Читать книгу War and Slavery in Sudan - Jok Madut Jok - Страница 10

Chapter One

The Revival of Slavery During the Civil War: Facts and Testimonies

The roots of Sudan’s unresolved civil war have a long history, but the modern context relating to the current wave of slavery was set in times of alien intrusion, starting with Turco-Egyptian rule in the nineteenth century (1821–81) through Anglo-Egyptian colonial rule (1898–1956).¹ By providing an overview of the current Sudanese conflict, I will analyze the causes and consequences of the ongoing slave raiding. There is concrete evidence that slavery is not buried in the past, especially since one still finds today the conditions that allowed it to flourish in the nineteenth century. For example, those Dinka areas that have witnessed the resurgence of slavery since the early 1980s were the same areas that had formed the slavery zone in historical times. The present slave-catching communities of Darfur and Kordofan were part of the slave frontier in the nineteenth century. The same Arab groups currently engaged in slavery were slave raiders during both the Turkiyya and the Mahdiyya. Long after Sudan joined the world community in ratifying antislavery conventions and formulated legal provisions that prohibited slavery, the practice persisted among the slaving communities in the North, as its ideology has been coded into the Baggara Arabic language, folklore, daily humor, and poetry. South Sudanese continue to be referred to as abeed (slaves) by North Sudanese, whose privileged position today has much to do with their history as slave masters in the past. It is this long tradition of an ideology of dominance that Arab governments in Khartoum have always used to treat the South as a mere source of material resources, and its inhabitants as cheap laborers who can be useful only when they are stripped of their freedom. This long-standing racial/ethnic prejudice has partly prompted the current wave of slavery.

During the first civil war, which took place between the North and the South from 1955 to 1972, the Baggara did not play a significant role. They continued to use Dinka grazing plains and fishing waters. Hostilities between the two groups were occasional. The Baggara even carried on with their traditional barter trade with the Dinka as well as with the southern rebel forces, the Anyanya. There were also extended periods of peace established by the traditional chiefs of the two groups on the basis of mutual interests, especially between the Misseria and the Ngok Dinka. At times, the two groups engaged in social relations that involved interethnic marriages, especially between the Rezeigat and the Malwal Dinka. They also established mechanisms for defusing individual conflicts between subtribes, most notably the truces signed by the leaders of both sides. Many accords were reached during the 1960s and the 1970s, including the 1976 Babanusa accord between chief Deng Majok of the Ngok Dinka of Abyei and Nazir Babu Nimr of the Misseria and the 1976 accord reached in Safaha between the Rezeigat and the Malwal Dinka of Aweil, brokered by the then-commissioner of Bahr el-Ghazal, Isaiha Kulang Mabor, and Sudan’s vice president, Abdel Majid Hamid Khalil. These agreements, although breached on many occasions by the Baggara, brought relative peace to the borderland between the Baggara and the Dinka for many years.

But when the second civil conflict broke out in 1983, the agreements disintegrated and Dinka-Baggara relations turned into almost irreconcilable hostilities. The hostilities were caused in part by the massive influx of Baggara pastoralists into Dinka and Ju-Luo territories to graze their livestock during the drought in Darfur and Kordofan. In addition, these pastoralists became hunters, killing small and big game in the nearby forests, and thereby provoking Dinka attempts to deny the Baggara access to their grazing areas and fishing zones. The Baggara started arriving in Dinka areas prepared to use military force to make their way south of the Kiir River if they met with resistance. Intense conflict ensued.

These hostilities would have remained sporadic and manageable, as they had been for many generations, had the government of Sudan not decided to manipulate them for its political designs as a cheap way to bring the South under control. The government tolerated the illegal acquisition of guns by the Arab pastoralists. The Baggara were often better armed than the Dinka because of their access to guns coming into Sudan from neighboring Chad, which was embroiled in its own civil war in the early 1980s. The war in Chad had serious security implications for western Sudan, but in the government’s view, the benefits of destabilizing the Dinka far outweighed the security problems.² Some Baggara individuals were also known for enlisting in the army and then deserting with the arms. It was also a matter of common knowledge that many western Sudanese who retired from the armed forces were allowed to keep a number of guns for themselves, which they either sold to others in Darfur and Kordofan or gave to family members. Such arms are locally used for protection against cattle rustlers from other herding societies within the North. By means of these arms, the Arab herders forced their way into the Dinka grazing lands. They also hunted game with impunity, and when the Dinka tried to stop them, the result was often a declaration of war on the Dinka.

These hostilities became more intense when the SPLA deployed forces in northern Bahr el-Ghazal, partly to restore the old colonial borders and partly to protect the Dinka people as well as the environment. The SPLA encountered Baggara Arab raiding forces in 1984–87 on the borders between Bahr el-Ghazal and southern Darfur and southern Kordofan. The SPLA defeated the Baggara Arab pastoralists and drove them away from the southern borders. The SPLA forces then turned to the escalation of the struggle against the Sudan army, following their victory over the Arab pastoralists and hunters. The SPLA forces established their military bases on the borders, extending guerrilla activities to non-Arab ethnic territories of the Nuba Mountains and Ingessana hills in southern Kordofan and southern Blue Nile, respectively.

Like Christian and non-Arab ethnic groups in South Sudan, the Nuba and the Ingessana people had also suffered from the oppressive and unjust rule of the Arabs in Sudan. Although their regions belonged to north Sudan, which was comparatively more developed than South Sudan, they had been as neglected in development as the South. When SPLA forces penetrated the Nuba Mountains and southern Blue Nile for recruitment and spread revolutionary feelings against the Arab and Muslim domination in Sudan, many young men and women from the Nuba and Ingessana joined the ranks of southern guerrilla fighters. Such unity among non-Arabs in Sudan, which had never happened before, sent a wave of fear through the Arab and Muslim rulers in Khartoum. In addition, the Khartoum governments traditionally relied on these non-Arab groups for army recruits under the command of Arab officers. During the second round of the civil war, the government found it difficult to recruit troops from the Nuba and the Ingessana ethnic groups. The Arab governments in Khartoum, therefore, turned to recruit most of their troops from Arab groups.

The Slave-Taking Armies and Their Mission

Two types of forces emerged out of this recruitment policy, and these were meant to be the “final solution”³ to the “Southern Problem.” The first type of force was the tribal militias called Murahileen.⁴ The Arab rulers in Khartoum resorted to the Baggara in particular to form a militia force to carry out what amounted to ethnic cleansing against the Dinka and the Nuba. The government saw the militias as an opportunity to assert Arab and Muslim domination in Sudan, and the Baggara pastoralists and peasants viewed their militia forces as the only way to gain their economic goals in northern Bahr el-Ghazal, southern Kordofan, and southern Blue Nile. The militias executed a policy of raiding and looting, capturing slaves, and expelling others from their territories, and settling “pacified” Nuba and Ingessana lands by force. The plan of the militia, as the victims explained it, was not only to collect booty and slaves but also to destabilize Dinka areas. The desperate Dinka would then have to move into the North, where they would be subject to economic exploitation and enslavement.

The second and most insidious forces comprised part of the Sudanese army and were the Popular Defense Forces (PDF). These also included paramilitary tribal groups affiliated with the Sudanese army. Their work took many forms. They were primarily a jihadic force that sprang out of the growing politicization of Islam and Islamic militancy most associated with the government of National Islamic Front (NIF), which came to power on June 30, 1989. One writer described the PDF as follows: “They consisted of existing Arab militias, the infamous Murahileen, student and professional ‘volunteers’ who rushed to the call of the jihad and adults dragooned into six weeks of compulsory military training whose curriculum consisted of calisthenics and religious indoctrination.”⁵ Because of this, these forces have also been called Mujahideen, meaning holy warriors. They were supplied with weapons, some money, and army badges. They were also armed with a complete ideology the Islamists had introduced to indoctrinate, shape, and thereby control the Sudanese in all aspects of life. The force was intended to fight the SPLA on the basis that the latter was the enemy of Islam and the Arabs, and that one way to defeat the SPLA was to hit at its support base among the Dinka. The recruits were constantly instructed that their mission was not only to defend the homeland from the “infidels paid by the U.S. and the Zionist State” but also to extend their faith to unbelievers in the South and beyond.

The NIF’s other mission was to guard the military trains between Babanusa and Wau, which run through Dinka territory. There were usually several trains going one behind the other carrying supplies and reinforcements to government garrison towns along the railway line up to Wau, the regional capital of Bahr el-Ghazal. To prevent the trains from being attacked or taken over by the SPLA, the government instructed the PDF to ride on them until the trains reached Dinka territory, after which they got off and moved on foot, forming a shield along the sides of the train. These trains moved at a walking speed. All three types of forces—the Murahileen, the Mujahideen/PDF, and the government of Sudan regular army—worked together, each assigned a particular role. The Baggara tribal militias “go on horseback forming an outer circle protecting the train, the army, and the other forces from possible SPLA attacks.”⁶ They move at an outer distance of approximately five miles but sometimes as far as sixteen miles away from the force on foot along the train. During their movement on horseback they pass through Dinka villages and cattle camps, which they attack, stealing cattle and taking slaves. They then return to the train with their booty, and as the train nears its destination, the horseback militia forces return back to the North as the trains enter Wau. To return to Babanusa, the PDF guards the train, and similar atrocities in Dinkaland recur.

My investigations indicate that the capture and movement of slaves to the North has been predominantly the work of the Murahileen. It has also been established that some of the regular soldiers and members of the other forces guarding the train have kidnapped women and children, whom they took to their barracks. Some of them have reportedly taken this human booty with them to their hometowns and villages when they went home on holidays or when they were transferred. Many children currently working as domestic servants in the towns and villages in northern Sudan were taken in this manner, under the pretext that they were being rescued from the ravages of the civil war in the South and were going to places of care rather than to enslavement. Some of them have been taken to Islamic schools in Khartoum to be trained as future Mujahideen to be used against their own people. Contrary to the stated goal of the army in establishing militias to boost its military situation, the government granted the soldiers free rein in the South to supplement their meager salaries with whatever loot they could come by.⁷

The Raids that Marked the Beginning of the Tragedy

The militias had been active since 1985 taking slaves from the Dinka. The first and most destructive attack on the Dinka communities of Aweil, Abyei, and Tuic occurred in February 1986. Jointly, the Rezeigat raided the Malwal Dinka of Aweil West County of the Bahr el-Ghazal region and the Misseria Humr raided the Abiem Dinka of Aweil East County. The Misseria Humr also attacked the Ngok Dinka of Abyei and Tuic during the same operations. During these violent attacks, many Dinka were killed, including the son of a Dinka paramount chief, Riiny Lual, in the village of Marial Baai. The Rezeigat and the Misseria Humr occupied a large area of Malwal Dinka for nearly two months. During this period, they conducted daily raiding and looting from their new bases within the Dinka territory, and some went back and forth between their homeland and the Dinka area to move their booty. They took two thousand women and children and thousands of cattle. The Dinka in the area were scattered, and large numbers were displaced to the North across the Kiir River into Baggaraland, where they hoped the government might protect them and provide them with shelter and food. The displaced also thought that their kin who had moved there in earlier years might help them. As will be shown later, they were soon disillusioned. Successive governments deliberately decided on a policy of exploitation of the displaced that amounted to slavery.⁸ Other Dinka communities in the vicinity of the border with the Baggara withdrew from their villages and cattle camps and moved to Dinka areas farther south and east of the region. The Dinka of Abiem in Aweil East County, Abyei, and Tuic were also displaced in massive numbers as a result of Misseria Humr raiding. Large numbers of children and women were captured and driven off to be sold into slavery or disposed of once they were determined to be unfit for the tasks for which they were taken. People found unsuitable for slavery were left to linger until they were able to find money for bus fare to other northern cities like Khartoum. These individuals have become an important source of information on the conditions of those who remain in bondage.⁹

The second raid took place in January 1987. Baggara raids take place almost exclusively in the winter because it is the dry season in Sudan. During the autumn, the rivers overflow their banks, making it difficult for the horseback raiding bands to cross into South Sudan. Horses also suffer from constant exposure to water, mud, and mosquitoes. Due to the difficulties experienced by their horses during the wet season, the Murahileen attack the Dinka only between January and April. Occasionally, they have raided up until May if the rainy season is delayed. The January 1987 raid targeted the area of Gong Machar in Aweil West County. The raid continued through February, and the Rezeigat took away almost all the cattle that remained in the area, killed many people, and captured about a thousand children and women.¹⁰ They took them across the Kiir River to “store”¹¹ them in the zaribas¹² (fenced enclosures normally used for cattle) while they conducted more raiding. After that, when the raiding bands were satisfied with their destruction and had accumulated enough booty, the captives were taken farther to such Baggara towns as ed-Da’ein and Abu Matariq, where they were distributed among the raiders and their families. The slave raids have taken place every year since 1985. In some years, multiple raids occurred in the same villages in one single dry season. For example, between January and April 1998, there were twenty-four raids in Aweil and Tuic Counties. There were approximately the same number of raids during the dry season of 1999.

By the time the second raid took place in 1987, the SPLA had increased its deployment of forces from the Tiger Battalion on the border areas of Aweil and southern Darfur under the command of George Kuac to protect Dinka civilians. The Baggara militias became aware that they could not do much damage to the forces of the SPLA, whom they were supposed to be fighting. In fact, they made a conscious decision to avoid SPLA forces by all means and instead attack civilian villages. Since the SPLA force in the area at this time consisted of only 4,000 men, it was not possible for them to completely block the marauding forces of the Baggara. The SPLA spent the whole dry season of 1987 trying to flush out the militias, running from one area to another whenever news came in about a raid. It became so difficult to deny the Baggara forces access to northern Bahr el-Ghazal that the SPLA resorted to a tactic of allowing them to enter and then locking them inside the South to retrieve the abducted people and the looted cattle. In one incident, the Baggara learned of SPLA forces trying to block them from returning to the North. They withdrew into a thickly forested area about forty miles west of Dinkaland, but the SPLA penetrated the forest and attacked them and recouped most of the stolen cattle. Despite the defeat and numerous casualties, the Baggara had found raiding too lucrative to give up. There have been many incidents where the Baggara were defeated and experienced heavy losses, yet they have continued to return to the South.

With increasing SPLA ability to rebuff militia raids, the government army advised the Murahileen to use the town of Safaha inside the Southern Region’s border as its base to quickly retreat to when cornered by the SPLA. At this base, the army would be able to provide the militia with needed supplies and reinforcements. There was a small 600-man-strong government army contingent in Safaha, and the thousands of Rezeigat armed men were only too happy to receive such a strong backing by the government of Sudan. Safaha became a strong militia and army base from which the assault on northern Bahr el-Ghazal was launched in 1987. The SPLA, however, continued to attack Safaha and retrieved stolen cattle and took over the town, killing two well-known army officers, Ahmed Musa and Omar Gadim, who were staunch supporters of the militia system. There were constant skirmishes, in which the Baggara were attacking the Dinka villages and withdrawing as fast as possible into pockets of forests before the SPLA could reach them. But the Rezeigat attacks became more and more successful in avoiding head-on clashes with the SPLA because they were guided by Dinka collaborators. Some Dinka reside among the Baggara and show the Baggara where SPLA positions, Dinka dry season cattle camps, and other population concentration areas are located. This is a puzzling phenomenon that cuts across cultures and historical periods and has occurred among blacks in the fight against the apartheid regime in South Africa, in the American West, where native Americans gave each other away, and during the Holocaust, where some Jews worked for the Nazis.¹³ It is common knowledge that the Baggara often have difficulties with the terrain and the geography of the Dinka territory and with knowing about the SPLA positions, and benefit from the help of some Dinka.

The Acquisition of Slaves and the Involvement of the Government of Sudan

The history of current slavery resembles the history of contact between Bahr el-Ghazal and alien intruders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This contact, which began in the middle of nineteenth century, was characterized by violence. The contact began with the influx of ivory and slave traders, followed by the Turco-Egyptians, the Mahdists, and the Europeans, all of whom entered the province in pursuit of either colonial or Islamic interests.¹⁴ When the slave traders first penetrated northern Bahr el-Ghazal, they tried to bring most of its territory under their domination in order to exploit its wealth of ivory and slaves. Firearms enabled the slave traders to impose their rule. The classic means by which slaves were acquired in historical times in Sudan was the razzia (Arabic, raid), most associated with Turco-Egyptian slave hunting (during the Turkiyya, 1821–81) and with the Mahdi’s anti-Turk Islamic revolution (the Mahdiyya, 1881–98).¹⁵ The Rezeigat and Misseria (Baggara) tribal militia attacks on the villages of northern Bahr el-Ghazal have become the principal means for the acquisition of slaves, and the violence involved is reminiscent of the earlier razzia. The current system was organized and sustained by a strategic interest shared between the government of Sudan and the Baggara—the government wants fighters to confront the SPLA and the Baggara want grazing lands and free laborers.

The planning and organization of the slave-raiding expeditions are evidence that the practice is not a mere “tribal feud over grazing areas and water sources,” as the government of Sudan has claimed. The degree and time of planning depends on whether the force that is being put together is the Murahileen, that is, the tribal militias of the Baggara, or the Popular Defense Forces, the Mujahideen that guard the military trains. In the case of the tribal militia, before the raid is actually carried out, the slave-catching communities of the Baggara spend several weeks putting together the raiding force. Preparations begin with a message from the local authorities to the chiefs in some of the slaving communities that there will be free arms and some money offered to those who volunteer for the militia. They are also promised that they will keep whatever loot they will bring back from Dinkaland. The preparations also involve native administrators such as the nazir, the umda, and the sheikh,¹⁶ the army, and the government officials who work in the slave-taking communities such as the police, the judges, and security officers. The Baggara also make an important electoral support base for the Umma Party of Sadiq al-Mahdi, and the party has therefore been involved in organizing the slave raids as well, at least during al-Mahdi’s premiership in the 1980s.

The native administrators then make clan-based lists of all the people who are interested in the adventure. The lists enable them to collect taxes from the raiders’ booty and to distribute the loot fairly. They also allow the government to keep track of the arms given away, for the government is at times unsure about the consequences of proliferating assault weapons to an undisciplined militia force. Recent interviews with South Sudanese returning from the North and with former slaves who were freed or who escaped have provided information on the planning of slave raids.

One informant was Ali, who was interviewed in Nyamlel (Aweil West) in the summer of 1999. He is half Dinka and half Baggara and has lived with the Dinka all his life. When a joint government army and militia force attacked and occupied Nyamlel for two weeks in 1998, Ali was captured and taken to the North along with 380 others. Because of his light complexion and other Baggara features, he was not enslaved. Instead he was released and told never to return to Dinkaland. Ali stayed in ed-Da’ein only to look for ways to sneak back to Bahr el-Ghazal. He eventually managed to travel to el-Fasher and got on a train that took him to el-Meiram. He then walked back to Nyamlel. His account, and information from SPLA local officials and other former slaves, explain the planning of a slave expedition as follows: “The Baggara usually form a slave-raid ‘committee.’ Each willing subtribal group brings its representative to participate in the committee. The representative mobilizes men and youth to join the raiding force. The committee determines the date of the raid. And the participants gather in a previously designated location that has water resources. The militia leaders, in collaboration with the umdas and sheikhs, would prepare food supplies for the raid. Then they would go to the hukuuma (the government) for weapons and ammunition. The government has to be informed about the departure of a raiding force to northern Bahr el-Ghazal so that reinforcements could be sent just in case the SPLA attacks them.”

This structured system is strong evidence that the government has made slavery an important institution once again, just as it was more than a century ago in the same area involving the same peoples. The preparations involve plans for the journey south, the attack on Dinka villages, the destruction of homes, the burning of food stores, the looting of cattle, the killing of men who resist, and the abduction of children and women. Also of important consideration during the preparation phase is the journey back to the North, how to deal with a possible SPLA ambush, the division of the loot at some point along the way, the dispersion of the militia to their villages, and the scattering of the slaves. The distribution and scattering of slaves has to be done as quickly as possible so as to avoid accumulation of slaves in one place where they might be found and the practice exposed. Upon the return of the attackers, the slaving communities normally celebrate the successful and safe return of the militias. Bulls are slaughtered to mark the occasion. People sing, beat drums, and make joyous cries. A game of horse riding-skills is played.

In the case of the Popular Defense Forces, slave raiding is a corollary of a jihadic war against the SPLA. As mentioned earlier, their main task was to guard the train between Babanusa and Wau. It took weeks, sometimes months, to get the train ready in terms of supplies and men to take the trip to Wau. The forces were conscripted and given rudimentary training in operating the AK-47 assault rifles. They were inducted into the mentality of martyrdom in the name of Islam. A word was then sent to Baggara umdas in el-Meiram, Babanusa, and Muglad that the government was recruiting Muslim youth to escort the train south. The government paid a varying amount of money to the participating youth in addition to arms, which they kept after the train had reached its final destination. Once a Baggara subgroup or clan received the arms, these arms became the property of the group. The chiefs can collect the weapons at the end of the mission or keep the list of recipients to be called upon the next time the government makes another request. Because they went through Dinka territory, sometimes in collaboration with the Murahileen and the regular army, the paramilitary forces raided Dinka villages along the railway line. Slaves captured in the process of the train movement became the property of individual Mujahideen as payment for their venture. Although material reward was minimal for this group, compared to the Murahileen proper, they seemed to believe that the demolition of the SPLA, the suppression of southern calls for freedom, and possible extension of Islam was the ostensible reward climax of their endeavor.

In sum, the line between the slave-raiding armies of the different subtribal groups in Darfur and Kordofan, the PDF, and the Sudanese army was blurry, as far as slavery was concerned. Often the army undertook a joint operation with these militias to attack SPLA positions or villages suspected of sympathizing with the SPLA. One such operation was the 1998 occupation of Nyamlel mentioned above. It involved not only the collaboration of tribal militias and the Sudanese army, but also the top administration of ed-Da’ein Province. The commissioner of the province, the commander of the armed forces, the nazir and other local administrators were all involved in the organization of the raid, the thirteen-day occupation of the town, and the town’s destruction. This occupation, which resulted in the taking of hundreds of slaves, was filmed and broadcast on an army program on Sudan national television. Although Nyamlel is not an SPLA military base, the broadcast portrayed the occupation force as a glorious army capturing a town from the rebels.

The following is an account of the occupation of Nyamlel in May 1998. It is a summary of many statements from the survivors of the raid as well as from escaped slaves. The Nyamlel occupation was a part of an offensive by the ruling National Islamic Front. The attackers were on foot, horseback and in armored vehicles. There were about twelve cars in all. They took cattle, goats, young women, and children. Houses were burned and people were thrown into the flames. Anyang Ngong, a young woman in her twenties, was among the captives. She was from a small village between Nyamlel and Marial Baai. She explained the whole ordeal in the following words:

They beat me and tore off my clothes. They tied the hands of small boys to the horses, and took us to Nyamlel. There, we had to stay at the old rest house.¹⁷ We were guarded by security men belonging to the Popular Defense Forces [PDF]. The commander in charge of the force was named Jenet Hassan. Almost all the strong people in my village were captured and taken to Nyamlel. But there were so many people from other villages. It was difficult to know how many were there. The town, Nyamlel, was crammed with abducted people. Most people were made naked. Women and men were all in one place. The Arabs have no decency. We were kept in Nyamlel for many days. People were being beaten, yelled at, and nobody could move anywhere. Nobody ate anything throughout the whole time that we were kept in Nyamlel. At night, some soldiers would take women from the crowd, take them to the river, and [sleep] with them. Sometimes their commander would stop them from doing this. The commissioner of ed-Da’ein [Abdelrahman Kidder] arrived in Nyamlel with more cars, I think it was three days after the occupation. We were [filmed] and we felt so bad about this, for we were naked. When the time came that they were leaving, it became immediately evident that they were taking us with them. They filled up the cars with people, but there were still more people left, including me. We were divided into small groups. Many people were made to carry things on their heads. Some carried jerry cans of water, others carried bullets, and others carried the Arabs’ food supplies. And worst of all, we had to walk in the hot sun, without food. After several days on foot, we reached the Kiir River and we stayed there for two days. Then we were divided up again and put in lorries. People were packed so tightly into these cars. Children were crushed and I thought they were going to die before the last destination. Anybody who complained about being sat upon was beaten. One woman complained that someone had sat on her child, and the guards beat her and her child was thrown off the moving vehicle. We were first taken to Abu Matariq and we spent one night there. Then we went to ed-Da’ein. We were taken to the Commissioner’s house for distribution. The most fit were given to various Arabs. The weak ones were sent to the displaced persons’ camps. I was taken to Khor Omer camp. At the camp I found most of the people were from my area of Malwal Dinka. There were those from Nyamlel, Gok Machar, Marial Baai, Manyiel, and Achana [all in Aweil West County]. The camp was guarded by security men from the government. We were told that the governor of southern Darfur and the commissioner of ed-Da’ein would send some people to help us, to give us food. There was an organization run by Arabs called Da’wa Islamiyya.¹⁸ This organization is in charge of the camp. The staff of Da’wa Islamiyya are security agents, but they masquerade as relief workers so that foreign aid workers do not know their actual role. Disguised as aid workers these Arabs watch the activities of expatriate workers and report them to the government. The Da’wa Islamiyya people do not allow displaced Southerners to talk with foreigners. They pay money for captured children, and they bring these children to the camp saying that they were orphans. Children kidnapped from the South and brought to the camp with their mothers were ripped from their mothers and taken to the khalwa [Koranic school]. The women were taken to farms to work in the field, or to homes to cook, clean, and wash clothes. Some women told us that others were killed when they tried to escape. I was made to be a cook for Arab guests who came to visit the people of Da’wa Islamiyya. Some relief food was brought to the camp by different aid agencies, but the security men would take most of it and sell in town. People were treated very badly in the camp. For example, one time, a woman from the UN came to give us ration cards, and we were beaten later for talking to her. People were also often beaten for visiting and mingling with each other. Every now and then, the commissioner of ed-Da’ein and other big officials would come to the camp to hold big meetings with all the captives. During one of these visits we were told to not resist conversion to Islam or any requests to be “married” to the Arabs. They told us that we could avoid falling in sin by accepting an Arab for a “man.” I had to get out of that place. I told myself that it would be better to die running away than be forced into Islam and marriage to another man. One day, when I was sent to the market, I just started walking past the market and I escaped. When I arrived back here, I found that we had lost everything, but I am much better off free and poor than to eat and be abused.

Other incidents in which the army’s central role in the resurrection of slavery have been reported by several sources including Dinka labor migrants returning from the North, former slaves, and those who were once stationed in Baggara towns as part of the Sudanese army. One strong case implicating the army was the report of many witnesses that a military helicopter was frequently seen landing in Safaha between January and March 1987. This helicopter reportedly brought ammunition for the militias that raided Aweil West throughout the season. Also reported were cases where supplies were transported by trucks from the Baggara town of Abu Matariq to Safaha, where both the army and the militias were stationed. In more recent times, the Murahileen have been seen carrying radio communication systems and heavy artillery, indicating that these tribal militias were no longer traditional cattle rustlers, as claimed by the government, but rather a well-organized force involving the army. Yet the government of Sudan continued to deny the organized role of the army in slave taking, and dismissed slave capturing simply as “usual tribal abduction.”

The linchpin of the government’s attempts to deflect world attention from slavery and other human rights issues in Sudan were the statements of Hassan al-Turabi, the staunch Islamist and chief ideologue of the ruling National Islamic Front. He has been seen as the real power in the government since a military coup brought al-Bashir to power in 1989. In response to reports accusing the Sudanese government of complicity in slavery, al-Turabi has constantly suggested that he found it impossible for slavery to exist in Sudan. He has repeatedly cited Sudanese law, which prohibits slavery, saying that “these allegations were no more than a malicious propaganda initiated by the United States because of the American hate for the Islamic cultural project in Sudan.”¹⁹ Judging by the scant attention the world has given to the suffering of South Sudanese, one must say that the efforts of al-Turabi may have been successful in persuading the world community that slavery is not practiced in Sudan. But while he is right about the fact that the Sudanese constitution prohibits slavery and other forms of exploitation, what matters in Sudan is the daily application of the constitution. South Sudanese, due to their race or religion, do not enjoy the protection provided by the constitution, since the laws are applied preferentially.

Another means by which slaves are acquired is through the exploitation of the displaced from the South. A large proportion of the thousands of slaves and hundreds of thousands of the displaced South Sudanese driven into the North by the war in the 1980s were Dinka from northern Bahr el-Ghazal. During the 1987 and 1988 war- and drought-provoked famines in northern Bahr el-Ghazal, which prompted the Dinka to flee to the North through Baggara territory, the Arabs exploited this tragedy to acquire Dinka children by means of deceitful contracts. These were bogus arrangements that the Baggara designed to take children from their poverty-stricken parents and guardians under the pretext that they were being offered light labor roles in exchange for food for the family and money for transport. Some estimates put the number of children acquired in this manner at over 2,000.²⁰

Testimonies of Former Slaves

Many people in Bahr el-Ghazal who witnessed the slave raids and survived them or who escaped from slavery were interviewed between 1997 and 1999. The stories they narrated about their experiences during the raiding and the march to the North provide a tragic account of the slave raids’ impact on the Dinka. The attacks, the burning of villages, the chasing and killing, the looting and destruction of property, and the capture of slaves were described as the most horrific events they had ever witnessed.

Garang Deng Akot is now twenty years old. He had been purchased from his original captor by a cattle-herding and small-scale agricultural Baggara family. He spent eight years working for them grazing cattle and moving with the entire family during the dry season as far as the Sudanese border with Chad. Realizing that his chances of escaping were limited or nonexistent, Garang pretended to have accepted his status as a slave. Within one year after he was acquired, he had earned the trust of his master so much that he was occasionally allowed to take the cattle to grazing areas far away from the village on his own. In March 1999 he found himself alone, and with the help of the changing vegetation, he noticed that he seemed close to the Dinka area, so he decided to escape. He drove the entire herd all day and all night until he found himself in Dinka territory after three days. He informed the Dinka that he had come from across the Kiir River with over two hundred head of Baggara cattle. He told the Dinka that he expected the Arabs to come looking for him and that a raiding party visit might be imminent. He was right. A force of horseback tribesmen had been looking for him all over the grazing plains and stumbled upon tracks which led them to the escaped slave. When they arrived, they clashed with SPLA forces and were beaten off. The young man now lives a comfortable life in Dinka territory after many years of captivity and enslavement. He described the raid in which he was captured as follows:

I do not recall what I was doing at that moment but I remember hearing the sound of gunfire, people running in different directions, and shouting: “Murahileen have come, Murahileen have come.” Within a short while, the Arabs on horseback were all upon our village of Majak Baai. The people scattered everywhere. All my immediate family ran toward the railway line, but I ran with my other relatives in the direction of the SPLA base. We were running as fast as we could, but the Arabs on their horses were behind us and shooting at us. They killed several people including two of my uncles, Akot and Garang Akot. I stopped for a moment to look at them and the sight of the bullet passing through someone’s head terrified me so much that I ran really fast. But the horses were racing toward me from all directions and I stopped. One of them stopped his horse, got down and came toward me. When I tried to run in the other direction he caught me from behind. The other Arabs arrived and one of them tied my hands with a rope. I was lifted on top of a horse and my legs were tied to the lower end of the saddle. Then they took me through my village, which was set on fire, to meet with the rest of the Arabs who were loading the looted grain on the back of the horses. They tied the rest of the captives to the horses. Then we were marched toward the Kiir River to a location where they had left their livestock. This location, the name of which I cannot recall, had been established as the base from which to stage attacks on various Dinka villages. When we got to this location, there were at least fifty camels carrying ammunition and other supplies. The different groups that had gone to attack the villages regrouped here. It was a good place for them since it had a well for water and the Dinka inhabitants had deserted it long before because of the raids. From here we were taken to Baggara villages north of the Kiir River. The man who caught me, whose name I later came to know as Muhammad Abeid, one day told me that I had to go live with another family and I should regard them as my family from now on. For the next several years, I had no idea about the fate of my family and I was just working for Ibrahim Kheir and his family. He told me that I was to become his son, but I was not treated like a son. I was so upset and sometimes when they treated me like a dog, I wished I had a gun to kill all of them, but I knew in my heart that I would be free some day.²¹

A local official in Tuic County, Thongjang Awaak, also recalled a horrific incident he had witnessed during the raid in Wunrok in May 1997. An Arab man on horseback had caught a young girl and a calf, tied both of them to the back of the horse and dragged them while being pursued by the SPLA. It was difficult for the horse to speed away, but the man would not let go of the girl and the calf. The SPLA soldiers were unable to shoot at him for fear of striking the girl. He was blocked off from rejoining the rest of the raiding force. His horse was struck from the side and he was eventually killed and the girl was rescued, but the determination shown by this man to kidnap and loot at all cost baffled the SPLA.

Some of the most gruesome stories told by slaves who escaped or gained their freedom in the North and returned to Bahr el-Ghazal have also provided an understanding of the nature of slave life and are the strongest evidence of enslavement. The stories of maltreatment involve hard labor such as herding livestock, agricultural work, domestic service, and even sexual and reproductive coercion. They also include verbal abuse. This exploitation of the slaves occurs extensively throughout the country. The provinces of southern Darfur and western Kordofan, in both rural and urban areas, are the principal areas of widespread enslavement, but other urban centers of slavery include el-Fasher, Nyala, Muglad, and Khartoum.

There are numerous accounts, provided by slaves who have run away and by human rights reports, about the way slaves in northern Sudan are treated. These accounts are reminiscent of the way slaves have always been exploited throughout history. The Dinka girls and women held by Arab families become sexual slaves as well as household domestics and farm workers. Consider the following accounts.

When they raided our village, captured me with my children, and marched us to ed-Da’ein, we were quickly distributed to the relatives of the man who had captured us, and I ended up with another man who had several adult sons. I was told of my daily chores right away and I was made to do everything from milking the cows to cleaning the house, cooking, and washing. What I was not told was that I was to become somebody’s woman. I was not even given to one specific man. Whenever any of them wanted to be with me, he just showed up at night and there was nothing I could do. When I expressed my objection to their advances toward me, I was threatened with gruesome violence. I was told I could have my breast cut off, my children could be killed, or I could die. One man was coming to me so often that I think his wives became outraged. After some time, when I did not know anymore what had happened to my children, I found a way to escape so I could search for them. Now I have heard from others that two of them are in el-Fasher.²²

Another woman made the following observations: “During cultivation times, the grown-up Dinka is sent to the farm to cut the weeds from morning to evening, and if a Rizeigi has a son, he will not send him for errands anymore. Only the Dinka child is sent to do these things. Old Dinka women are made to work in the house and on the farm. They wash the dishes and do many household chores. These enslaved Dinkas are given nothing. If they are barefoot they remain so. The Dinka girls who grow up there are made their ‘women’ and the virgin girl who is brought to you is also made a ‘woman.’ ”²³

A young woman I interviewed in Turalei in the summer of 1999 provided further illustration. When Teresa Amou Arou was abducted from Bulal in Abyei County at age twelve, her father was killed and her captor, Bakhur Ahmed from the Misseria clan of Awlad Kamil, took her to Chiteb, a Misseria town between Abyei and Muglad, and her name was changed to Zahra. When she was in captivity, she worked on the farm and went to fetch water. Every morning, she took the millet and pounded it in the mortar or ground it on the grinding stone. She went to fetch firewood and cooked the meals every day. She also worked in cutting karkade or hibiscus, drying it and packing it in bags.²⁴ Fearing that she might escape, her captors would not let her go far without the company of her master’s boys. She slept on plastic sheeting in a makeshift hut where she cooked the meals for the family. Her master and his sons abused her sexually, and fearing further physical harm she obeyed their commands. One season, the family moved close to the Kiir River with their cattle, and there, Teresa found an opportunity to escape in 1998. She now lives in Turalei at a boarding school set up by the local community for all the former slave children and supported by the diocese of el-Obeid.²⁵

Sexual exploitation could be regarded as another form of slavery that may have gone unexposed under the pretext of ordinary domestic service. At present, such practices against southern slave women is common. In many instances, the slave master not only demands sexual services from his female slaves, which causes an outrage among his wives,²⁶ but also instructs his female slaves to give sexual lessons to his young sons. This is a practice long reported by Dinka women who worked as domestic servants in Arab Muslim households throughout the 1960s and 1970s.²⁷ The explanation given by some of the women who have experienced this was that, given the Islamic strict separation between boys and girls in public places and between households, the fathers have often found themselves in a dilemma: they want to instill proper Islamic behavior in their sons, such as maintaining a distance from women, while they worry that their sons might become homosexuals if they have no exposure to members of the opposite sex. It is granted that slave women have no right to object to any sexual advances by the master and his sons. But the female slaves of modern-day Sudan are forced not only to tolerate sexual advances by the masters’ sons, but also to arouse the boy’s sexual urges toward females. Many testimonies provided by freed slave women attest to a myriad of sexual abuses by slaveholders and their young sons. One young former slave woman, whom I interviewed in Warawar in the summer of 1998, said that given the horrible atrocities that the Arabs have often committed during the raiding, she could expect sexual coercion. “But to be [gang-raped] by an old man and his children is just not human. Where else on earth do members of one family force themselves on one woman. Even cattle know their sexual boundaries.”²⁸

Sexual abuse of slaves is not limited to women. Many boys have told adult slaves, with a great sense of humiliation, that they were raped repeatedly by their masters. Upon returning home, one escaped slave boy from Gok Machar was said to have told his mother that the forced sexual contact between him and his captor had happened so often that he had sometimes wondered whether this was a natural occurrence for all men, and he almost believed it was so. When I heard of this boy and went to interview him in 1998, he told me that his only indication that this was unnatural was the pain he had experienced, the dreadful anticipation of his master’s visit upon him night after night, and the shame he had felt the day following the molestation. He said that he could not stand the look on people’s faces when he considered the possibility that other people knew what this man was doing to him. He still recalled the faces of other boys and girls still in captivity, and the possibility of similar things happening to them made him nauseous.

Another escaped slave provided a further insight about slave experiences. Angong Chan, a mother of three children, was captured in Warawar market during the May 1998 joint PDF-Murahileen attack. She was captured together with her children. The slaver Babikr Salah took her to al-Nuhud and renamed her Zeinab. He was from the Misseria branch that had once reached a truce with the Dinka and he had worked at the Warawar market. He sold two of Angong’s children. Her other children were kept away from her because the slaver thought she would not run away leaving her children behind. In the interview, Angong said:

There was no point for me to be there since I was not with my children anyway. Every day, I was made to carry big water plastic containers from the borehole five to seven times a day. I brought water for bathing, washing cloths, and cooking. I would bathe the children. When they wanted me to go to the borehole after dark a male adult had to go with me as a guard. I was also grinding and pounding grain and cooking. For the whole time that I was staying in al-Nuhud, I was made to do all kinds of chores including things that were not traditionally women’s activities in Dinkaland such as going with the cattle to distant pastures²⁹

Some of the most horrifying examples of abuse came from freed slaves, those who managed to escape, those who were allowed to leave by their compassionate masters, or those whose freedom was purchased through the various slave redemption programs.³⁰

One woman, Abuk Akot, was captured during a raid on Marial Baai in February 1999 and was taken to the North. She had a very young child left behind, and she kept begging her captors to release her for the sake of her infant. The captors thought that she definitely acted like someone who was going to attempt to escape, and they chained her arms together at the elbow. Because her arms were tied so hard, there was no circulation and they started to rot. Yet she was determined to run away. She said, “I refused to be a slave of the Arabs. I was ready to do anything to prompt them to kill me instead, and I told myself that running away would either get me killed or get me home. I managed to escape only to come and find out that my husband had been killed during the raid and my property was totally destroyed, and my arm is rotting…. I will not accept to be disabled by this. I will do everything possible to regain the use of my arms. It is the only thing I have got now.”³¹

Garang Anei, a forty-year-old man from Aweil West, had lived in western Sudan before returning to Dinkaland. He had witnessed the slave trade and explained that “Many Dinka women who were abducted by the Rezeigat were ‘married’ by Arab men for years and after giving birth to a child or two, the women were told to go back to Dinkaland. Some went back upon the realization that the children they had given birth to were not going to be their children anyway, and others decided that they could not leave their children behind. They now linger in limbo. No children, no going home, no job, so they sometimes accept enslavement.”³²

Another former slave whose freedom was obtained by his relatives provided an insight to the lives of slaves. Arop Ajing is a fifteen-year-old boy from the Tuic Dinka who was captured while grazing south of the Kiir River near Abyei. He had been a slave in a place called Chiteb in Kordofan. His aunt who was living in the North purchased his freedom. He explained why many slaves got killed in the North instead of being used as laborers. “When the Misseria hear that some Arabs have been killed by the Dinka in the South, revenge is carried out against the slaves. After all, it is easy to go back to Dinkaland for more during the next raid. The life of a Dinka person does not count for much in the eyes of the Baggara.”³³

The southern captives were sold and distributed, and those unfit for anything were left to die or to live in limbo between Arab villages, for they did not know their way back or were too weak to travel back to the South without adequate food. Some of them managed to make their way into one of the northern cities after a year or two. By this time their captors would have forgotten that their arrival in Khartoum, for example, might expose the practice of slavery to expatriates or human rights activists residing in the capital city. Many of the stories of slave’s lives became known in Khartoum through the narratives of the few captives who were deemed unfit for enslavement and were let go. Other narratives came from children who were very young at the time of capture and were taken to Islamic schools in the northern cities, and managed to sneak out of such schools.

One concern that investigators of slavery in Sudan have had is whether or not slave markets exist and what the going rate for slaves might be. Officially the slave trade is illegal, but the only effect of this has been that the slaves are not sold openly in any known markets. For fear of being found, the slavers have made sure that there were no slave markets that lasted for more than a few hours following the arrival of slaves from the South. The longest the slaves were allowed to stay in the zariba was one day. Only in rare cases did the newly abducted slaves congregate in one place for as long as two days.

But what the slavers fear is not legal redress from the government, but rather outsiders learning about their activities and reporting them to the world. What became the tradition with the slave raids was that after the slave raiding forces had crossed the Kiir River on their way back to the North and felt safe in their territory, they would stop at some established points of rendezvous on the outskirts of the towns. Here, the slavers would divide the slaves and the booty taken among themselves, thus scattering the slaves in the slaving communities, leaving behind very little trace of their activities. The division of the loot is based on several factors: the taxes to be given leaders back home; the individual firepower of those carrying weapons; and the decision that each militiaman may keep the slaves he individually captured. Any remaining slaves that could not be sold quickly were sometimes offered as presents to local government officials. These local officials have quickly learned the language of the central government of categorically denying the existence of slavery in Sudan while becoming prime movers of this practice. One escaped slave boy from the Tuic Dinka, Achuil Deng, testified to this point.

The government does not question the Arabs about their activities against Southerners. In Angreb near Muglad, one Dinka slave boy held by somebody called Khojli Muhamed one day refused to herd cattle. He told the Arab that he wanted to leave and the Arab took him to the police station of Angreb. The police officer in charge ordered the boy to return to work and warned him against attempting to run away. He told him, “if you try to escape they will kill you.” The police are usually Misseria, and they help their brothers to retain their slaves. An Arab killing a Dinka slave boy is very easy. If he suspects that you are being disloyal you get a bullet without warning.³⁴

The absence of slave markets has been held by the government of Sudan as the main argument against allegations of slavery, and has discouraged researchers trying to investigate reports of slavery. In addition, the area that has become the slavery zone is extremely difficult to enter. Educated South Sudanese and foreigners are heavily scrutinized in the area. Because foreign aid is needed, however, expatriate relief workers are allowed to go to the area but are not permitted to make any contacts with displaced Southerners without permission of government intelligence. The international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the transitional zone are required to employ only the local staff recommended by the government, so the NGO local staff are actually security agents who monitor the movement of expatriate staff. Expatriate aid workers cannot visit the camps unless they are with local staff. Any displaced persons seeking to talk to the foreign aid workers during visits are secretly taken and tortured. Displaced Southerners in the North, therefore, are unable to report their experiences to foreign investigators.

Children and women slaves, however, who had changed hands from one slaver to another, some many times over, related terrifying experiences with the slave trade. They talked about transactions involving the sale of children by their original abductors soon after they arrived in Baggaraland. These former slave children have also talked about the forced Islamization of slave children by their masters. As my interviews with former slave children indicate, almost every child or woman who has been captured and sold into slavery was subsequently forcibly converted to Islam. Conversion to Islam means being forced to drop their Dinka names, learn some Koranic verses, pray five times a day, fast during the month of Ramadan, and undergo certain North Sudanese rituals including female genital mutilation. I spoke with one woman who had been “circumcised” and three men whose wives had also been forced to undergo the procedure. Those resisting these practices were beaten, verbally rebuked, or killed.

In response to reports of slavery, the Sudan government has angrily issued statements denying that slavery and slave trade are practiced in northern Sudan. In fact, the government of Sadiq el-Mahdi reacted to such reports by arresting Ushari Mahmud and Suleiman Baldo, the two university professors who were the first and only northern Sudanese to report on slavery in writing. They were accused of wrongfully defaming the nation. Various Khartoum governments have since obstructed efforts by human rights groups and aid agencies to investigate these reports. In response to the large number of western media reports, especially from the United States, the National Islamic Front government has claimed over the years that what is happening in southern Kordofan and Darfur is a part of the traditional tribal abduction that has been practiced by the Dinka and Baggara throughout history. It also said that the constitution of the country prohibits slavery and that if it were taking place, the culprits would have been punished. More recently the government responded to the increasing evidence of slavery by forming a committee to investigate the issue. But what is certain is that there is already evidence implicating the government in the practice of slavery, and that the committee is merely a part of a campaign to disinform the world. Otherwise, the government should have invited journalists, members of nongovernmental organizations, diplomats, human rights groups, and members of the civil society including Southerners to participate in such an investigation in order to end these accusations, if they are false, once and for all.