Shattered Sudan
Randy Olson
National Geographic Magazine
It is really pretty gutsy for National Geographic magazine to devote 38 pages to Sudan and its problems, especially considering the compassion fatigue our society has about Africa. But there are real reasons for doing this story. This is the largest country in Africa. 2.5 million people have died in the Sudanese Civil War during its 19 years, creating the most casualties of any war since WWII. Serious strife in this country has spanned 40+ years.
The ruling Islamic northerners kidnap southern Africans and force them to fight their own people in order for the North to maintain its hold on the south’s vast petroleum and water resources. The people of the north remain largely unaffected by the turmoil they promote in the south, where brother is killing brother. Tribal factions are manipulated by the government for its own purposes. SPLA rebels fight the government and its oil company liaisons in an effort to force the country to unify: The south has the oil, but the north has the pipeline, access to the ocean and shipping.
Preview
The discord in the country affects the very health of its people. Southern Sudan is one of the last areas to have some of the simplest diseases cured. The United Nations has formed a coalition of aid organizations called "Operation Lifeline Sudan" (O.L.S) to help the humanitarian situation. But since the northern government in Khartoum decides flight schedules for relief flights, O.L.S. only flies to places Khartoum says it is safe for them to go. So aid is used as another weapon in the war.
Such incredible suffering and it is very poorly reported. It is always the edges of a long assignment that are the most difficult. You leave your comfy little life, pass through travel hell, which usually includes some Idi Amin like guy who shouts at you to put all 600 rolls of film thru some 1950's kind of X-ray machine the size of a Mack truck. It seems you always land in the same third world airport (in the dark) with the same fluorescent tubes at weird angles flickering on and off, ballasts almost dead whining away into the night. And usually by the next morning you are excited to be in a new place and ready to get to work.
But this first morning in Sudan was greeted with this editorial in the local paper. Title: Photography is Prohibited "Dear Sudanese tourist, our country and its unique exotic beauty may entice you; you may elatedly walk about the Nile Avenue, attracted by nature and its grace, which is evident on the riverbank. A sinful hand of yours may then reach for the camera to take a snap of the breathtaking scene, having the Nile as a magnificent background. You must realize then that you have violated an officially impermissible action, that you intentionally and openly subject your own self to criminal interrogation."
You have to understand Sudan shares borders with nine different countries and there are times when it has been at war with ALL of them. This creates a militarized provincial environment where anyone with a camera is treated as a spy.
