Edward because he is a rose man. Roses are a major crop in Kenya, and they need to be flown out every day. He spent last week arranging flights to rescue NGOs from the fighting in South Sudan. As a native white Kenyan, Edward knows a lot of things that the causal visitor would never see.

Edward knows genetics. “Roses are a big business in Kenya,” he explains. “There is a narrow window around 4,200 feet. You raise them too high, and the blooms are too big; too low, and the stems are too long. I know which roses sell. Which grow. I could buy a plot of land, put the best roses on them, and make a fortune.” Edward is tired of seeing other, less passionate, less knowledgeable people make money while he juggles multiple jobs to get by. “A square meter of roses can generate $50 a year in profit.”

We swerve out of the way of an oncoming truck.

Roses are a great way to smuggle drugs. Much of the aviation industry is hired to fly khat, a drug grown in Kenya and Somalia, next door. But there is a lot of drugs coming into Kenya—cocaine and heroin, mostly. Edward knows that business too. “Flowers come with those little white packets that are supposed to be full of sugar to keep them blooming longer.” He holds up his fingers to show me. “Heat-sealed, so the dogs can’t smell them.”

The rose business also offers the opportunity to launder drug money. “You pay expenses in [Kenyan] shillings,” he says, “but you get paid overseas in hard currency—dollars and euros. Keep it offshore and just repatriate enough to cover your costs.”

Edward is not involved in these businesses, but he sees the money that is made by those who are. For now he hustles.

He’s an African jack-of-all-trades looking to cash in on his own continent while he watches foreigners make bank all around him.

He took it as a personal challenge when I asked if he could find me a pilot willing to take us into South Sudan—especially considering where we wanted to go and whom we wanted to meet.

The conversation makes the time go by as we drive in the black of night.

A Brookside Dairy truck with the slogan “Goodness for All” painted across its side is blocking our way.

“I’m telling you, Robert, everything is corrupt here,” Edward says, pointing to the truck. “The president of Kenya owns Brookside Dairy. When Parmalat, a big Italian company, tried to get in here, they suddenly couldn’t get a license.”

(Parmalat pinned this on violence related to the elections.)

Somewhere in the dark is a massive pineapple plantation.

“Everyone is making money. President Kenyatta’s family is collectively one of the biggest landowners in the country,” he

insists. And then there are the government’s “ghost workers”: “The Kenyan government has thousands of people on the government payroll who don’t exist. They found out that of 16,000 employees, only 12,000 came to work.

“Every government tender is corrupt. When we have a $600,000 bid, we quote it at $1.2 million, because we have to slip $200,000 to the procurement people.”

Another fuel truck grinds by. “Fuel is a big scam. They load up in Mombasa, and the driver bribes the guy not to seal the lids on top. Kids ride along at night, siphoning off the fuel and pouring cheap kerosene back in to keep the amount the same.

They can do it in a pickup truck while the tanker is driving. If they steal five drums each trip, that’s about $1,000 a day. Not a lot, but enough to make it worthwhile. Then the driver has the kids seal the top and drops off his load.”

Along with its lure of big money and unrealized opportunity, Edward believes that Africa is rotten to the core. While I have no way of knowing if everything Edward believes is true, it is accurate to say that opportunity in Africa is a twoway street. Those with the resources are just as smart as the people coming to exploit the continent. Corruption here is akin to patronage: Make the right friends, grease the right palms, and things happen.

“They make a lot of money on forex [foreign exchange] here. There is a man inside the Central Bank of Kenya who tells traders whether the shilling is going up or down. His friends trade and make millions. Mostly Indians. That’s why everything here is fake—they move the money up and down.

That guy at the side of the road,” he points, “makes 300 shillings [about $3] a day. Next year, he will have to make twice that. Meanwhile, all the fat cats are getting rich. Every contract here has a price.

“It’s frustrating. I have sent out 32 proposals for a rose farm. Real proposals, vetted by lawyers and accountants. I need $2,800 an acre—a total of $1.2 million—and in one year and seven months you get your money back.”

Edward is not a linear thinker; he likes to digress. And so we are suddenly back to logo squatting: “Companies like Monsanto are coming here. They have to come to you because it costs too much to litigate. It’s corrupt. They have to pay everyone off. You have to pay people off…” he trails off. But his ventures have ultimately made money, he says.

“I bought a piece of land outside a military base. The colonel told me I should buy some land, so I did. I paid $5,000 for it and sold it for $42,000 nine months later. They were expanding the base, and they needed it for a fuel station.

Lucky, I guess.”

Then we arrive. He flings the wheel over, and we plunge into the dark. A chain-link fence looms in the dim headlights.

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TOP: Robert Young Pelton counting hundred-dollar bills BOTTOM: Equipment and supplies being loaded into a chartered plane in Nairobi

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“Soja soja,” Edward yells out in perfect Swahili. A guard opens the gate, and suddenly we are surrounded by what looks like a resort, except with a large aircraft parked outside the bar-restaurant.

Our discussion on how things happen in Africa seemed to indicate that the only way we are going to get a flight is to do it the “African” way.

Earlier in the day, the pilot had us put together a forged letter of permission from the government of South Sudan using Photoshop and the made-up name of a minister who doesn’t exist. As an example of how things work, it isn’t the pilot who needs the letter but the bureaucrat who might later ask to see it, with a little financial compensation to say that the paperwork is in order.

The price, $15,000, is also about twice what a charter to South Sudan should cost. But using a private, remote strip like this means that no outsiders or government officials will know about our trip.

While we wait for our pilot at the bar, Edward tells me another story: “My uncle and his wife had a safari company. They had an accountant they trusted. He did his thing; she did her thing. Always traveling. Then the accountant sets up a shadow company that looks and sounds exactly like the safari company. The accountant goes to the hardware store and other suppliers and gets fake invoices. For every ten grand in invoices, the supplier gets two grand.

“As my uncle and aunt were dashing off, he would say, ‘Now sign here; let’s take care of these bills.’ This goes on for seven years, and they have lost almost a million dollars. Is it possible to fight corruption? No. They have a saying here: ‘Lift too many stones, and you will get bitten.’”

Finally, our pilot walks in. He is stout, already a few beers in, and another native white Kenyan. The owner gives us beers and lights a cigarette.

The pilot fills in the gaps of the story that Edward recounted on the drive—of how he swooped into Somali airspace and snatched up the emaciated and abandoned Danish and Filipino crew of the MV Leopard. After he dropped the ransom, the authorities in Mogadishu surrounded his Eurocopter and ignored the yelling Somalis. “They complained to the Kenyans and had us shut down for 30 days.”

They knew there was a lot of money involved. He rubs his fingers together.

It seems every pilot here has a story to tell. We have been through many, and we want to meet a pilot who will fly his plane into a war rather than run his mouth about how dodgy his work is.

As we sit in the airfield’s rustic restaurant, it starts to rain.

A smell of fresh grass wafts through the open walls. The pilot flicks his cigarette.

I explain that we want to leave as soon as possible to link up with the rebels and interview their leader. I inform him that we’ve had a hell of a time finding a pilot who will fly

anywhere other than Juba, South Sudan’s capital—a place that would mean certain death for Machot and arrest for us if they knew where we were going.

“There’s your plane,” he says, pointing to the twin-engine Cessna 210 parked in the lot with pride. “We’ll take off with the transponders off, fly low under the radar, file a flight plan for Lokichoggio, and then drop you in Akobo. The hills should block the radar, and by the time we are back no one will be wiser. You pack your stuff in the side compartments and get out the pilot’s door.”

After landing, he warns, the plane will stay grounded, engines running, for no more than four minutes before hightailing it the other way. Then, mid-cigarette, he stops, looking grim. Either the change in the weather, something we’ve said, or just sitting in the dark is bringing some juju I can’t comprehend.

“You know… something is not right. I am not going to do it. You know what? I think I am going to give you your money back.”

Edward and I stare at each other, not quite believing him.

Our pilot continues: “I brought out hostages in November, and they tried to impound my helicopter. When I got back to Kenya, they pulled my license for 30 days.”

He is retelling the same story he told us less than 30 minutes ago, but now it’s been skewed from a tale of bravery to a reason not to take us to the bush. Then, appropriately, the power goes out, and we all sit in the dark.

“I am not going to risk my license and $15 million in business. We do a lot of business in South Sudan. If Juba finds out, I’m fucked.

“We will do this one right. We will fly through Juba. I have my people at the airport. Your guy can hide in the plane, and ten minutes later we’ll be off to Akobo. Yeah… we’ll do this right.

Get a visa at the airport for South Sudan, and we’ll get this done. Come round the office in the morning, and we will sort out a plan.”

Edward is stunned. We retreat to his car to discuss, but almost immediately decide to start the engine and leave the pilot and his plane and this place that amounted to a threehour drive to nowhere. And now it’s raining.

Back on the road south to Nairobi, Edward is pissed.

“That fucker!” he shouts as he pounds the wheel. “He knew everything we were going to do! He agreed! Fuck!” He shoves his BlackBerry toward me and scrolls through emails. The glowing phone confirms that our plans were no secret. “Read it. That fucker. $15 million, my ass. He doesn’t do any business in South Sudan; that’s why I picked him.”

I can feel the carefully counted, newly minted stack of greenbacks burning a hole in my pocket. Our chances of finding a pilot to bring us in are lower than ever, and there’s a real possibility that this trip will be a total bust. As Edward drives like a madman back to Nairobi, we shift around in our seats and try to muster the energy to contemplate Plan C, D, or whatever letter of the alphabet we are up to by now.

The price, $15,000, is about twice what a charter to South Sudan should cost.

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o not believe almost anything you read or hear about Africa, especially concerning the continent’s cultural sensitivity, ethnic peculiarities, or borders.

The source of this information usually has an agenda, is an outright bigot or moron, or has some misguided notion of how African salvation might eventually occur at some wholly imagined point in the future. Forget everything and just be honest: Greater Africa is a country, or is at least treated as one by most of the world, no matter how politically incorrect it may be to plainly state such a thing. It’s a market and a marketing hook; it’s a carefully analyzed genre of the fashion, music, and travel industries; and above all else, it is and always has been a singular obsession of the West. It’s the place somebody is always trying to save.

Technically, on a map, Africa is 54 seething nations chock-full of white, black, brown, and yellow people of every religion and persuasion, all communicating in real time via internet-wired coffee shops, mystical auras, largely indecipherable tribal bickering, machetes, and bullets. It’s also complex, vast, and rapidly changing.

But if we’re really honest, at the end of the day, to many of us it’s just “Africa.”

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Those carefully etched border lines found on modernday maps of the vast continent have nothing to do with the ancient tribes and civilizations that continue to rule over it. Rather, they are territorial remnants of foreigners’ greed, good intentions, and brutal wars. Yet to complete our journey, we will need to talk to people who will put stamps in our passports, ignore diplomatic blessings, and speak to every manner of rebel and activist about Africa’s ephemeral borders and abiding cultural separations. This is particularly relevant given that our ultimate destination—South Sudan—lies within the newest lines on the map, and our mission is to find the secret hideout of ousted vice president Riek Machar and get his version of the truth. Skittish pilots aside, daunting doesn’t even begin to define the task at hand.

Ever since Ptolemy pondered the source of the Nile, ever since explorers went looking for the mythical kingdom of Prester John, Africa has attracted the mystical, the hysterical, the greedy, the well intentioned, and certainly the brutal. Until the early 1970s, most print maps still had white areas marked with phrases like “Not Enough Data” to demarcate large swaths of land where satellite or aerial photos couldn’t penetrate the clouds. Yet these areas have been inhabited since the dawn of Homo sapiens,

A group of defected SPLA soldiers in Akobo

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never mind the emergence of the various hairy, upright beasts from which we descended. How did the reputed birthplace of mankind become so dark and hopeless in such a relatively short span of time?

The European search for the source of the Nile in the mid 19th century triggered a hysteria equal to the madness of the Space Race in the 1960s. Who would be first to discover the source of the Nile? What glory awaited the brave souls who challenged the primordial recesses of Africa? Despite the sense of the unknown, the pithhelmeted explorers sent forth by the Royal Geographical Society simply followed well-worn Arab slave routes.

When more plucky opportunists finally located in Burundi the tiny stream that fed the ancient Nile, they seemed terribly excited. The locals didn’t care. They wanted to know what was in it for them. Discovering Africa seemed an odd obsession to the people who lived there.

When British explorers arrived at the vast swamps of the Sudd marshes in what is now South Sudan, they were stopped by massive floating islands of vegetation.

Although the whites were convinced that the landscape before them was impassable, the local Nuer tribesmen just shrugged and kept paddling past them. To outsiders, Africa was—and still is, in many ways—all impenetrable swamp, desert, and forest. To the tribes who had lived off the land for millennia, it was just home.

Africa has only ever been a mystery to outsiders, not the approximately 7,400 known tribes who populated the continent for centuries. Granted, some of these tribes were completely wiped out; others, such as those living in what is now South Sudan, eked out a hand-to-mouth pastoral existence. The persistent but constantly rotating cast of corrupt leaders and regimes has, of course, only exacerbated Africa’s problems. Take, for example, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the president of Central Africa’s Equatorial Guinea, who is known for pondering his nation’s future from inside the lush fuselage of his private Boeing 737 jet. Once a backwater known as Fernando Pó, Equatorial Guinea is now, per capita, the richest nation in Africa, according to the IMF and World Bank. This is largely due to its abundance of previously untapped oil reserves.

In 2005, before the oil money was in full flow, I spent some time with President Obiang. We discussed Equatorial Guinea’s newfound wealth. He told me that one of his chief concerns was how he could preserve the cultural identity of the nation’s relatively meager population of 722,000 as the revenues from 1.1 billion barrels of proven oil reserves came rolling in. He told me that he considered the sort of wealth accrued from oil discovery to be a curse, because he knew it would “destroy” his country. This existential dilemma didn’t stop the deeply concerned president and his family from holding on to a few billion for themselves (just for safekeeping, of course). The point Obiang was making is that Africa is rich. Africa is populous. Africa is the place where most of the world’s untapped natural resources and fertile land lie waiting to be exploited. And ultimately it will be Africans who will reap the benefits.

According to estimates by the UN, over the next 100 years Africa’s total population will quadruple. At the same time, the continent’s share of the world economy is

expected to double. The GDP of African nations is now growing by more than 4 percent a year. Because most, if not all, major land-based resource discoveries will take place on a continent roughly three times the size of the United States, the possibilities are truly endless.

So the stereotype that Africa is “poor,” “backward,” and “scary” should be challenged. The origin of this misperception is complex. Is it because the inequality of wealth distribution across the continent makes Occupy Wall Street seem like a piece of performance art, or because we affluent Westerners want it to be that way so we can save it? Is it because of the white guilt demonstrated by the thousands of infomercials, charities, and celebrity representatives who telegraph Africa’s poverty, disease, violence, and illiteracy into our collective conscious?

Africa has always been rich. Before colonial times, Africans, Arabs, and Europeans simply took what they wanted. Slaving was a convenient way to make a maximum profit in a minimum area, a system so efficient it was imported wholesale to fuel the success of the New World.

In the aftermath of World War II, Africa was handed back to those the Allies believed to be its rightful owners. If it wasn’t then, it’s now completely unsurprising when these strongmen were revealed to be pawns of the former colonialists. The reoccurring theme of the 70s and 80s was, if an African ruler couldn’t be bought, then he could be overthrown or killed.

Russia stirred things up through the end of the Cold War, igniting dozens of coups, countercoups, civil conflicts, and bush wars. The CIA reciprocated, arming counterrevolutionaries and dictators. These were dirty wars that led to even dirtier wars that blossomed into fullon ethnic cleansing and wholesale slaughter. Those wars and lack of stability triggered everything from poaching and land destruction to disease and starvation. By the early 80s, Africa had shot from mere poverty straight into the apocalypse.

Most of this went unseen by the general public until a slightly out-of-sync Irish musician rekindled the world’s obsession with Africa. By the early 80s, singer-songwriter and future musical activist Bob Geldof had a string of lackluster albums and a growing sense of frustration about what to do with his life. In October 1984, he and millions of other people watched a BBC documentary

by Michael Buerk on starvation in Korem, Ethiopia, in the wake of conflict that had decimated the country.

Moved like many others by the film’s images of suffering, Geldof didn’t really want to focus on the causes of the famine: meddling by Russia, social engineering, decades of war, corruption, the collapse of infrastructure, and the cyclical environmental disasters that bring about famine.

He saw hungry people and wanted to feed them. He just needed people to care. And so he would write a song.

In 1984 Geldof and Scotsman James “Midge” Ure co-wrote and produced “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

With fluffy lyrics like “There’s a world outside your window / And it’s a world of dread and fear,” and “The Christmas bells that ring there / Are the clanging chimes of doom,” this ditty sung by 80s boy bands and pop singers could not be accused of being deep or instructive about the woes of Africa. But the catchy refrain of “Feed the world” seemed to hit the right chord. The video and

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Ever since Ptolemy pondered the source of the Nile, Africa has attracted the mystical, the hysterical, the greedy, the well intentioned, and certainly the brutal.

lyrics were free from any images of the actual Africans or famine areas the song intended to help.

The song, featuring a chorus of Boy George, Bananarama, Sting, Simon Le Bon, Bono, and George Michael, became the second-biggest-selling record in UK history. It went on to sell 4 million copies and generated about $8 million dollars.

Inspired by Geldof’s success, manager Ken Kragen wanted to replicate the concept of a pop song generating funds for famine victims. He decided he would organize a star-studded mega-choral tribute to the world’s woes following the 1985 Grammy Awards. This resulted in “We Are the World,” written by Michael Jackson with Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones. The proceeds from the sale of the single went to a charity called the USA for Africa Foundation. That hit song and other events were credited with eventually raising a stunning $100 million.

As Bob Dylan warbled, “We are saving our own lives / We make a better day / Just you and me,” listeners never noticed the song didn’t even mention famine or Africa.

On July 13, 1985, an inspired Geldof and Ure put on a 16-hour charity concert called Live Aid with the goal of raising lots of money for famine relief in Ethiopia and what is modern-day Eritrea. A reported 175,000 attended one of two venues in New York and London, and 1.5 billion people tuned in to a dual-venue live broadcast on television. The concert initially raised $245 million in relief funds.

By any measure, the idea of a pop song raising awareness for a disaster was a glowing success all around—proof that pop culture and young people could inspire change. It could be argued that Live Aid had less of an impact on Ethiopia in particular than on Africa in general, in the sense that it suddenly became cool to want to help it—though what help or it means is still not clear. The logo of Live Aid was a guitar in the shape of Africa with a tiny generic photo of a starving black kid down in the corner.

None of this meant anyone learned about the context of the 400,000 Ethiopians who had starved to death against a backdrop of a decades-long civil war and socialist policies that made farming nearly impossible in most areas. It was humanitarian aid used as a weapon of war. And that wouldn’t make for good TV. Where the money went or whose pocket it might end up in once it got to Africa was not completely clear, and in the ensuing years many well-meaning charities

throughout the continent have been accused of unwittingly handing over donations to a chain of organizations that have helped fund bloody uprisings, ethnic cleansing, and corrupt regimes.

Few questioned anything until 2005’s Live 8 series of international simulcast concerts, when Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly—of all people—made a stink while questioning Bono about the potential for funds he was raising to end up in the hands of warlords and corrupt officials.

The U2 frontman gave a bumbling interview that was preceded by a similarly barbed piece in the Guardian.

Later, in 2010, the BBC—which had aired the very report that inspired Geldof to dream up Band Aid, Live Aid, and so on—alleged that a significant amount of the charitable donations generated by these ventures was used to buy arms and kill people. Geldof lost it in a very public way and made some frenzied attempts to discredit the BBC’s reporting. Saving Africa had its problems if you looked too deeply.

Regardless, based on the math, even if Live Aid had raised $10 billion, it never stood a chance of saving the continent. According to the Wall Street Journal, at least $1 trillion of development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa over the last 60 years, but it hasn’t seemed to have much of an impact either.

A hallmark of Western naïveté was the media’s treatment of the recent death of Nelson Mandela, held up as an icon of peace and positive change for the continent.

The typical summary of his rise from jailed terrorist to gray-haired president of post-Apartheid South Africa and, finally, to a myth on par with Gandhi usually leaves out a few facts. For example, that Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the anti-Apartheid “freedom fighters” under Mandela’s command until his arrest in 1962, were known for wrapping gasoline-filled tires around the chests of their opponents and burning them to death. As late as 1985, Mandela’s wife, Winnie, caused a lot of harm to the anti-Apartheid movement by stating, “With our matches and our necklaces we will liberate this country.”

But people usually don’t talk about stuff like that when they mention Nelson Mandela.

When Mandela stepped down after his first term in elected office, it was held up as proof that Africa can fix Africa, but not much other explanation was offered.

That’s when the heavy hitters really came in. Who needs Bob Geldof or the Who when you have Clinton, Gates, and Buffett suddenly eager to show that Africa can

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function just like America—with only a little bit more development. They focused on the basics: clean water, malaria nets, solar power, education… you name it.

Flip on a news channel, and there was a billionaire or celebrity telling you how to fix it.

Overnight, it seemed, America suddenly knew that there were good diamonds and “blood diamonds.” Then, while hardly anyone could be expected to remember the alphabet soup of all the various groups involved in the operations, we knew that our smartphones required the use of certain minerals found in Congo that were excavated in horrible conditions, sometimes by children.

Maybe someday we will be able to buy a responsible smartphone like a pair of cloth shoes that feeds a kid in Uganda, or fair-trade coffee beans that put a few extra cents in some farmer’s pocket. Maybe that will fix everything.

As the new century dawned, 9/11 and Iraq erased any focus on Africa. Islamic terrorism, IEDs, and the Taliban all shifted America and Europe’s attention to fixing the Middle East and South Asia. Africa was—well, Africa.

The Dark Continent. Opaque. Unexplored. Unknown.

Then, in early March 2012, young people surfing the internet started watching an amateur film. It seemed homemade, with a man talking to his young son about

bad people in Africa. The Kony 2012 movie was created by a small group of religious young filmmakers in San Diego who had formerly appeared on The 700 Club talking about Uganda and showing videos about children who had been kidnapped. This particular film gave a brief history of the despicable deeds of the Lord’s Resistance Army leader, Joseph Kony, who up until then was virtually unknown to the general public. He was also old news in Africa—Kony had fled Uganda six years earlier. The point of the film was to make him “famous” so he would be caught. It was also one of the largest events in the history of the internet, and today it seems that almost everyone between the ages of 12 and 35 knows that there was a very bad man in Africa stealing children and turning them into soldiers. Kony is still at large, and no one quite knows what happened to him. But they do know that the maker of the video was filmed screaming naked at passing cars shortly after his film came out. Briefly, Westerners’ focus shifted from the unfixable violence in the Middle East to something simpler and nobler: Find a bad man in the jungles of Africa, and everything will be fine.

By the time of Mandela’s death and celebrity-packed funeral in December 2013, it seemed once again that Africa could be saved.

A mother and child in a civilian camp outside Machar’s base in Akobo, South Sudan

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t started as a simple idea: visit the world’s newest country with Machot Lat Thiep, a gangly 32-year-old Sudanese former Lost Boy who wants to help his nation, a homeland that is less than three years old and already in danger of becoming a failed state. Machot thinks he can make the situation better, even if it isn’t apparent that he knows how. What better way to understand the vagaries of saving Africa than with an African who wants to save Africa?

The Lost Boys are the thousands of children who fled the brutal civil war in greater Sudan and ended up in refugee camps in countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya. Over the past decade in particular, the plight of the Lost Boys has spawned myriad articles, appeals, films, and books; even celebrities like Brad Pitt and George Clooney have gone to great lengths to raise awareness about the former child soldiers.

In the midst of the convoluted battle for South Sudanese independence, about 3,800 of these young boys, many of whom are permanently scarred with the tribal markings of the Dinka (the ethnic majority) or the Nuer, were fostered in American homes. Most have done well, using their opportunities to get an education, a job, and a new life. Some, like Machot, have prospered in the States and now want to divert their fortunes back to their homeland and help forge a strong South Sudan.

Machot is tall, thin, and very dark. He is a Nuer who carries the tribal scars around his mouth, as well as six lines running across his forehead to the backs of his ears. A manager at a Costco in Seattle, he is married with two

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children, drives a minivan, and enjoys a version of the American dream. He thinks he could do better here, but for now he is fine.

I first came to know Machot shortly after his family was kidnapped for ransom by Somali thugs working the Kenyan border. A friend of his—the man who sponsored his entry into the United States—had reached out to ask for my advice on how to get them out. Eventually they were freed without having to pay the ransom.

A few years ago, as independence came to be a real possibility for South Sudan, Machot became involved in the political process of his nascent homeland. He soon returned to help write its constitution. In late 2013, Machot and I began discussing the idea of visiting the new nation together. The idea was to meet with Riek Machar, the Nuer leader and then vice president.

By mid December, however, the political situation in South Sudan had taken a violent turn.

President Salva Kiir insisted that Machar had attempted a coup. News spread quickly. There was a shoot-out between Dinka and Nuer presidential guards of the Tiger Battalion, and a melee erupted in the capital of Juba. Dinka militia and military troops went door to door looking for Nuers to kill. Machar barely escaped as tanks and heavy gunfire razed his home.

Following these events, Machot wished to salvage what was left of his country and perhaps even stay to defend it.

I bought Machot a ticket to Nairobi, and he persuaded his boss to give him a month of unpaid leave. I provided some funds for his family to live on while we would be gone, and in January we left with our photographer and videographer, Tim Freccia.

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Machot Lat Thiep outside his home, in Lynnwood, Washington. Photo by Kyle Johnson

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Is entering South Sudan to track down its deposed vice president worth paying 15 grand and risking your life for?

Absolutely.

Our simple trip to South Sudan became complicated. Battles raged all over the region, and Uganda had joined the fight. The cities of Bor, Malakal, and Bentiu were under siege as the country split between the government-backed Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the renegade Nuer forces, ostensibly under the control of Machar, who was reportedly hiding somewhere in the bush. Not quite the simple trip to South Sudan we had initially envisioned.

We consulted a few regional experts about Machar’s location. The answers varied: “Machar is in the US Embassy.” “Machar is on Giraffe Island, in the middle of the swamps.” “Machar is in London.” All we knew for sure was that Machar was in the bush, and that the government of South Sudan had just dispatched roughly 2,000 men to hunt him down and kill him. The most credible theory was that Machar was in Akobo, the easternmost town in his home state of Jonglei, butting up against the western border of Ethiopia.

That’s the abbreviated version of events that led us to Nairobi, in a car with Edward, our fixer, searching for a pilot to drop us behind rebel lines. dward works with a man named Ian Cox. Together they run Lorry Boys, a company that furnishes aircraft, ground vehicles, and heavy equipment for people with needs like ours. Recently, much of their business has focused on rescuing foreigners from South Sudan via emergency evacuation flights. My request to go the other way may seem like a simple matter on the surface, but at the moment most foreigners have been shuttled out, and no one is allowed back in. In other words, the government in Juba isn’t allowing any pilots to land in rebel-held territory—essentially the entire countryside surrounding Juba.

Brave local pilots who are used to flying anything into just about anywhere agree when we first ask them. Then they check with Juba and quickly find out that any charter company or pilot who dares support the rebels will be

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blacklisted. We get a series of polite declines.

Then we dig deeper into the cadre of Kenyabased pilots who are known to do the kind of work we need—pilots who won’t bother asking Juba anything. Most of them make a living doing ransom drops, hostage extractions from Somalia, and other odd jobs. In other words, illegal work that pays very well and puts the plane and pilot at great risk.

We meet in the parking lot with a famous pilot whose photo, name, and business cannot be found on the internet. He says he can do it, but he is busy at the moment; there’s plenty of work to do for the military, aid organizations, and the relief sector. He is a former British Special Air Service pilot, neatly dressed and knowledgeable about the area. He examines the map and calculates the distance. Although we have dragged him away from a shopping trip, he seems interested in the gig.

“You’ll need to push a couple drums of fuel into northern Kenya, on the other side of Lake Turkana,” he says. “When we land we don’t want any visitors.”

The price? “Depends on the risk,” he says— an awkward way of telling us he can charge whatever he wants.

Tim recognizes the neatly dressed pilot and says, “You picked up Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan in the Cessna 210. I was on the strip when you arrived.”

The pilot smiles. He says he also pulled out two Seychellois fishermen who had been kidnapped by pirates. “They paid a lot of money for those guys.” The stories pilots tell.

That’s when it truly hits us: Is entering South Sudan to enumerate the reasons the country’s heading toward failed statehood and tracking down its deposed vice president worth paying 15 grand, risking your life, and enduring the heat, pestilence, and hostility for? Our answer, of course, is “absolutely.”

All things considered, our journey is fairly normal. Or at least as normal as a former child soldier with severe facial scarring working at a Costco in Seattle.

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ccording to Machot, he was born in Bentiu, one of 14 children. He is a Nuer, but his grandmother was a Dinka.

Machot has a big, hearty laugh and loves to joke. If you spoke with him on the phone, you wouldn’t guess his humble upbringing. If you met him, the first thing that would strike you would be the scars on his face, keloids deliberately raised by deep cuts etched in his skull when he became a man. There are deeper cuts, to his soul and psyche, that you cannot see.

As a child, Machot lived in a traditional wattle-and-daub house with a large thatched roof. The largest structure in the vicinity was the luak, a cow shed, surrounded by smaller wattle-and-daub huts called diels or tukuls. Machot’s father came from a spear-making family, honing long rods of steel brought from the north into sharp blades. A man who can make a beautiful spear is called a “spear master,” and he is believed to have the power to predict the future. Machot’s mother and sisters would tend the crops while he went out with his father to fish, hunt, and take care of the cows.

Wealth was measured by the number of cows the family owned, which also dictated how many wives a man could support. By 1989 Machot’s father had three wives (despite his grandmother’s inclination to chase off the property any women he brought home), thousands of cows, and large swaths of land on which his cattle grazed. Machot had nothing to want for.

Education was often considered a bad thing because of the fear that men who could read and write would show up to interfere with the area’s simple pastoral lifestyle—specifically Sudanese tax collectors who would arrive at Machot’s father’s homestead and demand cows as payment. To Machot and his family, being “educated” meant you worked for the government and became corrupt.

Then Machot’s placid village existence came to an abrupt end.

In the dark hours of early morning, the sound of gunfire and exploding grenades rang through his village. Terrified, Machot ran into the bush to hide. When he returned, everyone was gone. Machot was alone at eight years of age.

Machot began to walk. He heard Ethiopia was where kids like him were heading. By this time, there were bands of what would later become known as Lost Boys wandering the wilds of South Sudan. When rebels captured their young prey, they grouped the children by size. The larger, stronger boys were instantly press-ganged; the smaller, weaker ones were left to wander until they were picked up and put through the ringer again.

At some point, Machot was intercepted by rebels who press-ganged him into their unit. It was a brutal introduction of rape, beatings, and constant abuse. If new recruits refused to fight, their own commanders would shoot them.

This is where Machot’s unique sense of time and place becomes obvious. He has forgotten large portions of his life

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and skips over others, often leaving out the years he spent in the camps as though they never existed.

After a year without contact, Machot’s father began to investigate what might have happened to his son. He met with Riek Machar, then one of the rebel leaders of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. When Machot’s father demanded that his son be returned to him, Machar refused. Instead he said that if Machot’s father agreed to let the rebels educate Machot and his brothers, they would be appointed to posts in the new government once South Sudan was established as an independent state.

Machar then demanded that Machot’s father forfeit custody of his son, infuriating the already frustrated father, who refused. Machar ordered him beaten by his guards and had him thrown in jail and assaulted several more times before releasing him.

Once freed, Machot’s father fell gravely ill, throwing up blood and growing weaker by the day. He died a month later.

Machot managed to escape from the SPLA and continued his flight to Ethiopia. When he arrived at a UN camp he remembers by the name of Etom, he was discouraged to find that it was under the control of the SPLA. Without parents to look after him, he was taken in as an orphan (which wasn’t far from the truth), and he studied at the camp’s school for six months, all the while unaware of what had become of his father and three mothers after the raid of their village.

Rebels living inside the camp worked as informants, identifying youth who were ready for military training and who would then be marched away in the dead of night.

Machot studied hard, regaining his strength and settling into a considerably regular routine, given his situation. But then, one night, they came for him. They dragged him into a vehicle and drove for five days to another camp ostensibly run by the UN. Along the way, his rebel captors told him they were his mother and father. They warned Machot that if he tried to escape, they would shoot him.

A rebel named Taban Deng Gai supervised SPLA interests inside the camp. He resided in a large compound surrounded by bodyguards and controlled the local black markets of food, goods, and children. Deng Gai would reappear in Machot’s life later as he rose up the ranks of leadership in the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement.

Machot remained a ward of the SPLA for years. He is vague about exactly what he did. He says he was a radio operator because he’d learned how to speak Arabic; he also said he knew how to use a gun.

He remained in the camps as part of the SPLA until 1991, when Ethiopia’s decades-long civil war concluded and the Ethiopians began clearing the camps because they no longer trusted the Nuers inside their borders. Machot and a group of boys living with him decided they would walk to Kenya, where, they heard, the camps were safe.

But they had to pass through the war in southern Sudan first. They walked west toward Nasir, a town near the

Machot managed to escape the SPLA and continued his flight to Ethiopia.

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Ethiopian border, and when the bombing became too intense they headed south to Kakuma, a sparse UN-run camp in the desert.

Machot lived in Kakuma for five years. The UN issued him a tent and a blanket, and every week he was rationed a cup of corn flour and some cooking oil. Contrary to the conditions described in the press releases, life in the camp was a harsh, ugly existence. Soon the boys began to talk about finding a better life in Khartoum. One could apparently get a job and go to school in the capital of Sudan, and there was no war. He and a group of older boys simply left and walked north for two months.

A February 8, 2011, photo of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, in the cowboy hat, and former Vice President Riek Machar, center-left. AP Photo/Pete Muller, File

But Khartoum wasn’t much better. Refugee camps ringed the city. There were odd jobs in construction, however, and Machot took one. In the beginning he could carry only one brick at a time, because he was so weak and thin. Khartoum is also where Machot met Paulino Matip Nhial, a Nuer commander who fought for the government of Sudan.

Machot remembered Matip Nhial’s face—he had been one of the men responsible for the violence in Machot’s village.

Despite this, they became friends.

In 1993, Machot left Khartoum and his job there. His boss at the construction site gave him $200 out of pity. He and two friends who had saved their money headed to Kenya by way of Ethiopia, forgoing the long walk this time for buses and cheap hotels. When they reached the border at Malia, a Nuer from Machot’s hometown of Bentiu befriended them.

The three boys paid $600 to be smuggled across the border and were told to wait at a hotel on the Ethiopian side. The would-be smuggler didn’t show up, but the police did. The boys were deported all the way back to Kukuma camp, from which they had set out on their journey a year earlier.

In Kakuma a rumor spread that Lost Boys could go to America from Ifo, a camp in the east, about 50 miles from the Somali border. Machot had already followed rumors and found nothing but broken dreams. Lost Boys were famous for simply leaving camps and wandering hundreds

of miles in vain. Some died in the bush, some were captured and press-ganged, and others made it to yet another camp.

But something about Machot’s spirit forced him to keep trying. In March of 1995, Machot traveled with a group of boys who braved corrupt Kenyan police and Somali bandits to arrive safely at Ifo. Their timing was perfect.

The UN was preparing to close the camp, expediting visas to America and Europe for weary Lost Boys. On the first day they arrived, Machot and his friends hurriedly filled out the paperwork. Three months later they were screened for US-entry visas.

Machot arrived in New York City on September 8, 1995.

It was not a joyous occasion. It was cold. The city was ugly.

He was under the strict supervision of handlers who didn’t know his language. It took an hour for him to figure out how to use the television in the hotel room. He didn’t use the telephone because he had been warned that dialing 911 by mistake would result in his immediate arrest. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. He was terrified of making an error that would send him back to Sudan.

Eventually Machot was placed in a foster home that he hated. He was still unable to sleep. When they took him to shop at Goodwill, he refused. He didn’t want to wear “dead people’s clothing.” He knew that just about everything in America was new, and that’s what he wanted. He began to fight with his foster mother’s son. One day it got so bad that his foster parents called the police, and he ended up in a shelter for minors.

Finally Machot was placed in a foster home that suited him, and he studied hard. He loved to run. Running took him back to his homeland, where he felt the wind on his face and his whole body was free. He excelled at track and field, which earned him a scholarship to Skagit Valley College in Mount Vernon, Washington. During college he worked at Burger King. After that it was the Department of Transportation, and in 2003 he joined the ranks of Costco.

That year his plight became famous via the documentary Lost Boys of Sudan. Books followed, and Americans began to learn about the horrors of thousands of young Nuer and Dinka boys being abducted, beaten, raped, forced to fight in an endless war, and sometimes even eaten by lions.

He paid his own way. He also formed a charity to help South Sudanese refugees acclimate to America. He saved his money to send home and to visit. Although there was hope of a new nation, he could never stay. There was nothing there for him.

On one of his trips to visit his mother back home, she demanded that he get married so that she could grow old and die in peace. She informed him that he had 24 hours to find a wife. He went from home to home, meeting eligible women and giving a sales pitch about the luxuries of life in America. He spent about 45 minutes at each house, meeting young daughters and their families. He might have a new life in America, but he would never escape his past.

With the help of his cousin, he eventually narrowed the candidates down to five, then three, then one: Rose. When he told her that she was his first choice, Rose lectured Machot on his arrogant approach to getting married. She refused to get on a plane the next day, but she agreed to being engaged for a couple of years while she finished her schoolwork.

Two years later they were married, and today they have two children.

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Machot at home, in Lynnwood, Washington. He is a Nuer. It is difficult for outsiders to distinguish Nuer from Dinka, or a half dozen other tribes in the region. Knowing their respective facialscarring patterns helps, but even then it’s easy to get confused. Perhaps that’s because the most decisive characteristics are arguably philosophical: The Nuer are a more democratic people who pay far less attention to royal lineage than the Dinka. Photo by Kyle Johnson

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FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, FRONT ROW: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, South Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, South Sudan Legislative Assembly Speaker

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James Wani Igga, and Deputy Speaker Daniel Awet Akot pay respects at the grave of late southern Sudanese rebel leader John Garang in Juba, South Sudan, on May 21, 2010. AP Photo/Pete Muller

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he bottom half of South Sudan was at one time known as Equatoria. Its boundaries, which are more or less the same today as they have always been, are partially demarcated by the Sudd—or “Barrier.” Water originating in the White Nile takes almost a year to flow into these flatlands, creating a swamp that in the rainy season swells to the size of Alabama. This marshland is the scene of Africa’s biggest and least documented wildlife migration and one of its largest concentrations of crocodiles, giraffes, hippos, elephants, and kobs, as well as more than 400 species of birds.

In the rainy season, the humans who live here cling to swampy islands. These pastoralists move with the seasons; as rain gives way to drier conditions, they continue to follow the water, returning to their villages on the high ground as the rainy season approaches once again.

They live in small family groups that fish, herd cattle, grow crops, and hunt, blending almost seamlessly with the ecology of the land. They are part of the approximately quarter of a billion Africans who reside in the Guinea Savanna, an area of 1.5 million square miles that covers portions of 25 countries—a vast ecosystem more than half the size of the United States.

As history has proved, humans who live like this tend to attract a strange breed of interlopers. Since its “discovery,” a series of peculiar men with various agendas have tried to “save” South Sudan. This includes its native-born, and perhaps increasingly so.

Dinka and Nuer tribesmen have composed the majority of the rebel groups operating in the area since the First Sudanese Civil War began in the 1950s. In the late 70s, following what basically amounted to an 11-year ceasefire, the Second Sudanese Civil War erupted for much of the same reasons it had in the 50s. But this time all of those problems had quite literally been doused in gasoline. By the mid 2000s, both sides had fought each other to a bloody draw.

By the time US President George W. Bush was elected, Sudan had become a geopolitical quagmire: The crisis in Darfur was boiling over, and the country was at risk of widespread and violent unrest. Years before, the plight of those in southern Sudan had been directly pressed upon Bush by the Evangelical right (many of whom wanted to arm Christian rebels in the south in an effort to protect them from the Muslim Sudanese government).

This led Bush to appoint a special envoy to Sudan in late 2001, with the goal of helping to find a peaceful solution to the Sudanese government’s “brutal and shameful war against its own people.” With 2005’s ceasefire and Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the envoy’s mission seemed to have achieved great diplomatic success.

For Bush it had been a no-brainer, a “legacy item” on his foreign-policy bucket list, according to the Atlantic.

But for the bipartisan congressional coalition known as the Sudan Caucus, what happened in 2005 was the longterm payoff of 20-plus years spent trying to convince three administrations to take Sudan seriously. Years of whittling away had finally carved a path toward South Sudanese independence, with borders that included 75 percent of unified Sudan’s oil supply.

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Bush’s more diplomatic approach was a contrast to Bill Clinton’s hard-line stance on the Sudanese government, which in the mid 90s had sheltered Osama bin Laden and members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad as they operated out of Khartoum. In 1996, three years after the first World Trade Center bombing and one year after Bin Laden and company’s thwarted assassination attempt on Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, the Sudanese government caved to intense international pressure and expelled the terrorist network. Bin Laden and his cohorts moved their operations to Afghanistan and Pakistan—and we all know what happened next.

Meanwhile, after two decades of leading rebel forces in the south, John Garang and his Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/A) were instrumental in brokering 2005’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Two weeks after the agreement was signed and Garang was sworn in as the president of the now autonomous Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS), he died in a helicopter crash. The official line was that the chopper had gone down in bad weather, though conspiracy theories naturally circulated.

After Garang’s death, Salva Kiir took over the leadership of the SPLM. Kiir, a Dinka from Warrap, had fought with the Anyanya separatist army during the First Sudanese Civil War; in later years with the SPLM/A, he’d served as Garang’s trusted second-incommand. With 93 percent of the vote, he was elected in 2010 as the man to see South Sudan through the following year’s referendum, in which 98.8 percent of the public voted to secede from the north. It was a mandate all around. With his leadership Kiir brought deep religious fervor, likening, on the GoSS website, his realization of Garang’s dream to “Biblical Joshua who took the mantle of leadership from Moses just as the Israelites were on the verge of entering Canaan and capably established the then fugitives in the Promised Land.”

Kiir, a big man with a big personality, is proud of his military heritage and 22 years of combat. When the war ended, he made it a point to keep his “bush beard.”

During a 2006 visit to the White House, Bush gave Kiir a cowboy hat that seemingly hasn’t left his head since.

He quickly took to wearing the Stetson during state visits, public appearances, and even during the signing of South Sudan’s declaration of independence.

Kiir’s detractors say that he likes to drink, has anger-management problems, and is paranoid— understandable personal flaws for a man whose main occupation for two decades consisted of unrepentant violence and the management of constantly shifting tribal divisions. But this demeanor is a major issue for a politician charged with uniting a war-torn nation.

On Saturday, July 9, 2011, the interim constitution was signed and South Sudan was officially a sovereign nation-state. Kiir and his vice president and SPLM/A comrade Riek Machar walked side by side in front of a who’s who of African old-school dictators, strongmen, and democratically elected leaders. Among those cheering the country into birth were Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni; Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, the longest-serving ruler in Africa; Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa; Meles Zenawi, the prime minster

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of Ethiopia; Equatorial Guinea’s oil-rich strongman, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue; and Omar al Bashir of Sudan, a man indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide in 2010.

But jubilee soon gave way to logistical concerns like feeding people and printing stamps (which the South Sudanese government bungled on numerous occasions). The UN reported that in 2012 approximately $763 million in aid was required to keep the country afloat. USAID provided an additional $323 million in 2013 but found it difficult to operate due to “insecurity, bureaucratic harassment of relief organizations, logistical challenges, and Government of the Republic of South Sudan–imposed restrictions.” A tidal wave of good intentions and donor money flooded into South Sudan as the White Nile flooded its marshlands, but the situation was already looking hopeless.

Even with a billion dollars to spend, the 22 different agencies that make up the United Nations Mission in South Sudan found it difficult to gain a foothold in the region, noting that “the challenges facing the world’s

newest state are overwhelming in both scale and complexity. State structures have only just been established, and delivery systems across all sectors are either absent or dysfunctional. Corruption impacts virtually all levels of Government, and accountability mechanisms, where they exist, have failed to deter misuse and mismanagement of public resources. In the absence of broad-based political and social-cultural mechanisms for resolving disputes, violent conflict remains a dayto-day problem.”

For 2014, the UN earmarked $924,426,000 to deal with South Sudan’s exponentially growing problems.

This was the projected yearly cost for 8,000 uniformed military and police peacekeepers, pay for various forms of governance, and relief from the humanitarian disasters that continued to plague the new country on a disturbingly regular basis. In March 2014, the UN put out an urgent appeal for an additional $1.27 billion to be in place by June to help contain the regional chaos running rampant through South Sudan, Central African Republic, and other countries in the region. The UN

George W. Bush and Salva Kiir in the Oval Office on January 5, 2009. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

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For 2014, the United Nations earmarked nearly a billion dollars to deal with South Sudan’s exponentially growing problems.

estimates that as many as 3.2 million South Sudanese could be in dire need of help, which will undoubtedly impact neighboring nations as refugees continue to flee their homes.

A wide assortment of NGOs, all with their own agendas, flocked to South Sudan in the lead-up to the 2011 referendum. At last count, in 2010, there were some 150 international NGO groups officially registered in the region. All of them spent lots of money on hiring locals and working on varied ways to improve the new nation. Today most have fled, pulling out their expat employees and leaving their vehicles and equipment behind for looters.

In August 2011, GoSS commissioned a report from the Joint Donor Team, an aid organization that helped the government hash out a national budgetary plan based on projected oil revenues, which according to the IMF make up 98 percent of GoSS’s national revenue, compared with 57 percent of the earnings of Sudan’s government.

The result was a five-year, 413-page operating manual for South Sudan that showed oil revenue already peaking in 2011 and then dramatically decreasing until completely tapping out. This blip of shortsighted income, combined with expected population growth and a current national poverty rate of about 50 percent, didn’t make for the most carefully considered financial plan. But many of the people appointed to run the country were former bush fighters and their relatives and friends. Some were educated; many were not. National, regional, and local governments, tribal leaders, and businessmen all looked to exploit this short-lived environment of rejuvenated optimism.

Buried within that 413-page operating plan was a startling statistic: The total value of all South Sudan’s 3.5 billion barrels of oil that would be pumped out of the ground over the next two decades would net only an estimated $38 billion. And once it was gone, that was it.

While fleshing out their 2014 budget, South Sudanese officials estimated that they needed $4 billion just to run the government’s day-to-day operations. They only managed to scrounge up $2.2 billion, as the rest had already been pledged to oil fees, external debt, and infrastructure commitments.

The August 2011 operating plan was based on the optimistic idea that oil would flow smoothly and swiftly into Port Sudan in the north and the two countries

would work together to export oil and share the profits. In January 2012, however, Sudan and South Sudan came to an impasse regarding pipeline-usage fees. The pipelines were promptly shut off, along with South Sudan’s primary source of income. The borders were closed to trade. Kiir accused Sudan’s government of stealing $815 million in South Sudanese crude oil out of retribution. Kiir and Machar, paunchy politicians who were once lean bush fighters, rattled off their grievances in Juba and lobbed threats at Khartoum. But the strain rapidly felt by both sides was too much to bear, and in September 2012 it was agreed that the pipeline would be reopened.

On May 3, 2012, less than a year after South Sudan had opened for business, Kiir sent what he has since claimed was a private letter to more than 75 senior-level politicians and government officials, accusing them of stealing $4.2 billion in state funds. He demanded that they pay it back and gave them instructions to deposit it, oddly enough, in a special bank account set up in Kenya by GoSS. Although Kiir insisted that he and only one other member of his cabinet had access to this letter, the Associated Press obtained it in early June. While this incident was on a much larger scale, the vanishing funds echoed an earlier snafu in 2006, when Arthur Akuien Chol, the provisional government’s finance minister, was dismissed after being accused of mishandling a $60 million grant from Sudan to establish basic civil functions. He subsequently implicated SPLM’s secretary general, Pagan Amum Okech, to whom Chol says he was instructed to give half of the $60 million.

So where did the money go this time? Nobody knew. And Kiir thought it best that these accusations of theft and corruption be kept quiet, lest they tear the government apart. One person who was very curious about where the money went was Machar, and he was determined to get to the bottom of the scandal. This curiosity would soon become a major point of contention with Kiir.

The three main things the money was supposed to be going toward were hiring soldiers and government employees, paving roads, and building a strategic grain reserve. But while Kiir’s accusatory letter polarized his nascent government, there still hadn’t been much—if any—progress on building infrastructure, even though

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thousands of former rebels and relatives were on the government’s payroll.

By June 2013 the oil pipelines had been shut down yet again. This time Sudan accused Juba of supporting rebels who had been fighting against Khartoum. South Sudan denied the charges, but that did nothing to get the oil flowing again.

“Oil-rich” South Sudan was, in fact, a debtor nation that had borrowed around $500 million from other countries: $100 million from the Qatar National Bank and another $100 million from Johannesburg-based Standard Bank Group, for starters. By September 2013, the IMF had promised another $50 million. Rumors began to circulate that the US was shoveling funds into South Sudan to prop up Kiir’s government. In November 2013, as the South Sudanese claimed that they could not afford to pay civil servants, various media outlets reported that the country was in the hole for as much as $4.5 billion, which had been borrowed from an assortment of commercial banks.

South Sudan was quickly following the path of Sudan, whose economy was $41.5 billion in debt, with 87 percent of that in arrears, according to the World Bank. But it had taken a century for things to go this pear-shaped in the north. South Sudan was just over two years old, and it controlled most of the oil. There was no acceptable excuse or explanation for this sort of rampant malfeasance, yet no one was claiming any sort of responsibility. Quite simply, South Sudan was a basket case.

Outside of oil, outside of the hard cash flowing through the fingers of a rapaciously incompetent and crony-laden government, what is the real economy of South Sudan? Nothing, really. The everyday citizens of South Sudan live hand-to-mouth, planting crops when the rains come; looking after their herds of cows, goats, and sheep; building their homes from natural materials; and spending their meager disposable income on the odd plastic chair, T-shirt, or phone card. All the while, they cling fast to the hope that gunfire and indiscriminate murder won’t once again negate their hard work overnight.

The sad truth is that the only business that South Sudan truly knows is war, and even then it’s not so good at it. Even though the SPLM successfully forged a ruling political party out of its military wing, South Sudan’s only long-term sustaining source of income has been killing its own people and nefariously shuffling around pots of money that have mostly arrived from outside sources looking to “help.”

As such, while the 2015 elections loomed against an accusatory backdrop of congressional favoritism, corruption, and hostile authoritarian rule, Kiir reacted the only way he knew how. On July 22, 2013, he fired his entire cabinet and gave orders to arrest a number of politicians he had implicated in various scandals. When he drafted the interim constitution, Kiir made sure to include a clause that allowed him to summarily fire democratically elected governors in extreme circumstances (chiefly under the guise of “national security”). But in a legal sense, that no longer mattered, as the final 2011 constitution replaced this overarching power with due process and voting. Kiir didn’t care, however. He was

going to do what he wanted. In his mind, his autocratic, military style of management trumped the constitution and democratic process. The already contentious groups that made up the government began to splinter in a way that foreshadowed failed statehood.

Salaries continued to go unpaid. Staunch allies of Kiir defected. By November 2013 South Sudan’s finance minister, Aggrey Tisa Sabuni, admitted that the situation was veering toward total collapse. “Our borrowing has caught up with us, and we cannot run away from it,” he told Voice of America. Austerity measures were implemented, but they excluded the handful of senior officials who still received their salaries and perks.

Dissent spread as the funding promised for projects and deals suddenly ground to a full stop.

Mabior Garang, the eldest son of the late John Garang, was not having it. Alongside John Garang’s widow, the former minister for roads and transport, and Machar, Mabior challenged Kiir’s leadership and questionable business practices. On December 6, the trio and their supporters held a press conference and expressed their complaints concerning Kiir’s leadership.

Why did a country less than three years old owe $4.5 billion in debt to the US? How did Kiir justify expenditures to create a 15,000-man “Republican Guard” that would run parallel to the existing armed forces? These questions remain unanswered.

Inspired by the press conference, a mixed group of Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, and other SPLM party members announced that they would hold a session of the National Liberation Council to review the corruption, to be followed by a public rally on December 14. Kiir addressed the rally, thundering that he would not tolerate a repeat of 1991 (referring to the Bor massacre against the Dinka by Machar’s Nuer rebels). Kiir’s supporters started singing war songs, and he put out a document that condemned his detractors.

A number of politicians did not attend Kiir’s fiery meeting on December 14, leading him to believe that a plot to overthrow his government was imminent. The next day he ordered his presidential guard to disarm all Nuer members of the Tiger Battalion presidential guard and issued a long list of offenders who were to be arrested.

On December 15, Kiir declared all-out war on the Nuer. An ugly ethnic cleansing against the Nuers ensued, a campaign that has to date claimed between 500 and 10,000 lives, depending on whom you’re talking to (as of press time a reliable source on those numbers remains elusive). Fighting broke out in the barracks of Juba as Nuer guards were ordered to disarm. An armed militia of Dinka called the “Gelweng”—or “Keeper of Cattle”—were ordered to go house to house, set up roadblocks, line up men along the street, and perform interrogations, beatings, and executions. Kiir declared Machar a “prophet of doom.” Tanks and armed troops soon arrived at Machar’s official residence and razed it, killing any bodyguards and household staff who stood in their way.

But somebody from the presidential guard had tipped off Machar and his wife, Angelina Teny, allowing them to narrowly escape with their lives.

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A bushfire burning across a vast stretch of land in South Sudan.

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achot, Amos, Tim, and I fall into a routine. Machot wanders over from the hotel in the mornings.

Seeing Tim and me enjoying our coffee, he demands to know why we’re not leaving. Then Tim and Machot get into a furious argument, usually over Machot’s dislike of Nairobi, while Amos stands back awkwardly and doesn’t say much. I play peacemaker, eventually calming everyone down. We are fighting our own little war in trying to get out of Kenya. We had our airstrip in Akobo; we just needed someone to take us out.

After numerous dead ends, our fixer, Edward, trips over a lead to a pilot who might take us into the bush to find Riek Machar. A connection of Edward’s, a man who also happens to be a native white Kenyan, thinks he can arrange a flight through a pilot inside South Sudan.

We are told the pilot cannot be named or photographed.

About all we know for sure is that the pilot is a woman and the one-way flight will cost us $17,200. That’s more than double what the normal charter rate is when the country isn’t about to cannibalize itself.

Edward relays the details from his contact to us: “You will be dropped—she is not even going to stop the engines—and then when your gear is clear, she is going to take off.” We agree.

Later we get the call: “Be at the airport at 6 AM.” Elated, we prepare by shopping for food, camping supplies, and gifts for the new friends we’ll meet on our travels. Machot seems obsessed with purchasing things that his associates have insisted Machar needs: a tent, boots, onions, baby formula, and other random bullshit. I mix it up by buying a candelabra, spices, and Tabasco. Machot also claims he needs clothes, even though he has packed his normal street clothes and a dress shirt, pants, and leather loafers. Amos, as always, hangs back quietly.

As soon as word is out among our contacts that we are leaving, demands to take people and equipment with us flood in. Nothing like a $17,200 flight into a country’s asshole to attract new friends. Our baggage swells with a new Thuraya satellite phone, two video cameras, tripods, more groceries, and boots.

At this point Tim and I get the sense that Machot has been moonlighting at our expense. He disappears for long periods of time, burning up minutes on our Thuraya, followed by constant demands to fill up random commanders’ satellite phones. We ignore these requests. He promises us we will be up on the front lines. “You OK with front lines?” he asks. Tim and I look at each other.

The morning of our departure we gather in the cool dawn at Wilson Airport, Nairobi’s commercial tarmac.

Pilots are having their early-morning cigarettes. Shiny new planes taxi the runway before taking off to deliver fresh goods to Somalia.

Upstairs in the office, Edward’s contact carefully counts the stack of cash I’ve given him. Then he counts it a second and a third time. He looks nervously at Tim, who is pointing a camera at him, and reminds us that we are not to film our pilot.

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Is this finally it? I refuse to believe it until we are airborne. The second time. First, we have to fly to the pilot who will take us to our final destination.

After lugging our gear through a makeshift security line, we load into the plane and taxi out. Machot is smiling broadly. He has never flown in a small plane.

The wheels are soon in the air, and we fly north as the landscape turns rugged and mountainous, eventually flattening into a dry plain.

As we descend, the runway below comes into view.

It’s littered with crashed and abandoned cargo planes, and we tuck in between them on touchdown.

Soon after we land our pilot arrives, the woman of the hour. She’s flying a massive Cessna Caravan, the 12-passenger, single-engine workhorse of Africa.

Luggage is stowed in a pod in the undercarriage. The inside features mud-caked cardboard on the floor and stained cotton seat covers.

After numerous dead ends, our fixer, Edward, finds a pilot to take us into the bush to find Riek Machar.

We load our stuff as our pilot drinks Nescafé and chain-smokes Marlboro Reds. She suggests that we hurry up and get away from the prying eyes of the airport workers lurking behind the building.

“How is it?” she asks nervously about the landing strip. I say it’s fine, that we’ve been talking to the people on the ground and they are expecting us. Then, shaking off my Nairobian haze, I realize that it has been Machot talking to the people on the ground all along. I admit that I have no idea what the situation might be. I ask Machot to call them again, and he dials my satellite phone.

Our pilot is nervous because, before our flight, she tried to pull a favor from a general she knows in Juba, who she hoped would grant permission for her to land in Akobo. His response was that under no conditions was she to land anywhere near Akobo. It meant that if she were spotted on the runway, her business in South Sudan would be over.

So instead she offers to take us to Pochalla, a small town near the Ethiopian border. Under my direction, Machot makes a quick call to the rebels, who tell us it’s in enemy hands. It has to be Akobo or Waat. She chooses Waat, putting us 100 miles away from our destination.

Soon enough Machot is back on the phone, shouting and relaying sideways intel to us: “They have 300 people, and the airstrip is secure.”

After hanging up he says, “They also asked if we could bring back four wounded people.”

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Our pilot bristles. “No, you didn’t tell me this,” she says. “I will not do it. I cannot bring wounded people here. Do you know how much trouble that causes? How much paperwork, how many headaches?”

Machot grows angry, retorting, “They have driven all the way from Akobo. They must be flown out.”

“What are their wounds?” the pilot asks.

“They have PTSD.” “PTSD? I thought you said they were wounded.”

“They have suffered from all the heavy fighting,” Machot protests. “One man led the escape for Riek out of Juba, and he has not slept for 14 days. They must be taken out.”

He is on the verge of screwing up the only ride out that we will ever have. Doing my best not to upset him further, I try to explain to Machot that PTSD is not really considered a fatal wound, nor does it call for a medevac.

Machot is turning out to be a bit of a liability and is constantly throwing roadblocks in our way.

The pilot refuses: “No. I am flying to Juba afterward.

I will not fly those people back.”

We argue with Machot and tell him to call the rebels back and inform them that we are going in and no one is coming out. We say we can arrange something later if necessary. We are lying. Machot is becoming a liability.

The pilot is not having a good time. While Machot yells in Nuer over the phone, she says, “I have done this before. They will mob the plane, wave their guns, and threaten to kidnap me. I have seen this many times with these people. I don’t think this is a good idea. I just walk away and smoke a cigarette. I say, ‘If you want to fly the plane… go ahead.’ And if one person reports me to Juba I can lose all my business.” She shakes her head. “No, this is not good. If I take those people back to Juba, they will kill them.”

Machot is off the phone, and she asks what they said.

“They are not happy,” he replies.

She tries to bail on us. “I can come back later,” she says.

“There is a cheap hotel here. You can spend the night.”

We make it clear we are going in. We tell Machot to call back and make damn sure there aren’t any problems.

He does and assures us that everything is fine. They have cleared all the people from the airstrip.

I tell the pilot that it’s now or never: If she wants the money, we are flying in today; we don’t have the funds to keep trying. She needs the money. Business has been shit for the past two weeks. She stubs out another cigarette and says, “Let’s go.”

We walk through the terminal’s solitary metal detector and board the plane.

The pilot has good reason to be nervous. She tells us that the day before, her plane was loaded with the corpses of three of Kiir’s bodyguards. She was hired to transport the dead bodies back to their home village.

By 11 AM there is nothing on the ground below to indicate that we have crossed into South Sudan, except for the clusters of tukul huts that appear every so often. Our pilot smokes and reads a book while the plane is on autopilot. As we approach Waat we peer eagerly for any signs of our hosts. The town of Waat is small, bisected by a rough-hewn airstrip—a pit stop for Ethiopians making their way across the border. On approach all we see is a group of random people roaming about the runway. There is no evidence of security or men with guns who will protect us from what could quickly become a mob. As we dip to a few hundred feet, the group scatters. We land.

Even inside the fuselage, the coolness of Nairobi is gone. It’s about 90 degrees. The sun is blinding, and a searing wind stirs up dust. Curious children are followed by women who greet us with goods balanced on their heads. There is no sign of rebel forces.

Scanning for trouble, out pilot barks at us to get out and unload. Within minutes our gear is piled up on the tarmac. “Be careful,” she says, climbing back inside the plane. Then, in a harsh spray of dust and rocks, she is gone.

As the plane disappears, we stare at the locals, who stare at us in turn. We have an impressive pile of baggage and no place to put it. Soon a pickup truck with armed men rolls up, and they greet us. It isn’t the 300 armed men promised by Machot, but it’s better than nothing.

The bed of the looted NGO Toyota is encrusted with coagulated blood. We throw our stuff aboard, and they drive us to a nearby compound.

When we get there the mood is not congenial. We are offered plastic chairs to sit in while the men gather around a plastic table and discuss our fate.

A two-inch-long digger wasp is busy making a hole under the table. A large brown eagle flies overhead while white-throated ravens look for food. A soldier walks by with a UN Peacekeeping flak jacket.

There’s a space issue. The four men supposedly suffering from PTSD didn’t leave on our plane, so now there’s not enough room in the car for all of us to go to Akobo.

Will we rent a car? Maybe.

A beige lizard scurries across the brushed dirt. We sit politely.

A looted but serviceable Red Cross ambulance is found. The owner wants $700 to rent it. We decline, only to later discover that this was a bargain.

Commander Dieu Koang Bangot mulls over the situation with his men. It is decided that we will all simply pile into the battered green Toyota Land Cruiser that brought us in and drive the roughly 150 miles east to Akobo. Problem is, there are 17 of us. We sit four deep, with two on the roof, and somehow find room for our gear.

The road is a straight shot across the dry savanna.

The black cotton soil is hardpan and deeply riven by

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cracks. When the rains come, this will be impenetrable swamp. For now it’s brutal road, all the way.

We pass more people walking with goods balanced on their heads. We are in Nuer territory and should have no fear of the enemy. Other than the pickup truck, AKs, and uniforms, this landscape has changed little since people started living here.

The truck stops abruptly, and one of the men on the hood points. A herd of antelope is grazing to the right.

One of the soldiers jumps off the truck and aims carefully. Bang. The herd scatters. One animal is wounded, its hindquarters immobilized. We rush over and see blood pouring out of its wound. It’s still conscious, so the rebels bash its head and step on its throat. Then it’s dead. The carcass is strapped to the hood. This will be chow later, as none of the rebels carry water or supplies into the field.

The men are all Nuer, and this is their homeland.

Although they wear SPLA uniforms, their current battle is with the government and Salva Kiir. They are all aware of the attacks against their fellow tribesman, a situation that has pitted the Nuer against their Dinka brothers.

After nightfall we pull into Akobo. We are definitely with the rebels now. Long processions of officials stop by our mud hut to greet us. “You will hear gunfire tonight,” says one gentleman. “Don’t worry—that is happy gunfire! Don’t be alarmed.”

We sleep under the stars, gunfire trailing off in the distance. In the morning there are two groups of uniformed rebels running through a casual muster and roll call. They carry what appear to be new weapons, with belts of PK machine-gun ammunition wrapped around their bodies.

We are told the random shooting is to make sure the gun barrels weren’t bent after the new weapons were airdropped from planes. I ask who delivered them. They tell me they are courtesy of Sudan, via Eritrean aircraft.

Akobo says much about South Sudan. The city follows the river, which has carved out a winding, watery boulevard. Steel riverboats, canoes, and speedboats line the riverbank, but fuel is in short supply. The social hub is a central tree-lined street where people stroll back and forth, saying hello to one another umpteen times a day. Large, empty schools sit adjacent to government

Robert hitches a ride.

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buildings. The expats and NGOs are long gone. There is no electricity, and people still bathe in the river and shit in the fields. Where we’re staying there’s a pit toilet, but a writhing mass of maggots is currently occupying it to the point of uselessness. Just outside the gate sits a sad collection of new Toyota trucks on blocks, stripped of their parts.

A faded South Sudan flag flaps weakly in the town square. Electricity hums from the commissioner’s office—I’m told someone from the US Armed Forces has installed solar panels and batteries. Although there is power, the office is locked, and only certain people are allowed to go inside to charge their cell phones.

Even though there is no coverage in the area anymore, people still like to walk around with their phones as if they have someone to talk to or something to talk about.

Spiderwebs and dead, hand-wired electrical grids connect the surrounding huts. Two large generators sit idle, their starter batteries dead. The old colonial structures are covered in graffiti and human waste, the locals preferring their wattle-and-daub construction to cinder blocks and corrugated tin roofing.

For some reason the local market is closed today, and police warn groups of youth to go home. The “market” is a collection of NGO-installed shacks that hawk dry goods imported from Ethiopia. A man there runs a foot-operated sewing machine, and kids peddle glucose packs and toothbrushes.

Just behind the UN base, on the river, is a storehouse.

A white truck unloads what can only be freshly looted flour and grain. Its cargo also includes an impressive collection of plastic chairs and goods. The man who runs the place is well dressed and a little uneasy about our cameras. He is selling sorghum from a large sack to housewives.

We bump into the soldiers who traveled with us from Waat. They are proud of their town. They are also quite proud that the UN Mission in South Sudan has remained secure after fighting broke out in the region a few weeks ago. Somehow the fact that it has not been looted is an indication of their control over the surrounding area.

It makes us nervously wonder when we will be getting out of here and on with the show. The last thing we want is to overstay our welcome.

Dinner is tied to the hood of the Land Cruiser.

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ere in his secret bush camp Riek Machar holds court atop his plastic chair while his wife Angelina Teny cooks. On our arrival I gave her a candelabra, some sugar, an array of Indian spices, and rice—true luxuries in the bush. The spices intrigued her. “I like to cook,” she said.

Later, Teny invites us to dinner and dishes out Nile perch and tilapia caught from the river below us. Fish on rice with a starter of fish soup. I give Machar a military folding knife of my design, but he is more intrigued by his new iPhone and Thuraya SatSleeve. Lesson one: Machar is more of a geek than a soldier.

Lesson two: Machar likes people to do things for him.

This is evidenced by photographer Tim Freccia’s growing frustration with Machar’s inability to activate his new phone. Tim puts his camera down for a minute and picks up a satellite phone to call a customer-service hotline so a technician in Nairobi can make Machar’s new phone work. Which is how we get to lesson three: Running a remote-access revolution requires a table full of Thurayas, internet access, and stacks of phone cards.

The humorous scene before me is also a metaphor for the state of things in South Sudan: complex and untenable. Machar is working his Thurayas, keeping in touch with defecting commanders, and looking for a sugar daddy to support his latest civil war. There aren’t many deep-pocketed sympathizers left. These days wealthy visionaries who know the art of squeezing profits from calamity are few and far between. Tiny Rowland died in 1998. Qaddafi’s legacy amounted to a corpse that had been dragged through the streets by his former subjects, his head and rear end ventilated just to make extra sure people got the point. Nimeiry is long departed, even though his declaration of Sharia law still haunts Sudan and South Sudan. And Uganda’s strongman, Museveni, is backing Kiir. This leaves one real option for Machar: the 70-year-old president of Sudan, Omar al Bashir.

A firebrand once accused of embezzling $9 billion in state funds by the International Criminal Court, Bashir helped negotiate the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement to get his hands on the south’s oil. Less than a decade later, Machar has kicked over the apple cart, promising to shut down the oil fields if his far-reaching demands aren’t met.

Unsurprisingly, a significant number of phone calls that Machar walks away to make are in Arabic.

Machar spends the day sitting in his tidy uniform under a tree in this peaceful place, picnicking off river fish and living without money. In this setting Machar comes off like a benevolent park ranger than like an angry rebel leader in exile. The unmolested nature of the herons, pelicans, storks, ducks, and African fish eagles in the distance makes it seem as though the rebels’ mission is to protect the untouched beauty of the countryside, with Dr. Machar manning the information desk (his lawn chair) from which he explains his country’s history and culture to ignorant visitors.

While he is careful never to attack President Kiir on a personal level, Machar paints a picture of South Sudan’s leading man as a not-so-bright and frequently inebriated former soldier with PTSD who is packing the government with his minions while robbing the country blind.

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Machar, on the other hand, portrays himself as the calm academic, a Mandela-like voice of reason amid all the insanity. He doesn’t even flinch when I press him on certain questions, many of which challenge his selfnarrative of victimization.

So why is he looking to repeat the horrors of 1991, when his actions plunged the country into wanton ethnic violence and mass starvation? At this point Machar’s sound bites are well rehearsed. He lays most of the blame on Kiir’s corruption, stating that as president Kiir has provoked tribal violence and alienated the international community.

The most pressing problem is that South Sudan is quickly approaching total disaster. The UN estimates that 3.7 million people living there are at risk of starvation, and this time there are no English boy bands or Grammy winners singing songs about it.

Like a spurned spouse, Machar has a list of demands that must be met—or else. He’s repeatedly voiced these conditions via satellite phone in interviews with the BBC, Al Jazeera, Reuters, and so on. He consistently expresses shock and surprise at his situation, as if the long-standing and unresolved bad blood between him and Kiir is a new and inexplicable development. It’s also apparent that Machar is operating on the belief that Kiir actually cares what the former vice president says or thinks. Ever the intellectual, Machar elucidates the need for “democratic process”—somehow building a consensus among the public that will truly hold the corrupt accountable. He seems to have forgotten that power in this country is lost and won through force. And that he has been living in the bush for months now because a tank flattened his home and almost killed him in the process.

After we arrive and settle in, I talk with Machar about the circumstances in which he finds himself. In conversation he is erudite and humorous. Our first chat continues into the late afternoon.

An academic and architect who helped draft the framework for an independent South Sudan, Machar is a respected scholar of his country’s history. But he isn’t aware that I know this, so instead he gives me the South Sudan for Dummies version. According to Machar’s simplistic summation, the current fighting stems from the ancient stigma that the people of the south are simply destined to be slaves. The discovery of oil on their land served as the perfect excuse for the Sudanese government to indiscriminately clear the pastoralists from these areas.

This is all ancient history to Machar. Boring. Irrelevant.

His recollection is selective, skipping over uncomfortable twists and turns he took to survive. He does not mention starving masses of children, or his failed attempt to overthrow Garang in 1991 by calling up the BBC and simply declaring that Riek Machar was now in charge.

He can focus on only one thing: his next civil war, which will once again undermine the foundation of his battered nation and star Kiir as the bad guy and Machar as the valiant underdog fighting for the people.

“If there was peace in South Sudan I think the Juba mountains and the Blue Nile would be part of South Sudan,” he continues. “I think the north will grow tired of the fighting. They are naturally aligned with South Sudan.”

This scenario—in which peace is achieved only by incorporating these oil-rich, embattled regions into South

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Sudan—would increase cash flow for South Sudan while further marginalizing Sudan. But part of Machar’s charm is that he is pragmatic. He blames much of the current fighting on shattered expectations.

“You can see they have nothing,” he says, waving his hand across the horizon. “The people in the oil state are worse. There is a big bottomless pit in Juba.” He explains that while the fat cats in the capital were driving around in SUVs, hustling land grabs and oil deals, the majority of the country saw little change. Then again, Machar rode to many meetings in Juba inside an SUV, and a lot of them had to do with oil.

The UN estimates that 3.7 million people in South Sudan are at risk of starvation, and this time there are no British people singing songs about it.

It was supposed to be different, Machar tells me, accusing Kiir and his government of making false promises that have stalled necessary development in the country.

“Three percent of the revenue was to go to the communities and 2 percent to the state,” he says. “The caretaker governor signed all the deals in Juba—deals that he gave to his own construction company. It is decided in Juba who works and who doesn’t. I have campaigned for a local contract. Most of the oil work is labor.

“These people can be trained,” he says, nodding to the people seated around him. “But everything in the oil sector has to go through the president.”

What about help from the outside? Third-party negotiations?

Machar tells me that humanitarian work always has a political agenda—whether it’s draining the people out of rebel-held territories or feeding one side while ignoring the other. “The relief people are very political. Most will sit back. But some will jump in.”

Throughout our discussions Machar retains an air of calm reconciliation. At first he is careful not to openly insult or level accusations at Kiir, as he has in previous satellite-phone interviews with media from his bush hideout. I wonder whether he perhaps hopes this skirting of direct opinion, coupled with his selective interpretation of history, will lead me to demonize the president for him.

“John Garang warned me about Salva Kiir,” he says. “He split off once, and it took days of constant negotiation to work out a deal.”

I ask him whether he thinks his insurgency will be successful. “I was trained by your ‘First Group,’” he says,

referring to his combat training conducted long ago by US Special Forces. He even has a copy of The US Army/ Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, albeit an old edition.

So has Machar come full circle? Has he reverted to rebellion?

“I am not a rebel. I view myself as the legitimate government. We are resisting Salva Kiir… We are not rebelling against anything. We want democracy.” He flashes a gap-toothed grin; he’s almost able to make starting yet another civil war sound like a good time.

I ask who is supporting this resistance. “Many,” he answers, so I get more specific: Who is officially providing financial, political, and military support?

He insists that he has no such supporters but hopes to find a solution to this dilemma soon. “There is no money. The oil companies have shut down or pulled their employees out. My people are volunteers.”

A thought crosses my mind that it was perhaps this low-key, passive-aggressive, chuckle-and-shuffle approach to answering questions that made Kiir finally snap.

Machar’s lighthearted, dismissive view still doesn’t explain the 500 or more murders of Nuer by Dinkas the day after the incident at the presidential garrison.

He feigns innocence and surprise at the violence even though it was his increasingly belligerent stance against Kiir that triggered the split. Machar knew very well that Kiir’s rhetoric was mirroring the horrible days of 1991, when Machar simply declared himself leader of South Sudan and forced Garang to go after him, fleeing all the way to the border of Ethiopia, where in a panic Machar joined with Khartoum. History seemed poised to repeat itself.

“Most of the violence was against Nuers,” Machar says.

“They went from house to house killing people. [Kiir] must answer for these crimes. He wants to be a dictator, but he is in a democracy.”

I ask whether he feels similar to Joseph Kony, once a governor of Jonglei under Khartoum but now living in the bush, demonized by the media, and classified as an enemy by a recognized government. Machar doesn’t see any correlation.

“I met Kony many, many times. He is a complex person bordering on paranoia. I forged a peace deal when he entered South Sudan in 2006, and Museveni should thank me for finally bringing peace to Uganda.” Machar doesn’t mention that he was fighting for the same Khartoum paymasters who had hired Kony to fight Uganda.

“Kony is like a cat. Sometimes he scares himself. I met him five kilometers from the border with Sudan. I said I would talk to Museveni. I brought two trucks of food. I set up the meeting through [the Lord’s Resistance Army’s second-in-command] Vincent Otti. [Kony ordered the shooting of] Otti during the discussions because he thought he was being bought.

“I told [Kony], ‘You must agree not to steal. Not to take children, or I will fight you.’ I gave him $25,000 to buy things so he wouldn’t steal. And maybe also to corrupt him a bit with Western things.” He laughs. “I met him many times. He agreed, but in the end he went back to the jungle. The Americans won’t find him in that area—it is very thick. It is a failure of technology with their drones.”

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Machar conveniently fails to mention that it was his alliance with Kony that brought the Lord’s Resistance Army into South Sudan. Or that he was quoted in 2008 as saying that the $25,000 he gave Kony was supplied by Kiir.

Our conversation is interrupted constantly by the ringing of at least four Thurayas by his side, and those are sometimes interrupted by calls handed to Machar by his minions. He seems too comfortable in this role—a wild card that when dealt has mostly resulted in dramatic violence and hardship.

In the cool evening, it’s clear to me that Machar is happiest in this role. He is in charge, making deals, and looking north to the vulnerable oil fields sitting on Nuer land. He knows Sudan needs to break away from Kiir’s southward vision and find a new leader who will ensure that the oil is pumped into the north.

Come twilight, villagers and refugees are burning grass.

Rebel scouts who have been out in the field all day trickle back to the camp. The billowing fire sends up gray smoke.

Off in the distance, in the north, is the massive red-orange glow of the undeveloped horizon. Southern Sudan is on fire literally and figuratively. We sleep well.

ust before dawn the camp springs to life. Soldiers flap their blankets, brush their teeth, and fold up bedrolls. Small cook fires are lit, and men sweep the areas clean to have their breakfasts of sorghum and tea. Around 9 AM shortwave radios crackle in the distance as they are tuned in to the news from Juba. Juba has no problem making up news. Just like Machar, the government has no problem telling Western journalists fictionalized accounts of South Sudan’s past and future.

Machar is back in a plastic chair, sitting at a plastic table where he fields calls on his Thurayas. Teny serves us a breakfast of boiled pumpkin and sweet tea. She is used to caring for soldiers and seems content in this role.

A modern woman educated in London, she appreciates our compliments on her cooking.

I continue my line of questioning from yesterday.

Machar tells me that John Kerry and Susan Rice recently called him to urge a diplomatic solution with Kiir. These tentative peace talks have allowed Machar to stall. He needs guns, bullets, fuel, and manpower. And he needs a

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Riek Machar and his wife, Angelina Teny, are the perfect Marxist-dressed, English-educated rebel-government-in-exile-in-the-bush power couple. Teny loves gourmet cooking, and Machar can educate visitors with his vast knowledge of the history of South Sudan. And of course, in between delicious, locally sourced dishes and PhD-level discussions, they are running a brutal war for survival.

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victory to show that he still has some sting. Just as in the old days, he’s planning to attack Malakal, the gateway to Juba, along the Nile. Even more critical to his mission, the oil sits on his ethnic homeland. Grab the oil, and Kiir’s government will wither and die. Yet Machar still talks about the oil as “the people’s.”

“We are trying to get over this dependence on aid. The oil generates $2 billion a year, and there are 13 million people here. At full production there will much more.”

A harsh, hot wind blows in, pushing the dust across the barren ground. Machar decides to decamp to a greener area by the river, and we take a break from our winding conversation. Wanting a local perspective on the subjects Machar and I have been exploring, I ask for 27-year-old Amos’s take on my back-and-forth with the former vice president.

I ask Machar if he feels similar to Joseph Kony, the Ugandan warlord who’s been demonized by the media. Machar doesn’t see any correlation.

One of the big moves Kiir made in the wake of the current round of scandals was firing Taban Deng Gai, the former governor of Unity state, Machar’s official spokesman (whom Machot had warned us not to go through), and Amos’s boss.

This is the same Taban Deng Gai who, in a previous life, oversaw dubious SPLA interests at a camp where Machot had been placed as a young orphan. Teny was once bitter enemies with Deng Gai in the race for governorship of this oil-saturated area. Machot is related to him. Amos is his bodyguard. The vast reaches of Africa can be a very small place at times. Enemies become allies, and vice versa.

Amos, now light-years away from even attempting to complete his mission, describes Deng Gai’s life as governor of oil-rich Unity state, based in Juba. “Taban has four Escalades. One is armored. He also has four Suburbans. He has a blue Lamborghini that was gift from a rich Chinese American businessman who said he has companies in 97 countries.” Deng Gai doesn’t even drive the Lamborghini.

There simply aren’t roads beyond Juba.

Amos thinks all of this is par for the course. “When you come from the outside, you give gifts. If you don’t give gifts, it’s up to you. Those that give gifts, get gifts.

That’s the African way.”

Amos succinctly sums up what he believes to be the main problem with the politics of his country: “All of the money is owned by the Nuer. The Dinka don’t have any oil states. And so they kill us.” When I ask him what he means by “kill,” he answers, “They went to Juba University

and dragged out Nuer with the marks on their foreheads.

They dragged them to the road, lined them up, and shot them. They question you in the Dinka language, and if you can’t answer they shoot you.”

After chatting with Amos, I notice Machar taking a call away from the crowd. He is speaking Arabic and seems more animated and pleased than normal, his gestures somehow more optimistic. I continue to watch while his bodyguards shoot me dirty looks.

Considering all the shiny new weapons in the hands of Machar’s men, I begin to wonder whether Khartoum has gotten back into the divide-and-conquer business. Machot tells me that the Sudanese government is airdropping munitions to Machar’s rebels in Akobo, a claim that was relayed to him over his numerous satellite-phone exchanges with commanders outside Bor. Perhaps it’s why shortly after landing in South Sudan we saw men test-firing the weapons to make sure their barrels were still true after the impact of the drop. It might also be why small units strapped with brand-new and fully stocked ammunition belts were being trained in the distance across the river.

They were proud to pose for Tim with their new guns, some of which had their serial numbers scratched off.

I ask Machar about the weapons, which become even more interesting as he idly speculates that Khartoum has no reason to arm the Nuer, because this would undermine Sudan’s participation in the current round of peace talks.

But his vague dismissals of Sudan’s support do nothing to negate Machar’s former alliance with the government up north—an alliance that resulted in the bloodshed of people whose freedom he had once claimed as his cause.

Later on I take pictures of Machar in his lawn chair, catching a few winks. The man likes his naps. His bodyguard chucks a rock at me, and Machar is startled. His eyes open, and he waves off his bodyguard, falling back to sleep while a goat examines the ground under his chair.

Continuing our conversation, I try to get personal. We talk about sadness and the past. Machar tells me that the last time he and Teny cried was on July 30, 2005, when they traveled to Bor to commemorate the sixth anniversary of Garang’s death.

The journey to Bor turned into an emotional apology for the November 15, 1991, murders of 2,000 people in the region, most of them Dinka. There was also residual anger over the unrestrained ethnic violence triggering the famine that followed, which claimed an even greater number of Dinka pastoralists.

Garang’s widow, Rebecca Nyandeng, had organized the meeting. She had long been critical of Machar’s 1991 decision to split away from her husband to fight alongside the Khartoum government.

As Machar and Teny stood outside the house of the late Garang, the normally grinning vice president broke into tears. “I should take squarely the responsibility of the events of 1991,” he said. Teny also sobbed heavily as the crowd began to wail.

What Machar didn’t talk about that day or during my visit was his relationship with leaders of the White Army— men who rely on advice from gods rather than a Thuraya to make their decisions. This violent and unpredictable mob had recently reassembled at Machar’s behest, and they were preparing for battle.

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TOP: The White Army is a collection of synchronized Nuer tribesmen motivated by their common goal of revenge and looting.

BOTTOM: Dusk in the rebel camp. The dull red glow of grass fires mixes with the sounds of cooking, laughing, and the chatter of shortwave radios.

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he events that led to the recent instability of South Sudan culminated on December 14 and 15, 2013. At the December 14 meeting of the SPLM’s National Liberation Council (NLC), amid mounting tensions within the government, President Kiir lobbed thinly veiled accusations of treachery at Machar, who was sitting next to him.

“In light of the recent development in which some comrades have come out to challenge my executive decisions, I must warn you that this behavior is tantamount to indiscipline, which will take us back to the days of the 1991 split,” Kiir was reported as saying at the council meeting by the independent news site SouthSudanNation.com.

The following day, leading opposition members Machar, SPLM Secretary Pagan Amum, and the late John Garang’s wife, Rebecca Nyandeng, publicly boycotted the second day of the NLC meeting. Kiir immediately classified their actions as an attempted coup and called for the arrest of several cabinet members who had been removed from their positions the previous summer. He then ordered that all members of the Tiger Battalion presidential guard in Juba be disarmed, after which Nuer members were rearmed. A bloodbath of infighting would ensue, quickly spreading throughout historically troubled regions like Bor in the months and weeks to follow. Political alliances became tribal as Nuer commanders aligned themselves with Machar for self-preservation.

On December 19, Nuer commander Peter Gadet attacked Bor and seized control of SPLA bases there in apparent collusion with Machar, even though the two had feuded in the past.

No one could deny it now: South Sudan was officially at war.

Traditional peacekeeping mechanisms like the UN, African Union, and Intergovernmental Authority on Development did not have the resources—or gall—to take action.

Two days after Gadet’s attack on Bor, a massive evacuation of foreigners began when a US rapid-reaction force attempted to enter Bor, where they immediately found themselves taking fire from Gadet’s rebel troops. Expats, members of the UN, and NGOs were now under attack from those whom they had worked so hard to save.

In January 2014 organizations like the UN and the International Crisis Group estimated that, over the first ten days of fighting in Juba, Dinka combatants had massacred some 10,000 people, mostly ethnic Nuers. At first many considered the estimates to be exaggerations, but the sobering reality became apparent with the UN’s report that more than 500,000 had been displaced by the conflict and with UNICEF’s warning, on April 11, that the region was at serious risk of famine that could result in the deaths of up to 50,000 children.

By January 10 Mayom and Bentiu had been torched and looted by rebel forces. Malakal had been razed a second time, and an influx of mortars, gunships, and heavy fighting had flattened Bor. In late December Uganda dropped cluster bombs on the masses of rebel fighters outside Bor. The Ugandans insisted they were preventing ethnic cleansing, while the Nuers attacking the towns also insisted they were preventing ethnic cleansing. It was a new, even darker epoch for South Sudan. When everyone is committing genocide, things tend to get confusing. The country wasn’t just at war; it seemed hell-bent on annihilating itself.

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The Juba government reclaimed Bor on January 18, with the help of the better-trained and better-equipped Uganda People’s Defense Force. Five days later, a ceasefire was signed that effectively locked down government troops inside the city, allowing the rebels outside to amass and hone their points of attack. The US-trained and -supported Ugandan soldiers were suddenly the bad guys after the UN confirmed their use of cluster bombs in February. At first they denied their presence inside South Sudan, but they finally owned up to it when they ran out of funds and were forced to ask the Ugandan government for additional support. Kiir promised to pay back the $48 million Uganda had spent to keep him in power.

The Nuers trapped in refugee camps and the thousands of rebels poised outside the towns had every reason to fear an oncoming slaughter of immense proportions.

In early February Machar announced that the seven SPLM party members detained by Kiir were not part of the “new rebellion” he was leading, further complicating matters. In the same month, to make sure Machar knew this was personal, Kiir commanded his forces to destroy Machar’s hometown of Leer, in Unity state. In a depressing moment of déjà vu, civilian oil workers were then attacked on Block 5A in Unity.

Short of a miracle, there was nothing that could save South Sudan now.

Things weren’t going so well for Machar and his Nuer sympathizers, either. By the time I arrived at Machar’s secret headquarters, the rebels—or “resistance,” as he prefers to say—had lost control of Bor, Bentiu, and Malakal, and they could not enter Juba for fear of triggering another massacre.

Somewhere around 60,000 people, mostly Nuers, had been sheltered in UN compounds, straining the resources of the world’s largest intergovernmental organization. Machar’s only hope, or so he thought, was to seize the oil fields by force and try to bargain his way back.

In the peace talks set up by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, it was clear that Machar was being outmaneuvered by Kiir—not in the hotel rooms of the Addis Ababa Sheraton where the diplomacy was happening, but in the media. The government of South Sudan had successfully portrayed Machar as a desperate fugitive, on the run and hiding from retribution in the bush.

When I talk to Machar’s wife, Angelina Teny, the war doesn’t seem so large and confusing. Despite her education and political background, she takes pleasure in cooking and serving food to those in the camp. Even though she’s a former minister of energy and mining, her view of recent events is more personal than political.

She and Machar are dressed in matching green uniforms.

The sight of the happy rebel couple chatting side by side creates a photogenic Mr.-and-Mrs.-Che-Guevara-in-the-bush look. But the truth is, she has only one dress with her; as she told me earlier, the oversize uniform is her only other outfit, the one she fled in. Teny’s polite English upbringing shines through, even in her descriptions of the events that forced the couple to seek refuge in the bush.

“I didn’t even take my purse,” she says and starts to tense up. “We drove, and there were people in front of us fighting at the roadblocks. One man was shot right in front of me.” She measures her distance from the shooting with her hands, her face pained and wincing.

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To make his point, he severs an artery of the tethered animal, and the bull slowly bleeds out in a torrent of bright red.

The elder invokes the White Army, the force that rises out of the ether whenever the Nuer are threatened by other tribes. A force that exists only to do violence. A force that is linked to God via prophets, who live fewer than two hours away by a giant mound that was once considered the holy center of Nuer culture.

What I discover from Machot is that Machar has been sitting in intense meetings with the latest prophet, a man who has visions and instructs Machar and his generals on the correct movements and timing for attacks. Machar’s military strength is puny compared with the power of the hordes of armed Nuer minutemen who will pick up weapons and burn down villages at a moment’s notice. Their impetus for and methods of killing do not come from a Special Forces counterinsurgency manual but rather from the predictions of seers and ancient war songs.

According to embassy cables published by WikiLeaks three years after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in 2005, Machar secretly met with the government of Khartoum to discuss what might happen if Salva Kiir were “assassinated.” The classified cable describes a meeting in which Machar and Sudan’s second vice president, Ali Osman Taha, agreed that Machar would assume the presidency of South Sudan if Kiir somehow met a violent end. Machar also tentatively secured funding for militias in Equatoria, Upper Nile, and Unity.

Peace had blocked Machar from taking control of the oil and emboldened his desire to loot his country. If democracy and reason would not work, then Machar would try war.

AP Photo/South Sudan TV

“People called from the house, terrified because they were using a tank to break down the back wall. They killed our people in the house.” She pauses and begins to choke up. “Over 500 people were killed. Hunted down and murdered. Mostly Nuer.”

She is at a loss for words. The small generator sputters to a stop.

“We are out of petrol for the generator,” she says. “They will go to town and see. There is irony in the idea of a fuel shortage in an oil-rich country.”

Both “Dr. Riek”—as he is called by his people—and his wife are at once completely Western and completely African.

But under their professional facades and their larger agenda is something ancient and mysterious.

Just outside the compound is an elder giving a passionate speech. He, like Machar’s fathers, is a spearman. A man who has more than simple political influence. A man who has the undivided attention of his peers. A man who has the power to forge steel with fire. A man who has spiritual influence over his brethren.

Dressed in traditional garb, the spearman has brought out a beautiful skinned bull. His fiery speech is translated from Nuer for me. He is chastising the gathered soldiers and tribesmen fleeing Juba, Bor, and other strongholds, running away from Kiir’s advancing troops.

“This retreat was a problem,” the spearman says. “From today on, no more retreating! It’s time for Kiir to get out. God is on our side. We praise God for getting Riek out and leading us to victory.” He waves the spear as he exhorts the crowd.

“This month is a good time for fighting. When was the last time we ran from the Dinka? You look like a bunch of little babies. You will be slaves if you give up your country.”

President Salva Kiir of South Sudan, center, giving a televised address on December 16, 2013. Kiir claimed the military had foiled a coup orchestrated by soldiers allied with Riek Machar. By December 19, South Sudan was at war.

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fter the boat ride we need to find a vehicle from Nasir to Malakal—a straight-line distance of less than 120 miles but another painful, all-day journey along winding bush tracks. Yet there are few vehicles here other than looted NGO cars, all of which have been press-ganged for the big assault on Malakal.

A local journalist named Ruot has heard that we were heading to Malakal, however, and he offers to drive us if we chip in for fuel. We set out at 6 AM, maneuvering along

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dirt roads through forests of thorn trees. As we approach Doma we decide to stop briefly, ducking into a church. The pastor greets us. He is kind and helpful, telling us that a garrison recently passed through on the way to Malakal.

Things are happening; we’re getting closer. We give the pastor our best and return to the car.

Soon we hit what looks like a mirage: a road, abandoned long ago in the midst of construction, about 15 miles south of Malakal. Mounds of dirt from when it was being paved still remain, and trees have grown among them. As we drive into the city, a straggling long line of

Upon arriving in Malakal there is a sense of joy as rebels celebrate and hoard their loot in encampments.

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soldiers and civilians is headed in the opposite direction.

The road widens as we approach the rebel base. We pass an abandoned tank, and soldiers drive by at insane speeds clinging to looted NGO Toyotas.

We pull into a commandeered road-construction site with neat rows of large backhoes and a group of men resting under a tree. We are looking for General Gathoth Gatkuoth, the former commander of the area, the former commissioner of Nasir, and the man Machar has tapped to retake Malakal.

This strategic Nile port is at the northern edge of the great swamp and anchors the oil region to the north. It is also where the rebels can receive support from Khartoum— if they can take it and hold it.

Gatkuoth and his command staff are thrilled to meet us. He has a big announcement to make, but first he has to make himself appear official and attach his epaulets.

After squaring away, he returns to deliver his news: “At 7 AM this morning, after a short battle, the resistance has taken control of Malakal. They attacked from the south and from the north, pushing the government forces north and across the river to flee.”

The general has no idea of the casualty count yet. He insists that there are no civilians in the city, because it has now been leveled three times over. He plans to continue pushing north and to take control of the oil. Gatkuoth lists Machar’s talking points against Kiir—calling for an end to corruption, tribalism, and so on—and credits the White Army with today’s victory. But where is the White Army?

Few if any journalists have been with the White Army in combat. Any outside knowledge rests in a few academic papers that generally describe it as an amorphous mob capable of great violence and destruction.

And then, as if summoned on cue, the White Army begins to arrive.

A battered white fleet of repurposed NGO station wagons rumbles into the construction compound, the dust blooming up behind them. Hyper and adrenalineaddled, the soldiers are making a wild return from battle, yelling and shouting, hanging out of, surfing on top of, and stuffed inside of the stream of vehicles. They’re dressed in no particular uniform but all wear red headbands, fashioned out of cloth, plastic, or string. They grip battered rusty weapons, have painted nails, wear flip-flops and dirty T-shirts. Streams of encrusted blood run down the windows and doors. It appears that inside there are wounded.

As they slam to a stop, dozens of soldiers pour out of the vehicles, many of them children. Parts of butchered animals get tossed out the back, along with backpacks, empty water jugs, and other gear.

It turns out that many are injured. Some have been shot in the face. Others have sustained wounds in their chests or limbs. They are lifted down painfully and handed to a man dressed in scrubs. Inside the hot building that functions as a clinic the men sit patiently. There are no medical supplies. The fighters ask us for painkillers. Tim Freccia hands a man a packet of morphine pills, and the man is surprised that the entire packet is his to keep.

Each group that rolls in has its own story. The first is elated, saying they killed more than 20 men. The next

group is angry, because the men next to them refused to hold the line, avoiding the brunt of the battle. Some men on the clinic’s roof are hollering and waving their RPGs and AKs to pose for pictures. Smashed windows and bullet holes decorate their hot-wired trucks. Some other men insist they heard gunships and are positive the Ugandans will try to take Malakal back that night. As more and more groups roll in to dump their wounded, it’s clear the only thing they have in common is the high of taking Malakal.

Gatkuoth tells us that 35,000 members of the White Army are currently fighting 10,000 of the Sudanese Armed Forces. We estimate the real numbers to be in the low thousands, but tallying is obviously difficult. It seems prudent to divide everything by ten.

A dump truck approaches, packed with rebels suffering more grievous wounds than the previous groups. All of them have bloodshot eyes, are tired and covered in dirt.

They’re coated not in the insect-repelling white ash that gave the White Army its name but in road dust from the high-speed, two-hour trip from the front lines. Blood soaks one man’s shirt as he stares at the sky in a daze. Another breathes with difficulty through clenched teeth. Gut-shot fighters endure the pain without yelling out. There is no screaming, crying, or complaining. The wounded fighters simply wait in silence for treatment.

When Ruot, the journalist, checks in to file his story, his employer advises him that it is too dangerous to be here.

Ruot tells us that he must return to Nasir for the night.

Frustrated but pragmatic, we resign to making the long drive back with him. The next morning we immediately find fighters heading to Malakal. We hitch a ride with them and return to the battlefield. his time, there are no people streaming out of the town carrying household items and personal possessions. We speed toward the dark plumes of smoke and barrel into the inferno.

Stolen Toyota trucks with wounded aboard blast by, kicking up dust, rebels hanging on for dear life. Rollovers adorn the road, their crushed front corners a sure sign of an off-road upending. Some have already been stripped of their tires.

Entering Malakal is surreal. The town is filled with disjointed scenes of chaos: buildings ablaze set to the soundtrack of constant gunfire, exploding RPGs, and incessant shouting. Rebels are everywhere, wandering with stacks of looted goods or burning down houses to flush out the enemy. During this time, some are happy to have their photos taken, while others fly into a fury at the sight of Tim’s lens. There is no organization, no structure—just fighters walking in random directions and the freshly killed lying where they fell, their goods scattered around their corpses. Nearly all of central Malakal has been scorched.

We are told the SPLA troops stationed here ultimately retreated, running into the river to find boats or drown.

The rebels killed many in the marshes along the Nile, but how many they don’t even care to guess.

As we cruise the town looking for whoever is in charge, we see that each house has been overtaken by a group of a dozen or more fighters. They point the way to the general.

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Women and children stick together in clusters, seeking a way to get out. The electric feel of warfare is in the air— but the SPLA soldiers have fled, leaving the White Army to take their revenge on civilians.

We push past a metal gate and find our grinning general in a mud house. Gatkuoth is discussing the situation with a council of officers. Among them is the field commander of the White Army, Odorah Choul, who has been shot in the left arm. He wears a green beret with a brass cobra insignia.

Gatkuoth is pleased to see us again. He warns that there are mercenaries lurking in Malakal, recruited from the Blue Nile and Darfur rebel groups.

I ask whether he or his men have encountered opposition from Ugandan troops while fighting here.

“No, but if we find a Ugandan soldier we will catch him and show you his ID.” The general takes a harder line than he did yesterday.

His demands include that Salva Kiir “step down from the presidency and pay $50,000 for every Nuer he has killed.”

Uganda’s Museveni must also be held accountable, or else, the general warns, this war will continue until it envelops

the entire country and then some. He tells me that his plan is to seize the oil-rich areas, clear them out, cancel all the contracts, and give the profits to the Nuer, because it is their oil. “All contracts will be canceled because they are corrupt!” he booms.

We tell the general that we want to look around town, but he warns us that there are still snipers hiding in the buildings above. He points to the main road a few yards away and says, “A man was shot just over there.”

If one wanted to find one place and time that evokes the true nature of war, it would be Malakal this evening. Tens of thousands of young men high on violence are celebrating, burning, looting, and posing for photographs.

Firsthand accounts from the fighters I talk to capture the surreal passion of revenge-fueled violence. After the SPLA soldiers fled to the river and were gunned down, the White Army went from house to house to murder, rape, and pillage. Soldiers are being burned alive. Some have been stabbed in the rectum with spears. Others have been impaled on top of one another. I notice one car that is not hot-wired: “I shot the driver,” a rebel tells me with pride.

Looter or liberator? A White Army soldier in Malakal carries off the spoils of war.

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Some are embarrassed by the bloodlust around them.

James, a 27-year-old student who was studying biology before joining the White Army, sums up the chaos that his life has become: “Before this I was studying; now I am just shooting people.”

Beyond the calm discourses on strategy that Machar gave under the tree by the river, Malakal is payback for what happened 400 miles away in Juba. The White Army is the thing we hate about humanity—pure violence, greed—the thing the West insists will never happen again but is happening here and now.

Machot tries to give context to the chaos. He reminds us that many Nuer came here to retrieve their families from the local UN compound to which the violence between the Dinka and the Nuer had spread. That doesn’t explain the red-banded fighters who wander around firing their weapons into the air, laden with looted objects, with no clear idea whether they’ve come out ahead.

Groups of men menace the town in increasing numbers.

Some gather to ignite straw buildings and then fire their weapons into them, even when no one seems to be shooting back. Machot explains that they have to burn the houses

so that the people inside will “give up.” I point out that the only people here are Machar’s men, the White Army, and the dead. It’s obvious that he is very uncomfortable with what he’s seeing. His personal mission to save Sudan has been short-circuited by the events around him.

As dusk falls the scene is complete: a dark blue horizon with a glowing red line of burning homes, a sort of painting of hell. Hundreds of young men mill about, randomly firing their weapons into the air, still high and jubilant, but with no one left to kill and nothing left to loot. Thousands of Khartoum-supplied bullets stream overhead, and dozens of RPGs boom into the night and light up the sky. There is no shortage of ammunition here. PK machine guns and their green tracers arc into the air. The staccato burst of AK fire is omnipresent.

In the courtyard of the general’s house, soldiers lay out their bedrolls among scattered belts of empty ammo. We are invited to stay in Gatkuoth’s room, which is ostensibly safe but in reality may be the most dangerous lodging in the city if Ugandans decide to zero in on his Thuraya.

At 10 PM the adrenaline is flushed, the gunfire subsides, and the flames on the burning buildings flicker out.

Malakal aflame. While some people rape, burn, and kill, others look for water or dance.

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The line of people leaving Malakal has no start or finish. It is a continuous stream of humanity fleeing the destroyed city.

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he next day the ravaged city of Malakal seems quiet—“quiet” meaning fewer looters, gunshots, and burning buildings. I am up before dawn, watching hundreds of civilians trying to board a single, battered bus. They swarm it, handing off bags and bundles and climbing through every open door; a man on the roof catches a suitcase as others toss theirs up. Exasperated, the driver pulls 100 yards away, but more people squeeze inside.

A blue light illuminates the town. Someone is firing an antiaircraft gun at nothing in particular. Fifty yards away a building goes up in flames, and the sun struggles to pierce the pall of smoke.

At 6 AM a bugle is sounded by someone at a loss to play the simplest of brass instruments. Rebels stumble around in wrapped blankets. Some have already progressed to a nearby field, where they drop their pants and shit or brush their teeth, spitting on the ground. Everyone has that deep cough that’s a hallmark of dust, grease fires, and respiratory infection.

Like a drunk awaking from a bender, the town and its remaining inhabitants seem somber, confused, and embarrassed. No one seems to know whether the government troops have retreated for the time being or are out there planning a counterassault.

As the light increases, I see a mind-blowingly long throng of people making their way across an open field and out of town. I can’t pick out the front or the rear of the line. It is endless. It is cinematic. It is biblical.

Each person is carrying something. One man hauls a piece of lumber; another drags a bicycle. Most have sleeping mats and plastic chairs. It seems critical for everyone to take plastic chairs out of Malakal—in a land of trees and reeds, the $3 plastic chair is considered valuable.

The White Army is escorting the trapped families out of the UN compound. I start to count, but since the line has no end, I can only assume I am watching 5,000 people every hour. As they walk into the rising sun, the refugees shimmer like a hazy mirage. All are looking at a full day’s walk in the blistering heat to a river camp 12 miles away.

The vast number of soldiers leaving makes this seem less a victory than a retreat.

Our genial General Gatkuoth is holding court inside our wattle-and-daub house. Outside, babies run circles around tired mothers. Soldiers come in and out of the compound looking for their friends or trying to find out what is happening. There are no radios or other means of communication. Even the general’s Thuraya is acting up.

Today he wants us to tour the liberated town of Malakal, to prove that he has taken it for good (Gatkuoth will lose Malakal in a few days… and then take it back again).

A jet flies over town at exactly 7:28 AM. Aircraft could be heard overhead the night before, and no one seemed too bothered by it. This morning the rebels are firing their guns and RPGs into the air once again, as they finally have a target, albeit one that’s well out of range. The hair-trigger sense of tension is gone and has been replaced by confusion.

An eloquent new friend of ours, a Nuer teacher named James, has learned that his house has been torched to the ground. His wife and children are already at the UN

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camp. He returned only to see what’s left of his belongings, which is not much. On the way into the city, we passed burned and abandoned Dinka villages in as bad a state as Malakal, if not worse. James knows what to expect next, none of it good. “The enemy has nothing to fight for,” he tells me. “We are defending ourselves and fighting for our homeland.”

Simon, a 26-year-old student, is another Malakal resident who suddenly needs to find a new place to live. “This is an old thing, the Dinka and the Nuer,” he says, while a soldier in the background reads dozens of names off a roll call as conscripts in mismatched uniforms stand in front of him. Simon points out that many members of the White Army are actually former or perhaps even current SPLA who have simply ditched their uniforms to participate in a little recreational looting.

Riek Machar has only three counties in the north left to conquer before he controls the oil. Although Malakal essentially gives him control of the Nile, Machar and his men have yet to reach the heart of the oil-producing areas in Paloch and Bentiu, the source of Salv Kiir’s money.

Our looted Toyota appears, and we jam in. The general, in the midst of lecturing some rebels, slides into the front seat. He wants to castigate the troops milling about and get them to move north. But the White Army is too busy checking out their plunder, firing weapons into the air, or bailing their families out of the camps.

As we take our tour with Gatkuoth, he stops to check in with the numerous clusters of White Army members gathered in small camps. Many encampments fly tribal flags outside their villages. The general tells the fighters to stop sitting around and continue pressing the front line northward. The men push back, demanding food, ammo, and water. Others want to know if we brought doctors; there is a lot of wounded and no medical care.

“Why are you still here?” Gatkuoth asks. “We need to chase [Kiir’s] troops far away so our children can be safe.”

Each group we visit has a nice cache of what appears to be looted goods. The spoils surrounding them include a variety of generators, motorbikes, and household supplies. The general’s Thuraya keeps ringing, but he’s having trouble picking up the calls. Bad signal. He gruffly hands the phone to his aide. The meet-and-greets become increasingly contentious, and finally the general just tells the driver to head into town.

The smoking ruins of Malakal prove that boredom and vengeance have replaced strategic purpose. Though the wounded elsewhere need a doctor, one group is setting a clinic on fire.

All around us is clear evidence of the extrajudicial killing of civilians and other heinous war crimes. Dinkas murdered in their beds at the hospital. Young girls raped and thrown away like garbage. The elderly gunned down.

An old woman with her brains blown out. An older man with a bundle of corn lying facedown in the dirt. Rebels walk by without noticing the carnage, eager to pose for victory photos.

One traumatized old Shilluk woman sits catatonically amid the backdrop of smoke and fire. I give her something to drink and some money. She just sits and stares some more. The general is displeased, and his bodyguards shake their heads. I can’t save her.

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One of our tour companions, a thoughtful man with a deep, melodious voice who says he is an information officer for the White Army, answers any question I have with a canned response: “At this time I do not have enough information to answer that question.” He says he studied theology in Canada up until two years ago. He lived in Calgary, Toronto, and many other towns across the country. He didn’t like Canada, so he returned home and worked with NGOs in Nasir. He is not proud of what he sees, or at least what we are seeing. “This is a real war,” he says. I ask him about troop counts and some other things. He apologizes and says, “We are having problems accessing information from their side. We are not that professional yet.”

Walking around, I begin to tally the dead civilians. I stop when I count seven within just a few minutes, realizing that it’s pointless. No one will ever admit to killing them. No one will count them. There will be no graves.

The soldiers sheepishly insist they were “caught in the cross fire.” Most victims are crumpled, keeled over, the scant possessions they were trying to escape with lining the street, minus what has already been sacked. One man

is facedown with his rear jutting into the air. Violence like this only begets more violence as people find out how their relatives were murdered. By the time the media flies in with the NGOs, the world will read stories about vultures and the smell of rotting flesh and jot down the eyewitness accounts. We are here in real time. Like a child caught in the act, the White Army has nothing to say, only lame excuses.

The dead soldiers we see are about a day old, in a more advanced state of decomposition—not bloated but stiff and blackened. They’ve been here perhaps a day or two longer than the civilian corpses. The locals have been turned over and awkwardly posed in rigor mortis, their underwear pulled down, revealing the large gash wounds from when they were still alive and begging for mercy—mutilations caused by spears and Russian-style bayonets. Some of the bodies are by the river, one with a spear broken off in his rear. Another is frozen in time, as if he is still begging his tormentors to stop. A soldier lies scorched beyond recognition. Others are still halfsubmerged in the river. Only the crocodiles know how many died there.

Women carry water from one of the few working boreholes. The Nile is polluted by corpses.

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achot continues his habit of vanishing for most of the day. As we are loading our vehicle and preparing to leave, he appears out of nowhere and shows us a metal plate and plastic water container.

He has been looting the International Committee of the Red Cross on the river, insisting it is overflowing with food. It took him most of the day to figure out that the reason he felt strange was thirst. On his way toward the river to fetch some water, he realized he had nothing to put it in. Hence his subsequent exploration of the ICRC warehouse.

As he made his way to the marshy riverbank, he saw a few bodies, then more bodies, then bodies stacked on bodies in the killing fields. He fled and forgot about the water entirely.

Late that night, after eight hours on the road, we arrive back in Nasir. We return to the abandoned Adventist Development and Relief Agency compound and make ourselves at home.

In the morning the manager of the camp demands money for our lodging, even though, a few days ago, we were told we could stay for free. I ask him how much, but he refuses to give us a number and rebuffs the several offers I make. After an argument, he storms off into town with Machot to fetch the police, locking the gate behind him.

The “police” are a small group of men and children with guns. Uneager to face what passes for Nasir’s law enforcement a second time, we decide to bail and hire a donkey boy loitering outside the compound fence. We smash the gate’s cheap lock with a discarded pipe.

He takes us down to the river, where we sit under a large tree, inhaling the fishy air. Soon Machot strolls up with the angry manager, just the two of them. Machot accuses us of cheating the man and says the commissioner asked him why he has brought these white troublemakers into town. I point out that we have offered the manager money on multiple occasions, that he has not specified what amount will satisfy him, and that I can even send the money directly to his employer at the NGO. Then Machot angrily tells the conniving NGO manager to get the police. He’s speaking in Nuer, but even I can translate that one.

I suggest to Machot that he stay here while we move on because I’m starting to grow suspicious that he’s playing the straight man in these seemingly endless petty scams.

“Instead of coming here to ‘fix’ your country, you’re on the side of the extortionists and con men,” I tell him. “Maybe

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it’s best you stay here and, when you’re ready, figure out how to make your own way home.”

This further angers Machot and results in another lecture from him that doesn’t make much sense to me. The police soon arrive—an angry man with a stick and even angrier men with AKs. At this moment, with all his posturing, Machot could easily be mistaken for one of them.

They try pointing their weapons at us. I suggest that if they do this again I will, in true rebel fashion, stick them up their behinds. Then they turn their fury on Machot, who is suddenly taken aback at being singled out as one of “us” instead of one of “them.”

Amos hangs quietly in the background, calling the game in my ear. “They want to beat you… They won’t beat you… Now they are going to beat you… Now they want to shoot you.” When I ask him to explain that shooting us means they won’t get paid, they wind it down to just a beating again.

There are four of us and six of them, though they have guns and I don’t expect Amos or Machot to offer much help if things get out of hand. Despite their efforts to rattle us, they don’t end up beating anyone and instead storm off to the commissioner’s office to enlist more angry locals and firepower.

As the kids stare at us, I ask Machot what he thinks of his country and countrymen now. We have come to document what is going on, and while many people have worked hard to help us achieve our goal, some have worked just as hard to hinder us.

Machot has a defining moment as he sinks down, realizing he is an American and a target for abuse at the hands of extortionists. He holds his head in his hands. “These people are crazy,” he says. “These people are crazy.”

I seize the moment to ask him what he thought when he saw the killing fields in Malakal, all the raping, burning, and shooting. Why was he so eager to believe the rebels’ claim that the women and elderly were “caught in the cross fire”?

What does he think now of all the rhetoric Riek Machar delivered under the trees? Was it in any way contradicted by the brutal killing sprees of the White Army? Machot has nothing to say, which is the correct answer. There is nothing to say. He just sits there holding his head in his hands. It reminds me of the catatonic Shilluk woman whom I gave a drink and some money the other day.

The members of the mob, eager to wrangle reinforcements, are halfway back to the commissioner’s office when they notice that our boat out of here is pulling in. We are already preparing to load up. For once this country’s

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slowness is working in our favor. Knowing that their time is limited, they rush back, with sticks and guns flailing.

“You are not leaving!” they shout. “You will go to prison.”

I mention that there is no prison anywhere near here.

“We will beat you.”

All the while, the renegade NGO manager realizes that what started as his inability to do basic math has spiraled into another dimension. I walk straight into the angry mob and put my arm around the manager’s neck, covering his heart with my left hand. I ask him if he can feel his heart pounding. He is too scared to reply.

The makeshift police force, seeing this sudden détente and fearing that their instigator has flipped, start threatening him too. None of it makes sense, other than as a microcosm of how things work in South Sudan. Enemies become friends at the snap of a finger, and now the toughguy NGO manager needs me to get him out of a potentially severe beating.

So I offer him $200 to solve all our problems and suggest that he make a big display of accepting it. I am sure the mob will divide that into enough portions to leave him

with almost nothing. I count out the money very publicly, admonishing him to be more specific next time. Disgusted with the lot of us, the rabble storms off.

The trip upriver is fun. Crocodiles, cranes, pelicans, fish, herons, and children splash in the water as we make our way to the Ethiopian border crossing. The facilities aren’t much to look at—just a few boats, a World Food Program warehouse, and yet another predatory cluster of Nuers who threaten the jitney drivers and demand money for doing nothing.

Over the border, the Ethiopians give off a completely different vibe. When we ask how much it will cost for a trip to the nearest town, they quote a fair price. When the Nuer porters threaten them and try to block their exit, the Ethiopians gracefully cast down their eyes and wait.

I demand that we start moving. The Nuers respond by trying to latch onto our tiny three-wheeled vehicles in a strange attempt to mime jumping aboard. The drivers slowly wait them out a second time, and we blast down the road.

The madness fades behind us. Unfortunately, South Sudan is not going to be saved anytime soon.

Author Robert Young Pelton and former Lost Boy Machot Lat Thiep became fast friends when Robert helped rescue Machot’s family from Somali kidnappers.

After experiencing the best and the worst of South Sudan, they head from Nasir to Ethiopia and then home.

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he civil war in South Sudan that began on December 15, 2013, shows no sign of abating. While the United States threatens to slap increasingly strict sanctions on anyone who stands in the way of the overarching concept of “peace,” Riek Machar’s forces control much of eastern South Sudan.

After a long wait for military supplies from Khartoum, Nuer rebels have seized the oil-producing areas in Bentiu.

Malakal was lost and has been won back again, the oil areas in Upper Nile are under attack, and Jonglei is firmly under Machar’s control.

Secret training camps outside Khartoum are preparing more military units to head south in support of the White Army. The UN estimates that more than 17,000 people, mostly Nuer, have been murdered, though the true figure is likely much higher considering the many bodies dumped into the Nile.

As of press time, President Salva Kiir still sits defiant in the capital of Juba but is desperately looking for sponsors as the flow of oil has been turned off once again. Following our visit with Machar, a few journalists have managed to catch flights on relief planes and interview him. He mostly gives canned responses under the shade tree, repeating his demands, while Angelina Teny works for peace agreements in Addis Ababa and Nairobi. None of the journalists who have met with him since our trip have received Machar’s permission to cover the White Army in action. After the atrocities they committed in Malakal, its members have been ordered to undergo training of one sort or another.

In the meantime, the civilians still suffer. The UN estimates that it will need $1.27 billion to deal with the aftermath of the disaster. Right now, it is a billion short of that goal. Meanwhile, 3.7 million South Sudanese are at risk of famine, with a million displaced from their homes since the violence broke out.

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Doctors Without Borders doctorswithoutborders.org Adventist Development and Relief Agency adra.org

The next incarnation of civil war in South Sudan is finally being termed as such in headlines, articles, and op-eds. The situation was described by an April editorial in the New York Times as “the worst starvation in Africa since the 1980s, when hundreds of thousands perished in Ethiopia.”

Machot is back to work at Costco. He’s looking for someone to publish his memoir, and a sponsor for a return trip to his birthplace so he can continue to save South Sudan.

If you would like to support groups that are actively working inside rebel areas and other parts of the country, please contact one of the organizations below.

Medair medair.org The Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development acted.org

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VICE MAGAZINE VOLUME 12 NUMBER 4

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