In 2015 Newsweek assigned me to track down billionaire Navy SEAL and founder of Blackwater Security Erik Prince in South Sudan.
Personnel from his new logistics company Frontier Services Group were rumored to have been arming both sides of the conflict in the nascent war-torn country.
I didn’t find Prince himself but signs of FSG in Juba, and near the oil fields in the Upper Nile state, were aplenty.
More on that later.
In September, I passed through UAE and found Erik Prince’s “Blackwater” (note logo) catamaran docked in front of his two villas in a gated enclave in Abu Dhabi. A local realtor said they were valued at $5 million – and one was for sale.
A view of Abu Dhabi from one of Prince’s two villasFerrari parked in villa garageCatamaran with Blackwater logo
I’d been on the hunt for former U.S. security firm Blackwater owner, Erik Prince, for Newsweek. At the time Prince’s Malta-based logistics company, Frontier Services Group, was sending supplies and repairing oil production facilities. Contrary to some reports, sources said he’d also been training police and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army – SPLA – to fight rebel leader Riek Machar and to protect Chinese-owned oil fields. The U.N. spokesman at the time was not keen to host me apparently because a Newsweek had published an article three months previously that reflected poorly on the U.N.. They seemed to try just about everything to dissuade me from heading to the Upper Nile state, the only region producing oil at the time. I stubbornly persisted and they eventually relented. UNMISS turned out to be particularly accommodating.
Erik Prince has since pulled out of South Sudan.
Armed civilian
South Sudan’s Ministry of Defense
“Enduring towel” that a gentleman stationed at a South Sudan military base loaned me for two nights.
View from an expensive Juba hotel – a microcosm of the divide between Africa’s elite and impoverished accelerated by international intergovernmental organizations. Beyond the corrugated tin squalor is the leafy compound of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir.
Chinese State-owned oil production facility.
Acres of oil tailing ponds containing toxic waters spill into the Nile River each rainy season, killing wildlife. Though workers with Chinese state-owned companies claim to deliver potable water to residents frequently, illnesses from drinking contaminated river water are still reported.
Dinka IDP camp, where there are schools. UNHCR provides health care, women whose husbands were killed during the 2013 civil workshops are taught quilt and bead making by Kenyans.A Nuer IDP camp I visited near an oil production facility was cramped and lacking in proper health care. Dozens live in a small compound in open spaces, lacking privacy. Intimacy is nearly impossible and child birth is made public.
A Nuer IDP camp I visited was cramped and lacking in proper health care as compared with a Dinka camp. Dozens live in a small compound in open spaces. Intimacy is more or less impossible.
Flying over Bandingilo National Park with directors of Wildlife Conservation Society. Check out my feature for The Daily Beast about wildlife and charcoal poaching by South Sudan’s military.
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