Journalist and author of The Prince and the Poisoner
Three from the NatGeo blog: On the trail of endangered pangolins from Africa to restaurants in China; wrestling as peacebuilding in South Sudan; and an unprecedented scientific investigation into neonatal death in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan.
This piece first appeared at National Geographic.
An obscure indie-rock b-side kept running through my head last January as I hopped from city to city reporting on South Sudan’s freedom referendum.
The song was Two States, by the band Pavement. The words were simple, the music jaunty and driven.
Two states. We want two states.
North and south. Two states.
Forty million barrels!
Forty million barrels!
The lyrics seemed shockingly, if accidentally, appropriate to the break-up of Africa’s biggest country, and the high-stakes competition for the valuable oil located on Sudan’s contested north-south border. I grinned as the song persisted during my travels in Khartoum, Malakal, and Juba. After decades of civil war and life as second-class citizens, more than 98 percent of southern voters chose to leave Sudan and become masters of their own destinies.
But the chorus I recalled was wrong, misheard many years ago and never corrected.
The accurate chorus, tragically, is perhaps more fitting to the independent Republic of South Sudan than those I had imagined. It goes:
Forty million daggers!
Forty million daggers!
South Sudan is at war with itself. Continue reading “Two States: Mass Murder in South Sudan”