Whirling derishes
An ancient ritual, performed by Muslims, unique to northern Sudan.
They are whirling dervishes.
And, if it's strange to our eyes ..... then it's just as alien to the people of southern Sudan.
For the southerners are Christians and Animists .....
And such differences make Sudan a religious, tribal and cultural cauldron.
This is a story about black Africa meeting Islamic north Africa. It's a meeting of cultures and religions that was destined for conflict.
When Sudan gained its independence 37 years ago, the colonial powers decreed- for their own vested interests - that it should remain one country.
It set the Sudanese on a course that led - inevitably to a conflict that has led to the war and famine that blights this nation today.
Nairobi streets
To reach the rebel-held south you must start in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Jacob in taxi with newspaper
Journalists in this part of the world need a guide ... someone like Jacob Akol ... a Dinka tribesman of southern Sudan.
Jacob arrives restaurant
Jacob's offered to attempt to take us on the long journey back to his homeland ... into the war zone. But it will not be easy.
Interview Jacob Akol
In Kongor there is fighting not so very far from the famine triangle - so it could happen there is fighting there - but if there is fighting we will not be able to get in anyway.
There is another problem. The wet season can make travel impossible.
It's touch and go, we just have to go up to the border and listen to what people say
SPLA HQ
The first rite of passage is a visit to the (Nairobi) headquarters of the main rebel group - the Sudan People's Liberation Army
The SPLA's military wing holds much of southern Sudan. Here they issue permissions to travel and propaganda.
Interview Dr Justin Garang
The centre of power in Khartoum - it must be dismantled - because we are not there.
Like most of the SPLA Dr Justin is a Christian opposed to the Islamic regime in the north.
If I am not acceptable because I am a Christian and all these things then something must be wrong about Sudan.
Visas
The SPLA gives us a guarantee of safe passage ... but it's an uncertain guarantee at best ... In one incident alone last year rebels killed three aid workers and a journalist.
UN plane lands
Lokichokio - north Kenya - the frontline of the international food aid programme.
It's where the big planes are forced to stop ... the annual flood of the Nile headwaters makes impossible swamps of the rough airstrips of southern Sudan.
Small plane takes off
So from here we travel with aid workers who fly light aircraft - often for hours - across war zones - on to muddy strips - in unsafe areas.
The aid workers do it daily.
Dusty shots people singing
school teaching
Jacob's own childhood was spent barely fifty kilometres away from this village of Thiet.
Like these children, he too was a young refugee ... he fled alone and on foot in the face of civil war.
kids in feeding centre
It's almost like a continuation of my life. Thirty years ago I was displaced from southern Sudan by the same war. ... And it is sad to see that it is continuing for so long
Jacob speaks
Jacob's mother and the rest of his extended family could be alive or may be dead ... he has had no way of knowing for 10 years.
Kids in feeding centre
Jacob
If I were to go there it would take me something like another two weeks to try to get to where I think the location is of my home. I'm not quite even certain that if I get there people will not have moved away from my village where I was born.
Farming
What strikes you first about southern Sudan is just how lush it is ...
It seems like some terrible mistake: people starving to death amongst such plenty.
Walk along track
But this is rainy season ... the harvest isn't in yet ... and in the past when harvest time comes so does a new military offensive.
Feeding centre
This is the result - year after year it happens ... hundreds of thousands of half-starved people leaving their crops to wither .... fleeing the fighting ... descending on feeding centres and dying in their uncounted thousands.
Sick child
Tell me about this little one ... how old is this one she said about 4 years old, I don't believe it - it's so tiny - the only hope is that he's actually eating on his own - he seems to be hungry and he wants to eat.
Serving food
There are only a handful of feeding centres scattered through this, the largest country in Africa.
Across hundreds of thousands of square kilometres no one really knows what's
happening. There are no body counts out here.
Babies being weighed
Nature has bequeathed southern Sudan lavish wealth in its fertile lands - and its plentiful oil reserves ... yet its children starve.
They remain free from the clutches of the hated regime in the north ... but locked into a terrible cost.
Wheels through mud
We set out along one of southern Sudan's countless water logged tracks.
vehicle in mud
How are we going to get through this
Driver
I don't know, we may want to go around this way. It looks like its a bit more sandy on this side.
We are soon hopelessly bogged and suddenly at the mercy of a band of guerilla fighters. Our safety is supposedly guaranteed but only by the main SPLA faction. We have no such agreement with renegade factions which now fight each other as bitterly as
once they fought Government troops.
Luck is with us. We've stumbled upon a friendly unit. They've been on a forced march with little food for 18 days. It's a surprise they help us at all.
The commander tells us he's retreating form a frontline position facing Government troops because his home town is threatened by a breakaway rebel force.
After 10 years the SPLA has started splitting into tribal based factions.
Question
Colonel Garang it seems to me as an outsider that you have something of a disaster on your hands ... ceasefire not holding, you have thousands of your own people in the south starving or close to starving, and you also have an appalling split within your own ranks ... do you see it that way, yourself?
Colnel Garang
Well, it's ... any war is a disaster including our own (even the second world war, including the first) all wars are a disaster. What has happened in the SPLA is that a portion of the movement ... has technically joined the enemy. It's a defection not a split. Somewhere on our side they have now gone on the Sudan Government side. Some do defect from the Sudan
Government side to come to our side. That is the meaning of a civil war.
Defection or split, it's a catastrophe for the rebels and a godsend for the Government in Khartoum - a chance to score in the propaganda war.
Where once the only thing delivered from the north was bombs today its grain donated to the United Nations by the regime in the north.
Lisa Campeau
Initially the administration out rightly refused to receive the grain from Khartoum for fear it was poisoned.
So, anything coming out of Khartoum is immediately treated as being suspicious presumably. Is that right?
Without a doubt, immediately presumed as suspicious.
It's a gift from the enemy ... for the Khartoum regime with an international reputation for massive and shocking abuse of human rights has launched a new "propaganda war".
Khartoum shots
Sudan's Islamic capital Khartoum. After years of self-imposed isolation the regime is courting international opinion. It's become known as Khartoum's "charm offensive".
Presidential adviser interview
A "charm offensive" though, is that a fair enough description of what you're working on.
A "charm offensive". That's an interesting term, I would say.
Is it an accurate one?
It's not. I don't think it's exactly a "charm offensive". It's an attempt at trying to make the world perceive us as we are.
Sharia court - exteriors peopl waiting guys with guns etc
To perceive the regime for ourselves, we're allowed to see Sharia law in action ... Islamic courts seen in the west as infamous
Justice Minister
This is the outlook of the west and it is because of the punishments provided in Sharia - for example in theft the amputation of the arm in adultery, the stoning and the lashing - which are viewed by the west as being cruel and unusual - actually for us Sharia has been unusually tolerant.
Trial
Such tolerance is said to extend throughout the Sharia ...
18 year old Hassan Haj Ibrahim is on trial for murder ... if found guilty, the court will by law impose the death penalty.
But, if just one relative is prepared to forgive Hassan, then the court must reduce his sentence to time in jail and the payment of blood money ... and in fact, that's exactly what normally happens. The sentences we see as extreme are rarely imposed.
But, the Christians of the south don't trust the alien principles of Sharia and cannot believe Government assurances that the Sharia will not be forced upon them.
For although Islam preaches forgiveness and tolerance the Khartoum regime stands accused of utter intolerance.
Question to Justice Minister
Can you tell me how do you feel being Minister for Justice in a country that has been slated by organisations like Amnesty International for having the worst human rights record in the world.
I absolutely disagree with you. Let us take what is facing the UN in Somalia now
Justice Minister
No, lets take Sudan. Does what you're doing justify .
... I am talking about the relativity of human rights to a given situation. Human rights are not absolute.
When you talk about human rights you must talk about human rights in a given situation. In an armed conflict human rights are quite different from human rights in a peaceful area.
Sombre faces (bus stop)
But even on the streets, there's ample evidence the regime maintains power through fear and outright repression ...
Peter approached by guy
Heavies approaches Peter
During half an hour in the main square our papers are demanded three times by men who refuse to identify themselves or even give reasons.
Then the muhabarat arrives - the feared secret police.
Where's your permission. These are our permissions. This is a card. The Ministry says we can film anywhere in Khartoum so long as we don't film in military areas. They said we can go anywhere we like. Do anything we like.
Peter being led away
Amnesty International says these are the men responsible for the most gross acts of barbarism and torture ...
Justice Minister
Speaking about torture - this does not fit with our character - our religious beliefs and with our tolerance. These accusations are the product of the opposition which is in exile.
Peter
Mostly because they say they are afraid to come back.
Yes, and they want to come back as people in authority.
But the southerners say what they really want is simply to share the power.
Garang
The issue is that of justice, is that of freedom, is that of democracy, is that of development opportunity for all irrespective of race, irrespective of religion and we are not unique in this. This is how nations are formed.
So you have not been defeated but under the circumstances can you hope for victory.
Garang
Well, it depends on what you mean by victory, military victory - I don't think the Sudan Government has any illusions that
They can achieve military victory over us. We don't have any illusions that we are going to overrun Khartoum tomorrow.
Kongor feeding centre - Jacob
Jacob Akol has heard the arguments countless times before. Not once have they seemed any closer to resolving the plight of the victims caught in the middle.
Kongor - hands scrape food
"Almost all of them are agreed that this war cannot be solved by continuing to fight yet they can't find that political solution and the people who are suffering from that are the innocent people - the people we are looking at the moment."
Jacob
I think there is no way the Sudanese can find a solution to what has been going on. It's almost 30 years now and it is time the international community intervened and when I say intervene I don't mean militarily.
Jacob
You're not talking about another Somalia.
No not in that sense I think that's the final, it's the last alternative. They should intervene humanitarianly like they are doing now.
But, on a larger scale?
On a larger scale and politically.
Jacob's brought us to a place called Kongor ... in what's called south Sudan's death triangle.
Jacob and kids
As many as a quarter of a million people have already perished in this region. There's been so much fighting aid workers daren't stay overnight ... and the mainstream SPLA says an attack by renegade commander Colonel Riak is imminent.
Kongor - hands scrape food
Commander, I have been informed you're expecting an attack from the Riak forces soon is that true. Yeah, I can not deny - it can be true - because Riak has no objective - his objective is to destroy SPLA is to fight us.
He's not fighting the Sudanese Government so now his target is here.
The reports proved accurate ... within 12 hours of our leaving, Kongor was under attack. These men were in battle.
Guys with bandoleros
The relief centres were closed ... the staff evacuated ....
From the outside it's tempting to turn your back on this seemingly endless war with its complex politics and factional fighting. But, without massive help from the world these people will lose even the occasional moments of joy.
Old car - medical treament room
When the aid workers left Kongor this is what was lost... .
Drip feeding child
The volunteers who each day struggle to nurse children back from the brink of death.
Malnourished child and mother
Lost is this child, she had a chance to survive but only with constant intensive care. Now she is dead.
Girl with flies - smiles
Gone also ... the solitary smile the one that rewards the struggle, and somehow makes caring worth the pain.