BRENT STIRTON
The spoils of war Much of Brent’s time is spent gaining the trust of his subject – in this case, a defector from the Lord’s Resistance Army in Africa.
Brent Stirton is a hard man to track down. For at least nine months of the year, he is away on assignment in some of the world’s most volatile locations, where he documents issues ranging from the illegal wildlife trade to tribal conflicts and human rights abuses.
When we speak, he is on a rare twoweek break at his Californian home after several months away in Mongolia, Somalia and the Peruvian Amazon. Even then, Brent Stirton doesn’t get many days of complete rest: my call is one of six he’s taking this morning.
“That’s not unusual,” he says.
“When I come back, there are usually a few days of chaos.”
I was in the South African military, and South Africa was going through tremendous turmoil at that time. I went from wanting to become a doctor to wanting to become a journalist, just because I thought there was a great misunderstanding over the role of geopolitics over things like apartheid and the Angolan conflict; and also, our communication with each
