VICE (2013) s05e19 Episode Script
Crude Reality & Between Oil and Water
1 Shane Smith: This week on Vice: Corruption over oil threatens the world's newest nation.
This is not the country we fought for.
People are upset about where we have found ourselves.
Yeung: This fence here is the only thing separating these people from the attacks that happen right out there.
Smith: And then, inside the controversy over resources on tribal land in America.
(whooping) Duboc: You're looking at a group of unpaid social objectors versus one of the wealthiest industries in the world.
More oil has been sold here than all the gold rushes put together.
(theme music playing) Yeung: Go, go, go! (crowd shouting) Refugee: We are not animals! Oil was first discovered in the south of Sudan by Chevron in 1978.
Now, that discovery quickly ignited a long-running civil war with the north.
And for the next 22 years, the south, which had most of the oil, fought the government in the north, which took most of the wealth.
By the time it was over, more than two million people were dead and more than three million, displaced.
But six years ago, the people of South Sudan voted almost unanimously to break away from the north, becoming the world's newest country.
The US played an instrumental role, sending close to $11 billion in aid.
(people cheering) For the first time, the people of South Sudan had a chance to benefit from their wealth of natural resources.
But now, the south may be falling victim to the so-called "resource curse.
" (distant chattering) (vehicle honks) How many patients on average do you have here coming in? (speaking English) Yeung: Maker Isaac is the director of the main hospital for South Sudan's 12 million people.
Yeung: Broken bone? Ooh, that's a bad break.
(Maker speaks) (boy moans) Yeung: He's very skinny.
Maker: Yeah.
Yeung: Is that normal? (Maker speaks) Yeung: Oh, I see.
Yeung: So, there's no food at all in the hospital? (Maker speaks) Yeung: That must be difficult when a lot of people are here for malnutrition reasons, or for dehydration and such.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeung: What's she in here for? (speaks foreign language) It seems like getting treatment is quite difficult.
(speaks foreign language) Yeung: Without food, medicine, or electricity, South Sudan's largest hospital is clearly failing its patients.
Do you have enough funding here for you guys to get paid and everything? No? (speaks English) How much? Less that $30.
Yeah.
And you're the director of the hospital? Yeah.
Yeah.
Why? Yeung: While South Sudan struggles to provide the most basic services, it's sitting on some of the largest oil reserves on the continent.
Madding Ngor is a journalist whose family members fought and died in the war for independence.
The economy is struggling, because the oil prices are declining.
And South Sudan is a country that is almost entirely dependent on oil.
It has tremendous effect.
Yeung: In this oilproducing country, it's actually almost impossible to buy gas.
There's a big fuel shortage here? It's huge.
It's immense.
Yeung: Seeing all these people queuing up, to try and fill up their tanks, is that how everyone gets their fuel? Ngor: It's crazy.
Let me tell you on record, I waited for 10 hours.
10 hours? Ngor: 10 hours, and I didn't get it.
So, where's everyone getting their fuel? (laughs) There is the black market.
So, these guys are all selling gas? Yeah.
Let's see.
(Ngor speaks foreign language) (man speaks) (Ngor speaks) (man 2 speaks foreign language) (man speaks) (Ngor speaks) (man speaks) (all speaking) (Ngor speaks) Yeung: A single bottle of fuel costs more than the monthly salary of most people in South Sudan.
Despite at least three and a half billion barrels in oil reserves, the economy is now completely crippled, a far cry from what was expected when the country gained its independence.
Were you here on Independence Day? Ngor: Absolutely.
I was here, and this place was filled up with people.
(people cheering, whistling) (speaks English) (applause) This was the only time in our history where we came together, despite our differences, whether they were tribal, whether they were political, whether they were economical.
All kinds of people where here.
(cheering) Ngor: Just like a wedding night, when the honeymoon fades, the real problems, they kick in.
And it was just a matter of three years.
and the country erupted in war.
December 15, 2013, there was a brewing power struggle.
between Salva Kiir Mayardit, president of South Sudan (speaks English) and Riek Machar, the former first vice president.
(speaking English) Ngor: And of course at the center of power, is oil, is money.
It became a conflict along tribal lines: the Dinka, where the president comes from, and the Nuer, where the former first vice president comes from-- and that engulfed the whole country.
Yeung: With the country's two largest tribes divided by their loyalty to the president and the vice president, the world's newest country split along ethnic lines.
Ngor: This is not the country we fought for.
We were fighting for a future where there is a peace, there is a stability, there is prosperity.
So, indeed, people are upset about where we have found ourselves in the country.
(distant gunfire) (cameras clicking rapidly) Yeung: In 2016, a team of investigators backed by George Clooney-- who's been an activist in this region for over a decade-- published a two-year long investigation into South Sudan's leaders.
This morning, we're prepared to give evidence of massive criminal behavior by the president of South Sudan and by his opposition, the ousted vice president.
Yeung: They concluded that at the root of the power struggle is a fierce battle over control of the state's assets.
Clooney: They're stealing the money to fund their militias, to attack and kill one another.
Yeung: South Sudan's leaders and their relatives were getting rich off lucrative deals in the oil and mining industries while the country was driven into war and famine.
Fourteen-year-old Bol is among the nearly two million people who were forced from their homes and now scattered across South Sudan.
How did you get here? (speaks foreign language) Do you think about your family a lot? Yeung: To find out how the ongoing war is affecting civilians outside of Juba, we flew north, crossing ethnic lines to the tribal home of the opposition.
More than 120,000 ethnic Nuers are now living inside this one barbed-wire camp.
UN peacekeepers protect them from their own government.
(speaks foreign language) Yeung: Half of them are children like Isaac, who fled ethnic slaughter by government soldiers.
(speaks foreign language) Did you lose anyone? Have you talked to anyone about how you feel? I mean, I can tell you're upset and you're thinking about your brother.
(boys shouting) Yeung: We just climbed up to the edge of the POC site, and from up here you can see how absolutely humongous this site is.
In fact, it's the third largest city in South Sudan.
And this fence here is the only thing separating these people from the attacks and killings and atrocities that happen right out there.
Even inside the camps, food is scarce.
Civilians, mostly women, are forced to leave the camp every day to collect firewood, which they can then sell to purchase food.
(speaks foreign language) So it takes four or five hours to reach the place where you're going? Yeung: What are the biggest threats when you go out to collect wood? Who is it that's beating and raping? Yeung: Both the UN and the African Union have documented cases of mass rape of civilians and even children by government soldiers.
We're with the UN mission in South Sudan, just out with the Mongolian battalion.
The security situation around Nhialdiu has been pretty precarious recently, and so, these peacekeepers are frequently having to head out on patrols to go and assess what's going on.
The territory around the camp has changed hands several times during the conflict.
Right now, it's government soldiers that are controlling this town.
There are so many soldiers loitering around this one tiny little village, and several extremely young-looking kids with guns.
According to the UN, there are more than 17,000 child soldiers involved in the conflict, and that number is growing.
With one of the largest peacekeeping missions protecting hundreds of thousands from their own government, we sat down with the country's minister of information.
Michael Lueth belongs to the small circle of presidential elites.
The US recent attempted to slap sanctions on him for orchestrating the slaughter of civilians.
Can you explain what the current state of South Sudan is in your eyes? Well, the current state of South Sudan in terms of human rights is is okay.
You say it's okay.
I mean, there's almost three million people displaced throughout South Sudan, and about 200,000 of those are living within IDP camps within their own country.
Were they displaced because of human rights violations? Yes.
No.
There are widespread reports throughout the country, and outside of the country, of killings, of brutal mass-rapes.
These are reports from independent people, from individuals, from humanitarian groups from the UN.
(stammers) These are not credible reports.
These are reports which are written here in the hotels.
I mean, it sounds like you're saying that the government accepts zero responsibility for any of the atrocities that have happened throughout your country.
If you don't accept any of that responsibility, it's incredibly difficult to see how peace could ever be reached, if there's no accountability at all.
I'm not saying that there had never been any offenses committed.
Yes, there are offenses committed.
People are under arrest-- people are under arrest By your people.
and they are under investigation.
Others have already undergone trial.
Do you refute the fact that South Sudan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world? Well, corruption is all over the world.
South Sudan is part of the world, so it cannot be free of corruption.
I'm asking you on a scale whether South Sudan is up there as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
South Sudan is one of the corrupt countries in the world, not the most.
Are you corrupt? Me? No, I'm not corrupt.
Yeung: While the government denies the allegations of corruption, the fact remains that the same men who tore this country apart remain very much in power while civilians continue to pay the price.
And it's the international community that's left with the costly task of trying to hold the world's youngest country together.
We're hoping that Bol, the 14-year-old kid that we met in Juba is on this plane so that he can come and be reunified with his family.
Bol, who's 14 years old, hasn't seen his family here in Bentiu since he was 11.
Does it feel good to be back in your town? (speaks foreign language) What are you most excited about? (women ululating) (man speaks) (Bol speaks) (woman speaks foreign language) (Bol sobbing) (ululating continues) (singing) (ululating) Who are these people outside? (speaking foreign language) How long have you been waiting for this day? (ululating) (group singing) The Dakota Access Pipeline brought an intense wave of attention to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
After protesting for months, the opposition successfully blocked the pipeline, which they saw as a great danger to sacred land and fresh water.
Under my presidency, we'll accomplish a complete American energy independence.
Complete.
Complete.
(crowd cheering) Smith: But President Donald Trump's pro-energy, pro-pipeline platform, stands in direct opposition to practically everything that the Standing Rock protest has represented, which constitutes a new threat to the future of America's tribal lands.
(wind blowing) (horse neighs) By the way, you'll have to take my word for it, because I don't know if you can see me, but we're in Standing Rock, North Dakota.
We came here in early December 2016 at the peak of the protest movement.
Thousands of people from across the country-- native Americans, military veterans, and environmental activists-- came together here in solidarity for one cause: protecting land and water they say is under threat from oil and gas development.
I've never seen anything like this in real life.
(laughs) The closest thing I can compare it to is a scene from Game of Thrones or Mad Max.
You came prepared.
How come you have gas masks? (man speaks) Duboc: Their goal was to halt the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, whose 1,172-mile path runs directly through land which was once part of the Great Sioux Nation, and to some is still considered sacred.
If the pipeline were to spill oil, it could contaminate the Missouri River, which provides drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux and millions of others.
And with nearly 8,000 major pipeline incidents in the last three decades, leaders like Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault, felt the need to act.
How did the protest against the Dakota Access pipeline begin? It wasn't overnight.
2003, 2006, there was a lot of exploration going on in North Dakota.
There was this new Bakken oil play.
Newswoman: The US Geological Survey is now calling the Bakken formation the largest continuous oil accumulation it's ever assessed.
Duboc: It led to the biggest oil boom in American history, increasing domestic production by 87 percent from when President Obama first took office until its peak in 2015.
Archambault: 2014, we learned the Dakota Access pipeline was being planned, and we expressed our concerns, saying, "This pipeline is gonna destroy a lot of our sacred places.
" So, we filed a suit, then they gave a notice of preconstruction.
(people chanting) Archambault: There was a sacred camp that was set up.
And then a week later, there's maybe six people, and then 12 people, and then 30, and then 100.
Duboc: Images of clashes between Sioux protesters and authorities sparked a wave of support from other Native American tribes and environmental activists, hoping to stop construction.
(people shout) By December, the camp had grown to 10,000 people.
What was it about this protest that became a kind of phenomenon? Like, why? I think it's pretty simple.
We've been treated wrong for so many centuries, that it's time to stand up.
A lot of people recognized that and said, "We're gonna stand with you.
" (people whooping) Duboc: And it worked.
While we were there, the Obama administration halted the pipeline's construction.
This is a huge victory for protesters in North Dakota.
The Army Corps of Engineers announced it will look for an alternate route for a controversial pipeline project near Native American lands.
Duboc: But once in office, it only took four days for Donald Trump to allow the project to continue with an action of his own.
This is with respect to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Duboc: Trump issued executive memorandums, which showed support for both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines.
Okay? Archambault: We are the original occupants of these lands, and infrastructure projects do have an impact on us.
Economic development is why they took our land.
There's no benefit to our tribe for this pipeline.
Duboc: All across the country, Native American tribes are concerned about the risks of energy extraction.
But in Oklahoma, one tribe has been reaping the benefits from their underground resources for over a century.
(gavel pounds) Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to Osage Minerals Council regular meeting, Wednesday, January the 18th.
Duboc: The Osage Minerals Council oversees and manages the headrights to all oil, gas, and minerals found underneath the nearly 1.
5 million acres that makes up the reservation.
Everett Waller was elected council chairman in 2014.
I want the Osages to be known as an oil tribe.
(man speaking English) I sell a product that comes out of the wellhead at approximately $50 a barrel, but every dollar I make under royalty is delivered to the owner.
Duboc: So the Osage are able to dictate where people can and cannot drill.
Welcome to my reservation, yes.
So, the Osage are pretty unique in how much control you have over your mineral wealth.
We give the credit to my great-great-grandfather.
His name was Watiankah the Mighty.
He saw this vision about our future.
He saw metal flying and then running on the ground.
This was back when there were Lincoln Logs and stuff like that.
But we had someone with enough foresight to ask in our treaty rights that we wanted everything under the ground.
We struck oil in 1898.
Once it was found, everyone come down to get their fortune like a gold rush.
More oil has been sold here than all gold rushes put together.
Figures suggest some 20 percent of America's fossil fuels are on reservation land.
Imagine that.
I'm representing one of the richest tribes in the world.
We own the oil.
We own the gas.
It's worth billions.
We haven't even hit the helium yet.
That's gonna be worth a trillion dollars.
Duboc: Up at Standing Rock, it seems like the last thing anybody wants is to be in bed with energy companies, and yet, arguably, that's what's served the Osage so well.
I'm wondering, what the Osage position is on reconciling the relationship with the energy companies with belief in the sanctity of land, trying to protect your reservation.
We understand the sacred land.
We are one of the best custodians there is on the planet of trying to retrieve this fossil fuel and not damage Mother Earth.
Duboc: But that wasn't always the case.
The Osage Tribal Council fired former environmental inspector Chris White in 1995 after he reported 130 potential violations during his employment.
Do you see where the salt has come up here on the edge around this joint here? That's a leak.
Most of the operators in Osage County on the reservation, they're good operators.
There are some operators that, when given the opportunity, they will take advantage of an area like this, right here.
It's money to them.
If they can cut corners, it reduces their overhead, so they're dumping stuff on the ground, or not disposing of it properly, not maintaining their equipment in a proper working order.
Duboc: After being fired, Chris filed a complaint against the council under the whistle-blower provision within the Safe Drinking Water Act.
He won the case, and it was discovered that the council's grounds for firing him were unlawful.
How does it make you feel to come back here after all of that? It's depressing.
At some point in time, the chickens are gonna come home to roost.
Duboc: But spills are not the only consequence of America's shale oil revolution.
We're in Cushing, Oklahoma.
People often refer to this as the Saudi Arabia of the West, because there's more oil flowing through and stored here than anywhere else in North America.
Cushing also happens to be experiencing a rash of earthquakes.
(rumbling) Since 2008, the state's gone from averaging two a year to two a day.
A powerful earthquake rattled central Oklahoma Saturday.
Newswoman 2: Oklahoma geological survey experts have connected the increase in quakes to the disposal of wastewater from a oil and gas production process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Duboc: Jake Walter is the state seismologist for the Oklahoma Geological Survey, and is studying the steady rise in seismic activity over the last decade.
What's going on? What's causing the earthquakes? There's thousands of injection wells throughout Oklahoma.
Oklahoma has loads and loads of faults in some of the deepest sedimentary layers.
Because of the high volumes of water that have been injected, that water is working its way into some of these faults, so that these faults are allowed to slip.
(rumbling) Duboc: How does Oklahoma compare to the rest of the country in terms of seismic activity? Well, with the exception of Alaska, Oklahoma is the most seismically active state in the US.
We're looking at a map of Oklahoma here, and the earthquakes are in red, and the injection wells are in those black squares there.
You can see that injections sort of spread to the north-central part of Oklahoma, and the earthquakes are not far behind.
We're getting to a point where some of these earthquakes are fairly significant-- the 5.
8 that was in September of this year, the 5.
0 near Cushing, which is near a nationally strategic oil pipeline.
These sort of last six years have been unprecedented.
How worried should people be about these earthquakes? The hazard is very, very real.
Duboc: But the threat of catastrophic damage to infrastructure in Oklahoma has not stopped the surge in shale oil production, which has skyrocketed over thousand percent since the year 2000.
With the support for a new oil-friendly administration, the industry has 32,000 miles of new and planned pipelines in the works across North America, according to Pipeline & Gas Journal.
And already, the Dakota Access pipeline has leaked, confirming the fears that brought it so much attention in the first place.
Luckily, the leaks didn't impact drinking water, but Dave Archambault showed us just how vulnerable the tribe could be if they had.
Would you say that this pipeline is now the biggest threat to the community? Today it is.
If you look right here, this is where the water comes in.
You can see the treatment plant, the intake, and the water tower all right here.
And that's the system that provides the fresh drinking water, but it all comes from Missouri River.
This pipeline that threatens this water supply, carrying 550,000 barrels of crude oil with benzene in it, is gonna have a direct impact on our people.
And that's not right.
Even though it's legal, even though the political system says, "This is what we're gonna do," we can't continue down this path, or we're gonna leave nothing for our kids.
Duboc: There are currently over 150 proposed oil and gas pipelines in the works across the country, many of which could potentially cross through tribal lands.
but the legacy of Standing Rock has endured through numerous pipeline protest movements that have sprung up across North America.
Hey! (cheering) Duboc: And pipeline divestment groups have shepherded the removal of billions from the balance sheets of investors.
Seattle is the first city to have divested from Wells Fargo.
(cheers, applause) (woman speaks on megaphone) (crowd shouts) (woman speaks on megaphone) (crowd shouts) Despite setbacks brought by the Trump administration, these people aren't giving up.
(whoops) The fight for clean water is the battle for the soul of our nation and of all nations.
(crowd cheers) Our way of life is being destroyed.
Instead of expanding human rights, the new administration limits human rights.
(cheering) Kandi Mossett: Repeat after me, everybody! I Crowd: I believe Crowd:.
.
.
believe that we Crowd:.
.
.
that we will win! will win! (ululating)
This is not the country we fought for.
People are upset about where we have found ourselves.
Yeung: This fence here is the only thing separating these people from the attacks that happen right out there.
Smith: And then, inside the controversy over resources on tribal land in America.
(whooping) Duboc: You're looking at a group of unpaid social objectors versus one of the wealthiest industries in the world.
More oil has been sold here than all the gold rushes put together.
(theme music playing) Yeung: Go, go, go! (crowd shouting) Refugee: We are not animals! Oil was first discovered in the south of Sudan by Chevron in 1978.
Now, that discovery quickly ignited a long-running civil war with the north.
And for the next 22 years, the south, which had most of the oil, fought the government in the north, which took most of the wealth.
By the time it was over, more than two million people were dead and more than three million, displaced.
But six years ago, the people of South Sudan voted almost unanimously to break away from the north, becoming the world's newest country.
The US played an instrumental role, sending close to $11 billion in aid.
(people cheering) For the first time, the people of South Sudan had a chance to benefit from their wealth of natural resources.
But now, the south may be falling victim to the so-called "resource curse.
" (distant chattering) (vehicle honks) How many patients on average do you have here coming in? (speaking English) Yeung: Maker Isaac is the director of the main hospital for South Sudan's 12 million people.
Yeung: Broken bone? Ooh, that's a bad break.
(Maker speaks) (boy moans) Yeung: He's very skinny.
Maker: Yeah.
Yeung: Is that normal? (Maker speaks) Yeung: Oh, I see.
Yeung: So, there's no food at all in the hospital? (Maker speaks) Yeung: That must be difficult when a lot of people are here for malnutrition reasons, or for dehydration and such.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeung: What's she in here for? (speaks foreign language) It seems like getting treatment is quite difficult.
(speaks foreign language) Yeung: Without food, medicine, or electricity, South Sudan's largest hospital is clearly failing its patients.
Do you have enough funding here for you guys to get paid and everything? No? (speaks English) How much? Less that $30.
Yeah.
And you're the director of the hospital? Yeah.
Yeah.
Why? Yeung: While South Sudan struggles to provide the most basic services, it's sitting on some of the largest oil reserves on the continent.
Madding Ngor is a journalist whose family members fought and died in the war for independence.
The economy is struggling, because the oil prices are declining.
And South Sudan is a country that is almost entirely dependent on oil.
It has tremendous effect.
Yeung: In this oilproducing country, it's actually almost impossible to buy gas.
There's a big fuel shortage here? It's huge.
It's immense.
Yeung: Seeing all these people queuing up, to try and fill up their tanks, is that how everyone gets their fuel? Ngor: It's crazy.
Let me tell you on record, I waited for 10 hours.
10 hours? Ngor: 10 hours, and I didn't get it.
So, where's everyone getting their fuel? (laughs) There is the black market.
So, these guys are all selling gas? Yeah.
Let's see.
(Ngor speaks foreign language) (man speaks) (Ngor speaks) (man 2 speaks foreign language) (man speaks) (Ngor speaks) (man speaks) (all speaking) (Ngor speaks) Yeung: A single bottle of fuel costs more than the monthly salary of most people in South Sudan.
Despite at least three and a half billion barrels in oil reserves, the economy is now completely crippled, a far cry from what was expected when the country gained its independence.
Were you here on Independence Day? Ngor: Absolutely.
I was here, and this place was filled up with people.
(people cheering, whistling) (speaks English) (applause) This was the only time in our history where we came together, despite our differences, whether they were tribal, whether they were political, whether they were economical.
All kinds of people where here.
(cheering) Ngor: Just like a wedding night, when the honeymoon fades, the real problems, they kick in.
And it was just a matter of three years.
and the country erupted in war.
December 15, 2013, there was a brewing power struggle.
between Salva Kiir Mayardit, president of South Sudan (speaks English) and Riek Machar, the former first vice president.
(speaking English) Ngor: And of course at the center of power, is oil, is money.
It became a conflict along tribal lines: the Dinka, where the president comes from, and the Nuer, where the former first vice president comes from-- and that engulfed the whole country.
Yeung: With the country's two largest tribes divided by their loyalty to the president and the vice president, the world's newest country split along ethnic lines.
Ngor: This is not the country we fought for.
We were fighting for a future where there is a peace, there is a stability, there is prosperity.
So, indeed, people are upset about where we have found ourselves in the country.
(distant gunfire) (cameras clicking rapidly) Yeung: In 2016, a team of investigators backed by George Clooney-- who's been an activist in this region for over a decade-- published a two-year long investigation into South Sudan's leaders.
This morning, we're prepared to give evidence of massive criminal behavior by the president of South Sudan and by his opposition, the ousted vice president.
Yeung: They concluded that at the root of the power struggle is a fierce battle over control of the state's assets.
Clooney: They're stealing the money to fund their militias, to attack and kill one another.
Yeung: South Sudan's leaders and their relatives were getting rich off lucrative deals in the oil and mining industries while the country was driven into war and famine.
Fourteen-year-old Bol is among the nearly two million people who were forced from their homes and now scattered across South Sudan.
How did you get here? (speaks foreign language) Do you think about your family a lot? Yeung: To find out how the ongoing war is affecting civilians outside of Juba, we flew north, crossing ethnic lines to the tribal home of the opposition.
More than 120,000 ethnic Nuers are now living inside this one barbed-wire camp.
UN peacekeepers protect them from their own government.
(speaks foreign language) Yeung: Half of them are children like Isaac, who fled ethnic slaughter by government soldiers.
(speaks foreign language) Did you lose anyone? Have you talked to anyone about how you feel? I mean, I can tell you're upset and you're thinking about your brother.
(boys shouting) Yeung: We just climbed up to the edge of the POC site, and from up here you can see how absolutely humongous this site is.
In fact, it's the third largest city in South Sudan.
And this fence here is the only thing separating these people from the attacks and killings and atrocities that happen right out there.
Even inside the camps, food is scarce.
Civilians, mostly women, are forced to leave the camp every day to collect firewood, which they can then sell to purchase food.
(speaks foreign language) So it takes four or five hours to reach the place where you're going? Yeung: What are the biggest threats when you go out to collect wood? Who is it that's beating and raping? Yeung: Both the UN and the African Union have documented cases of mass rape of civilians and even children by government soldiers.
We're with the UN mission in South Sudan, just out with the Mongolian battalion.
The security situation around Nhialdiu has been pretty precarious recently, and so, these peacekeepers are frequently having to head out on patrols to go and assess what's going on.
The territory around the camp has changed hands several times during the conflict.
Right now, it's government soldiers that are controlling this town.
There are so many soldiers loitering around this one tiny little village, and several extremely young-looking kids with guns.
According to the UN, there are more than 17,000 child soldiers involved in the conflict, and that number is growing.
With one of the largest peacekeeping missions protecting hundreds of thousands from their own government, we sat down with the country's minister of information.
Michael Lueth belongs to the small circle of presidential elites.
The US recent attempted to slap sanctions on him for orchestrating the slaughter of civilians.
Can you explain what the current state of South Sudan is in your eyes? Well, the current state of South Sudan in terms of human rights is is okay.
You say it's okay.
I mean, there's almost three million people displaced throughout South Sudan, and about 200,000 of those are living within IDP camps within their own country.
Were they displaced because of human rights violations? Yes.
No.
There are widespread reports throughout the country, and outside of the country, of killings, of brutal mass-rapes.
These are reports from independent people, from individuals, from humanitarian groups from the UN.
(stammers) These are not credible reports.
These are reports which are written here in the hotels.
I mean, it sounds like you're saying that the government accepts zero responsibility for any of the atrocities that have happened throughout your country.
If you don't accept any of that responsibility, it's incredibly difficult to see how peace could ever be reached, if there's no accountability at all.
I'm not saying that there had never been any offenses committed.
Yes, there are offenses committed.
People are under arrest-- people are under arrest By your people.
and they are under investigation.
Others have already undergone trial.
Do you refute the fact that South Sudan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world? Well, corruption is all over the world.
South Sudan is part of the world, so it cannot be free of corruption.
I'm asking you on a scale whether South Sudan is up there as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
South Sudan is one of the corrupt countries in the world, not the most.
Are you corrupt? Me? No, I'm not corrupt.
Yeung: While the government denies the allegations of corruption, the fact remains that the same men who tore this country apart remain very much in power while civilians continue to pay the price.
And it's the international community that's left with the costly task of trying to hold the world's youngest country together.
We're hoping that Bol, the 14-year-old kid that we met in Juba is on this plane so that he can come and be reunified with his family.
Bol, who's 14 years old, hasn't seen his family here in Bentiu since he was 11.
Does it feel good to be back in your town? (speaks foreign language) What are you most excited about? (women ululating) (man speaks) (Bol speaks) (woman speaks foreign language) (Bol sobbing) (ululating continues) (singing) (ululating) Who are these people outside? (speaking foreign language) How long have you been waiting for this day? (ululating) (group singing) The Dakota Access Pipeline brought an intense wave of attention to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
After protesting for months, the opposition successfully blocked the pipeline, which they saw as a great danger to sacred land and fresh water.
Under my presidency, we'll accomplish a complete American energy independence.
Complete.
Complete.
(crowd cheering) Smith: But President Donald Trump's pro-energy, pro-pipeline platform, stands in direct opposition to practically everything that the Standing Rock protest has represented, which constitutes a new threat to the future of America's tribal lands.
(wind blowing) (horse neighs) By the way, you'll have to take my word for it, because I don't know if you can see me, but we're in Standing Rock, North Dakota.
We came here in early December 2016 at the peak of the protest movement.
Thousands of people from across the country-- native Americans, military veterans, and environmental activists-- came together here in solidarity for one cause: protecting land and water they say is under threat from oil and gas development.
I've never seen anything like this in real life.
(laughs) The closest thing I can compare it to is a scene from Game of Thrones or Mad Max.
You came prepared.
How come you have gas masks? (man speaks) Duboc: Their goal was to halt the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, whose 1,172-mile path runs directly through land which was once part of the Great Sioux Nation, and to some is still considered sacred.
If the pipeline were to spill oil, it could contaminate the Missouri River, which provides drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux and millions of others.
And with nearly 8,000 major pipeline incidents in the last three decades, leaders like Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault, felt the need to act.
How did the protest against the Dakota Access pipeline begin? It wasn't overnight.
2003, 2006, there was a lot of exploration going on in North Dakota.
There was this new Bakken oil play.
Newswoman: The US Geological Survey is now calling the Bakken formation the largest continuous oil accumulation it's ever assessed.
Duboc: It led to the biggest oil boom in American history, increasing domestic production by 87 percent from when President Obama first took office until its peak in 2015.
Archambault: 2014, we learned the Dakota Access pipeline was being planned, and we expressed our concerns, saying, "This pipeline is gonna destroy a lot of our sacred places.
" So, we filed a suit, then they gave a notice of preconstruction.
(people chanting) Archambault: There was a sacred camp that was set up.
And then a week later, there's maybe six people, and then 12 people, and then 30, and then 100.
Duboc: Images of clashes between Sioux protesters and authorities sparked a wave of support from other Native American tribes and environmental activists, hoping to stop construction.
(people shout) By December, the camp had grown to 10,000 people.
What was it about this protest that became a kind of phenomenon? Like, why? I think it's pretty simple.
We've been treated wrong for so many centuries, that it's time to stand up.
A lot of people recognized that and said, "We're gonna stand with you.
" (people whooping) Duboc: And it worked.
While we were there, the Obama administration halted the pipeline's construction.
This is a huge victory for protesters in North Dakota.
The Army Corps of Engineers announced it will look for an alternate route for a controversial pipeline project near Native American lands.
Duboc: But once in office, it only took four days for Donald Trump to allow the project to continue with an action of his own.
This is with respect to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Duboc: Trump issued executive memorandums, which showed support for both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines.
Okay? Archambault: We are the original occupants of these lands, and infrastructure projects do have an impact on us.
Economic development is why they took our land.
There's no benefit to our tribe for this pipeline.
Duboc: All across the country, Native American tribes are concerned about the risks of energy extraction.
But in Oklahoma, one tribe has been reaping the benefits from their underground resources for over a century.
(gavel pounds) Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to Osage Minerals Council regular meeting, Wednesday, January the 18th.
Duboc: The Osage Minerals Council oversees and manages the headrights to all oil, gas, and minerals found underneath the nearly 1.
5 million acres that makes up the reservation.
Everett Waller was elected council chairman in 2014.
I want the Osages to be known as an oil tribe.
(man speaking English) I sell a product that comes out of the wellhead at approximately $50 a barrel, but every dollar I make under royalty is delivered to the owner.
Duboc: So the Osage are able to dictate where people can and cannot drill.
Welcome to my reservation, yes.
So, the Osage are pretty unique in how much control you have over your mineral wealth.
We give the credit to my great-great-grandfather.
His name was Watiankah the Mighty.
He saw this vision about our future.
He saw metal flying and then running on the ground.
This was back when there were Lincoln Logs and stuff like that.
But we had someone with enough foresight to ask in our treaty rights that we wanted everything under the ground.
We struck oil in 1898.
Once it was found, everyone come down to get their fortune like a gold rush.
More oil has been sold here than all gold rushes put together.
Figures suggest some 20 percent of America's fossil fuels are on reservation land.
Imagine that.
I'm representing one of the richest tribes in the world.
We own the oil.
We own the gas.
It's worth billions.
We haven't even hit the helium yet.
That's gonna be worth a trillion dollars.
Duboc: Up at Standing Rock, it seems like the last thing anybody wants is to be in bed with energy companies, and yet, arguably, that's what's served the Osage so well.
I'm wondering, what the Osage position is on reconciling the relationship with the energy companies with belief in the sanctity of land, trying to protect your reservation.
We understand the sacred land.
We are one of the best custodians there is on the planet of trying to retrieve this fossil fuel and not damage Mother Earth.
Duboc: But that wasn't always the case.
The Osage Tribal Council fired former environmental inspector Chris White in 1995 after he reported 130 potential violations during his employment.
Do you see where the salt has come up here on the edge around this joint here? That's a leak.
Most of the operators in Osage County on the reservation, they're good operators.
There are some operators that, when given the opportunity, they will take advantage of an area like this, right here.
It's money to them.
If they can cut corners, it reduces their overhead, so they're dumping stuff on the ground, or not disposing of it properly, not maintaining their equipment in a proper working order.
Duboc: After being fired, Chris filed a complaint against the council under the whistle-blower provision within the Safe Drinking Water Act.
He won the case, and it was discovered that the council's grounds for firing him were unlawful.
How does it make you feel to come back here after all of that? It's depressing.
At some point in time, the chickens are gonna come home to roost.
Duboc: But spills are not the only consequence of America's shale oil revolution.
We're in Cushing, Oklahoma.
People often refer to this as the Saudi Arabia of the West, because there's more oil flowing through and stored here than anywhere else in North America.
Cushing also happens to be experiencing a rash of earthquakes.
(rumbling) Since 2008, the state's gone from averaging two a year to two a day.
A powerful earthquake rattled central Oklahoma Saturday.
Newswoman 2: Oklahoma geological survey experts have connected the increase in quakes to the disposal of wastewater from a oil and gas production process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Duboc: Jake Walter is the state seismologist for the Oklahoma Geological Survey, and is studying the steady rise in seismic activity over the last decade.
What's going on? What's causing the earthquakes? There's thousands of injection wells throughout Oklahoma.
Oklahoma has loads and loads of faults in some of the deepest sedimentary layers.
Because of the high volumes of water that have been injected, that water is working its way into some of these faults, so that these faults are allowed to slip.
(rumbling) Duboc: How does Oklahoma compare to the rest of the country in terms of seismic activity? Well, with the exception of Alaska, Oklahoma is the most seismically active state in the US.
We're looking at a map of Oklahoma here, and the earthquakes are in red, and the injection wells are in those black squares there.
You can see that injections sort of spread to the north-central part of Oklahoma, and the earthquakes are not far behind.
We're getting to a point where some of these earthquakes are fairly significant-- the 5.
8 that was in September of this year, the 5.
0 near Cushing, which is near a nationally strategic oil pipeline.
These sort of last six years have been unprecedented.
How worried should people be about these earthquakes? The hazard is very, very real.
Duboc: But the threat of catastrophic damage to infrastructure in Oklahoma has not stopped the surge in shale oil production, which has skyrocketed over thousand percent since the year 2000.
With the support for a new oil-friendly administration, the industry has 32,000 miles of new and planned pipelines in the works across North America, according to Pipeline & Gas Journal.
And already, the Dakota Access pipeline has leaked, confirming the fears that brought it so much attention in the first place.
Luckily, the leaks didn't impact drinking water, but Dave Archambault showed us just how vulnerable the tribe could be if they had.
Would you say that this pipeline is now the biggest threat to the community? Today it is.
If you look right here, this is where the water comes in.
You can see the treatment plant, the intake, and the water tower all right here.
And that's the system that provides the fresh drinking water, but it all comes from Missouri River.
This pipeline that threatens this water supply, carrying 550,000 barrels of crude oil with benzene in it, is gonna have a direct impact on our people.
And that's not right.
Even though it's legal, even though the political system says, "This is what we're gonna do," we can't continue down this path, or we're gonna leave nothing for our kids.
Duboc: There are currently over 150 proposed oil and gas pipelines in the works across the country, many of which could potentially cross through tribal lands.
but the legacy of Standing Rock has endured through numerous pipeline protest movements that have sprung up across North America.
Hey! (cheering) Duboc: And pipeline divestment groups have shepherded the removal of billions from the balance sheets of investors.
Seattle is the first city to have divested from Wells Fargo.
(cheers, applause) (woman speaks on megaphone) (crowd shouts) (woman speaks on megaphone) (crowd shouts) Despite setbacks brought by the Trump administration, these people aren't giving up.
(whoops) The fight for clean water is the battle for the soul of our nation and of all nations.
(crowd cheers) Our way of life is being destroyed.
Instead of expanding human rights, the new administration limits human rights.
(cheering) Kandi Mossett: Repeat after me, everybody! I Crowd: I believe Crowd:.
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believe that we Crowd:.
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that we will win! will win! (ululating)