In August, Jason Pattinin’s correspondent and I crossed a walk from northern Uganda to the rebel -dominated southern Sudan. For four days, we walked over 40 miles via the bush, accompanied by rebel soldiers, to highlight one of the most reported conflicts in the world.
The reporting of the South Sudan war, which started in 2013, has always been a challenge due to the risks and logistical obstacles associated with reaching the remote areas where the fighting occurred. But during the past year, the war covers and its human repercussions became particularly difficult. Since the beginning of this year, the government of South Sudan has banned at least 20 foreign journalists in a clear effort to silence the reporters who have a busy record of cash reports on the government.
This systematic campaign coincided with the foreign press (Sudanese journalists in South Sudan long ago from prison and death to do their work) with two important development. In November 2016, the United Nations warned that violence against civilians in the southern region of tropical had risked escalating to genocide. After that, in February, the United Nations announced a human famine, and warned that 100,000 people were at risk of hunger to death as a result of civil war.
Journalists who seek to cover these events were left with equality options on an equal basis: self -censorship or risk -fraught journey into parts of the rebel -controlled country. Only a handful of journalists has tried the latter since the fighting escalated in July last year. For us, this was the second inclusion of the rebels this year.
Martin Abosha (the second of the right) is based on his forces in southern Sudan, which is controlled by the rebel. Photo by Jason Pattinken
We set out from a town in northern Uganda at five in the morning, and we rose along a rugged dirt path towards the southern Sudanese border. The rebel commander Martin Abosha, an American and southern citizen of the Sudanese, a US and southern Sudanese citizen who planned our formation at the weekend segment on the weekend, and two evidence, and several bags of rain full of our tents, sleep bags, four -day medical emergency tools in the United States.
Just as the sun began to rise over a far group of hills that we were aimed at crossing later that day, our car stopped in front of a stream. Because of the rainy cause, he was carrying water more than usual. It is time to go down and start walking, or “foot”, as South Sudan tends to call it.
We took off our shoes and wandered in cold cold waters. This was the first among many rivers that we had to cross along the way, either on foot or in flimsy boats of tree trunks. Each time, we fear the idea of falling into our camera equipment.
The first part of our journey in northern Uganda felt greatly like hiking across the national park. Passing the beautiful landscapes and ideal agricultural villages, one can almost forget that we were heading to a war zone – but we were about to get a reality examination.
We just crossed to South Sudan when they left twenty men armed with tall grass and surrounded us at gunpoint.
“He stopped! Who are you and where are you going,” Another one next to him had a hand grenade made of missiles supported on his shoulder, also an unambiguous target in our direction.
In instinct, we threw our hands in the air and exchanged a confusing look. Have we accidentally shocked the government soldiers? Or maybe we got to the “wrong” rebels? The ABUCHA group, called the People’s Liberation Army in Sudan in the opposition, is the largest armed group but not the only one in the scaling line, and it is a region that has been divided with competing militias and the cotton thieves who exploit the security void left by the war.
For our satisfaction, and only after Abucha answered a series of questions, this routine security examination has quickly gave the way to warmly welcome. The family will be accompanying our next four days while we were heading to their base and Loa, ABUCHA.
The rebels were not keeping in an easy task. Due to the country’s outbreak of basic infrastructure, the southern Sudanese are bigger to walk for tens of miles just to go to their daily lives. For stable Westerners, maintaining the targeted pace for “two meters per second” (about five miles per hour) has proven a challenge amid 90 degrees, all while filming and playing it through the heavy elephant herb.
The bullish trend of the exhausting terrain was that we kept safe. During our four -day journey, we did not cross a single path, and instead we are walking along a stunning network of narrow bush paths that seemed to know the rebels like their backs. It was an unwanted meeting with government forces, which were tending to adhere to roads and move in vehicles instead of foot, was very unlikely.
The closest that we have reached the government -controlled area was Lua’s visit, located just two kilometers from a major road often by government soldiers. We were unable to stay long, but the watch that we spent on the ground was offered a glimpse of what the villages should appear in many parts of the equator: burned clay huts, outstanding schools and clinics, and the fields of bor, and more strikingly – not civilians.
The war had a devastating impact on the southern Sudanese societies such as those in Lua, but many of them remained out of the limelight in the international media. Our four -day project in South Sudan, which is controlled by rebel, gave us a rare opportunity to report ground facts, and we are grateful for that.