TITLE: SIGN WARFARE
LOCATION: R.C.A. - R.D.C.  
MEDIA: Photographs - Digital Collages
TEXT AUTHOR: Jonathan Littell
YEAR: 2011

“The MI-8 buzzes above the trees, a fat bloated insect, its belly swollen, white as a mythical whale that would have suddenly taken to the skies. Its shadow flits lightly over the green treetops. A few ports are open and a strong wind blows through the hull; the cockpit door, badly latched, flaps open, revealing the thick reddened necks of the Ukrainian pilots.The helicopter is rented, with American funding, by the Ugandan military called the UPDF, Uganda People’s Defense Force. Two officers sit on a bench, AKs between their knees, unloaded and barrel down. A lieutenant of the air wing, his ear glued in spite of the racket to a handset, guides the flight. In front of him are piled cases of corned beef, millet flour and bottles of mineral water. Through the round window set in the door one can look down on the forest, a vast ocean of ever-changing green hues, streaked through with pale winding lines of treeless land. In the distance, a gray mass weighs down on the trees, a broad tube of misty rain connecting cloud and vegetation.The helicopter is somewhere between South Sudan and D.R. Congo, nothing marks the border, there is no sign of life, not a fire, not a plot, not a hut. This is where the enemy hides, and one only has to look to understand how impossible these endless combing missions are. What the Ugandans call OLT, Operation Lightning Thunder, covers an area as large as all of Germany, entirely wooded, hardly inhabited, nearly roadless.The enemy in question is the Lord’s Resistance Army, Ugandan rebels pushed over the border years ago, but who still continue to kill, loot and kidnap young slaves throughout three neighboring countries. There must be a few hundred left. Go find them down there.”