Saving South Sudan

Our colleagues down the hall have just released an ambitious project, devoting an entire issue of VICE magazine and a half-hour documentary to the conflict in South Sudan. Saving South Sudan is the work of writer Robert Young Pelton (The World’s Most Dangerous Places) and photographer/filmmaker Tim Freccia (The VICE Guide to Congo). In February, Pelton and Freccia set out to locate South Sudan’s former vice president, Riek Machar, who has been leading a rebellion against President Salva Kiir. Their traveling companion was a former child soldier named Machot Lat Thiep. Machot had helped advise the formulation of South Sudan’s constitution, but at the time of the trip he was working as a manager of a Costco in Seattle. He arranged Pelton and Freccia’s rendezvous with Machar through a long series of satellite phone calls to rebel platoons and old contacts, who eventually guided the group to the deposed vice president.

Read Saving South Sudan