On a dirt track in southern Sudan, an old man all matchstick limbs flees for his life.
In his etiolated and feeble state, the odds are against him. Ahead is a walk of some 50 miles
to the nearest town with food.
He leaves behind him only starvation and horror, what the local Dinka tribesman say
was a massacre of men, women and children. What happened in this marshland has its origins in another
part of Sudan, 150 miles away.
A United Nations relief plane lands at a place called Nasir. More aid flights reach
here, than anywhere else in the country. This bend of the river is relatively speaking
a land of plenty. The flights get through with permits from the Sudanese government.
Nasir is the headquarters of a new rebel leader, who in the name of democracy has spilt the Guerrilla
movement in southern Sudan, and in doing so appears to appears to have received more than a little
encouragement from khartoum. Commander Riek Machar is 38 and has a doctorate in engineering from Bradford university.
His tribe the Nuer, regard him as a saviour, someone they've been told to expect
by a 19th century prophet. Riek's fight he says is for democracy, but it's tribal as well.
His Nuer warriors distinguished by marks accross the forehead. From an old comrade in arms there are bitter words.
They will be known in history as people who stabbed the movement in southern Sudan
in the back. They will be know as people who, at the point of victory, when we were going to win,
they stabbed us in the back.
In contrast to the rich Muslim north, southern Sudan is Christian and poor.
John Garang from the Dinka tribe has led the rebel SPLA since it was founded in 1983.
It's reduced the government to three strongholds in the south, the capital Juba, and the garrison towns of Wau
and Malakal. The rebel split came last August, Reik Machar, formerly fourth in the high command, accused Garang
of being a dictator, and set up on his own in Nasir in the Nuer heartland.
Garang didn't like assemblance of institutions, of structures, of democracy within the movement.
He is interested in running the movement as his personal property.
A dawn parade of new recruits in Nasir. The spilt in the SPLA with it's tribal overtones.
Has inevitably meant more than just a trading of insults. This maybe the Christian south, but in the months leading
up to Christmas, an army of young Nuer soldiers, militia and tribesmen march south through the Dinka villages
including John Garang's birth place. It was to be a wide and bloody sweep.
To reach some villages visited by the marauding army, you have to travel by foot a trek of over 100 miles.
The camerman who took this film was the first journalist to go there. In his words,
everywhere there was a stench of death. On the edge of the marshland
a vulture has been picking at a human corpse.
Great herdsmen that they are, in this region the Dinka lost all their cattle.
It's impossible to know how many people died, some say more than 5000.
Many ran from the villages to hide in swamp, and were slaughtered there, some were strangled,
others were shot.
This woman said the soldiers arrived looking for John Garang's men, they'd come
she says with a magician. His spells had protected the outsiders from death, but not her people.
Bodies were left in the marshland to the mercies of the hyenas.
We were unable to bury them. We have no man power. No energy. We couldn't bury them.
These were our brothers, and our sisters.
The regional hospital only has a few patients left, anyone seriously wounded died for lack of drugs.
I was not physically there, but... yes, yes I was the commander of the forces They were in touch with me, yes.
They were in touch with me
And they had their specific instructions. Civilians, were have no quarrel with them.
I cannot just say, kill the Dinka born. No, not at all.
They are using it as a human rights violation. I'm aware of it. But i think it is propaganda.
Everywhere the camerman went, he met people looking for their relatives.
A child is frightened by the camera, but his father, an SPLA guerrilla has something to smile about,
he's found his son again.
A young herdsmen Ajak, fled when the fighting began.
Now that things have quietened down, he's come back to his home town of
Conger, to look for his mother. He's been looking for her for the past two weeks.
In his absence, Conger has become a virtual ghost town, only a few old people have
stayed behind.
This old man was simply to weak to move.
The population of Conger was over 10,000. It's now less than 100.
Ajak didn't find his mother, and he moved on continuing his lone search.
Most villagers took to the swamps during the fighting, where increasingly the problem is finding
anything to eat. They've begun to harvest the water lilys.
Despite widespread malaria and other diseases, the Dinka have made camp on islands in the marsh.
The staples were meat and milk, now in desperation there's only the water lily seeds ground
to an edible paste. The process takes about a week, and the result is flavourless and of minimal nutritional
value. The best that can be said about, this clay like paste is that it can keep you alive...just.
Three miles away the airstrip at Conger. No planes have landed here for at least four months.
The Sudanese government strictly limits the number of planes going to areas under the control
of the SPLA. Still, a few women and children while away the day, waiting and waiting
in the remote hope of a United Nations flight bringing in supplies.
The biggest single concentration of refugees in southern Sudan is to be found in the town
of Bor, John Garang's birth place.
It's a place of starving children, the refugee camp that has sprung up since the attack
by Riek's men. When the cameraman was there, the only food available was
biscuits for children. The United Nations is mounting an operation by road, to bring in more supplies.
This is the rebel frontline. Most of the SPLA's hardware has been thrown into the siege of the southern capital Juba.
Government forces exploiting the distraction of the Riek attack, pushed them back some ten miles.
And another government offensive is expected imminently. This is the 9th year of
was in the south, and in John Garang's view, democracy can wait.
Democracy has been so much beaten up these days, that even the devil can come and say he's
he's a democrat people will listen to him.
In a way, in the SPLA, we are a victim of our own image, of our own success.
So the SPLA is a tool, a tool cannot be democratic.
It's a tool in order to bring about a democratic society.
The rebel campaign is now dogged by tribalism. Even if the two main tribes, Nuer and Dinka,
have intermarried for over a century, what happened in the marshland won't be easily
erased from Dinka memories. In the last two years southern Sudan has been hit by drought and then floods.
In this warzone, more than most, the brunt of the suffering falls, not on soldiers,
but on civilians.
As of this moment the UN estimates that accross southern Sudan, there are some two million
dependant on it's aid, some clearly get more than others.
The Dakota DC-3 is one of two planes which ferries in supplies every day to
Nasir. Where the food is needed most, among the Dinka villages the problem remains
of getting a flight permit from khartoum.