SLAVERY IN THE SUDAN SINCE 1989.

INTRODUCTION

ONE IMAGINES THAT THE BRUTAL HISTORY of slavery is long over and should only be the study of historians. The sad and well-documented truth is that this sordid business in fellow human beings has not only continued but it has expanded in the years since the arrival of the National Islamic Front to power in Khartoum. The history of slavery in the Nile valley is extremely ancient indeed. Certainly in the times of the Egyptian pharaohs, slaves were taken from among all enemies that included Asians, Libyans, and Nubians. Even when Nubians were in power as in the case of Kerma, of Dynasty XXV, or in Meroitic times slavery continued. Horrendous levels of slavery were reached during the Turkish occupation of the Sudan (1821-1885) as they had a great thirst for them in their armies, harems, and in domestic service and foreign export. The case for the Mahdiya perpetuated the domestic use and export of slaves from the Sudan and even the famed Mahdist soldier Othman Digna was a slave trader. This is not to mention the m ost notable Zubeir Pasha who profited greatly in the business. Under colonialism slavery did decline substantially because the British wanted cheap "free" labor to pick the cotton they needed for their booming textile mills.

Thinking that slavery has a five thousand-year history in the region perhaps one is less surprised that it should not have ended. But in the 20th century and in the 21st century we have just begun is a time of United Nations declarations on human rights and mutual respect of cultural diversity. This is also a time of Article 3 of the Geneva conventions that govern the treatment of prisoners of war that typically defines the conditions under which slaves are captured. With some cynicism in the modern world one is not amazed to discover isolated criminal cases of slavery, forced prostitution, and domestic brutality, but slavery as a regular practice is still hard to comprehend. Thinking of how many millions of people of African descent have suffered from slavery it is harder to comprehend that the current practice is in the hands of other Africans.

Today, slavery has resumed in the Sudan as a matter of informal, but institutionalized policy that is implemented through the Popular Defense Force (PDF) militias (murahileen) that are supported by Khartoum to serve the practice of "ethnic cleansing" and "mass displacements" (Human Rights Watch). Slavery has become part and parcel of the government's long failed effort to suppress the movement toward secular rule and a return to democracy and away from the fascist system that hides beneath a claim of Islamic justification. In order to have some common understanding about slave status we can accept the definition by Kevin Bales appearing in Miller (1999, A21). He terms slavery as "a relationship in which one person is completely controlled by another person through violence or the threat of violence for the purpose of economic exploitation."

THE DOCUMENTATION

Since the pioneering work on human rights in the Sudan by Sulayman Baldo, U.A. Mahmoud, Mohamed Omer Beshir, Abdullahi An-Na'im and Mahgoub al-Tigani even more have been inspired to heed the call for further action. The work of the Anti-Slavery Group in Boston led by Charles Jacobs (1999) and Tim Sandler (1995) has added to the exposure of Sudanese slavery and the complexities of U.S. and Canadian foreign policy vis-a-vis the current Sudanese regime. Documenting illegal slavery is naturally difficult. This was also the case during the 'Underground Railway' and the abolition movement in the United States. In 1987, even before the NIF government, the former Sadiq al-Mahdi regime had been allowing slavery as a weapon of war. Such was the case in the El-Diem (also spelled ad-Daein) massacre on 27 March 1987 as reported by Mahmoud and Baldo (1987). Aside from the thousand Dinka killed in the main incident there were also reports of slavery of Dinka women and children in the Kordofan-Bahr al Ghazal borderlands. Th is case was investigated by a prominent Sudanese lawyer Abel Alier (1990:263-265) who confirmed the findings of Mahmoud and Baldo. Alier also noted that money was exchanged between Dinka families and the slave captives of the murahileen. One child was actually recovered as far north as Wadi Halfa just as he was to be exported to Egypt. The defense of the captors is that this is not true slavery but 'guardianship'. Moreover they say, in contradiction to the Geneva accords, that these peoples are at war and the captives are prisoners of war or legitimate booty of war.

In April 1988, Burr and Collins (1995:114) reported hunger-stricken Dinka women "pawning" their children to Rizeigat Arabs for 300 Sudanese pounds in order to stay alive with the understanding that the children would be looked after until better days, not that they were actually selling their children. Another source (Jeune Afrique, 1988) also reported that starvation was driving Dinka women to the same fate of handing over children to northern Arabs for 50 Sudanese pounds. By the end of 1988 additional reports circulated (Burr and Collins, 1995:257) of widespread enslavement of up to 75,000 Dinka enslaved in towns and villages of Kordofan. These same authors have one list of 115 children and the names of the Arab families where they reside (1995:342).

Since the Human Rights Watch/Africa was created in 1988 it was in place at the time of the NW military coup in Khartoum in June 1989. This government headed by Omer Hasan al-Beshir and, until very recently, masterminded by Hassan al-Turabi has essentially been in power ever since and have continued a very similar policy and practice in their military operations against the south (Sikainga 1993). With the confirmation of renewed slavery dating to the Mahmoud and Baldo report in 1987, Sandler (1995:12) reported a May 1994 exchange of 150 slaves by purchase at a local market. It is clear that the continuing and present claims of a resumption of the domestic slave trade especially in northern Bahr al-Ghazal by the PDF militias are correct.

Reports written by Sandler (1995) provide some sorrowful detail. Biographies collected by Sandler tell of Malwal Akec a Dinka from Turalei who was captured by murahileen near Abyei. He was forced to farm Arab fields, tied at night, beaten and lashed with a whip for about a year. Fleeing at night in March 1995 during a heavy thunderstorm he managed to escape after a week of walking and fearing for his life. Nine children and three women told similar stories of enslavement and brutalization, including rape. By agreeing to pay the ransom demanded these slaves were saved. Another group of nine was subject to the similar circumstances and six of these were starved to death. One survivor, Nyoul Madut Yaac was so badly beaten and tied that he could not even work. Another boy was kept for six years as a herder for Arab livestock. Agawai Akot from Marial Bai, near Nyamlel was held as a slave by an Arab named Abmaden for seven years until she was exchanged for a cow and a rifle. On 25 March 1995 the village of Nyamlel l was attacked and eighty men and two women were killed. 282 other women and children were taken as slaves or to government posts. The children are kept as domestic servants and herders while the women are taken as concubines. Some are exported to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Libya according to Arkek Tong Dhum and her daughter Abuk Narou Keer who escaped to tell the tale.

In February-March 1996 raids of Misiriya Arabs with PDF militias attacked Dinka in Gogrial and Abyei in which men were killed, cattle were taken, and women and children taken as slaves. On 13 March 1996 the United States House Committee on International Relations held published hearings on slavery in the Sudan and Mauritania (cf. Lado 1996). A variety of anti-slavery activists gave testimony including United Nations and CSI officials. Among the widespread criticism for all antagonists in the Sudanese conflict, Congressman Frank Wolf was able to declassify documents entered into the public record that the Sudanese government was allowing forced labor from the southern Sudan to be sent to Libya. This sent a shock wave to Khartoum and indeed, to the White House. Wolf described how the government was arming the murahileen to enable them to carry out attacks against the Dinka. The reports of slavery in the Sudan were corroborated by the highest U.S. government officials (Petterson, 1999:67) that also included U.S . Ambassador William Twadell (Lado, 1996:2).

A journalist, William Finnegan traveled to the southern Sudan on four occasions to make first hand observations about the conflict. His reports renewed the charges of slavery in the Sudan, especially by the Iranian-trained PDF (Finnegan 1999: 56) who are mainly the Rizeigat and Missiriya Arabs who occupy the lands just north of the Dinka of Bahr al-Ghazal. Well armed, these groups attack in the dry season to take captives for their own use and for commercial export. Sometimes their attacks are even with government armored vehicles and usually the men are killed with women and children being the preferred captives. Interviews with lucky survivors of this raid gave a solid sense of reality to his experience in the southern town of Nyamlell (Finnegan 1999: 57).

In a note of cautious optimism, Finnegan was also witness to a Rizeigat Arab who returned to the south with a large group of slave women and children who had been captured about a half a year earlier. He had brought this group of 138 slaves from El Diem in Rizeigat country because he supposedly opposed the government's encouragement to the PDF to raid, slave, and loot in the south. Four had died along the way back south. This Arab slave liberator said that the slaves are given work tending to livestock or farming and household work. Children are converted to Islam and some are exported to the larger farms near the provincial capital in El-Obeid or in Khartoum province. In the past this Arab had been paid for his trouble by Christian Solidarity Worldwide led by Lady Cox who gave him $50.00 for each slave freed and his devotion to freeing the slaves seemed also to be motivated by further "rewards". Testimony from some of the young women returnees, Ayok Kuac Dut and Abuk Deng Garang was supportive of the genera l observations that the Arab slavers would usually kill men and enslave women and children. In fact, as the story unraveled the 'Arab' liberator (perhaps Doka Awut, by true name) had himself been born of a Dinka mother and an Arab father. Hence his sympathy for those in the present plight that figured in his own biography.

Additional reports (Mabry, 1999) from Malual Baai in Bahr al Ghazal accounted for another 400 women and children freed. Their captor Ahmed Bashi released them after walking hundreds of miles and when John Eibner of CSI (Christian Solidarity International based in Zurich) paid $50 for the freedom of each or a total of $20,250 dollars. Those freed from captivity, forced concubinage conversion, and slavery were naturally gratified and they offered no criticism of the program that led to their liberation by ransom.

In June 1999 the Swiss movement Christian Solidarity International (CSI) raised money in a national campaign to purchase the freedom of Sudanese slaves. Reports in the McLean's Weekly Magazine and the Sudan Democratic Gazette stated that in from 9-19 March 2000, 4,968 slaves (mostly women and children) were purchased in northern Bahr al Ghazal by the CSI. The team included representatives from the USA, Canada, Germany and the Cairo-based Sudan Human Rights Organization. The price paid was $35.00 each and virtually all had been captured in raids by the PDF. A high school group in Strohman Texas led by chemistry teacher Mike Stern, Rev. David Hunsicker of Ft. Worth, Texas, and Rev. Jack Hammans of Round Rock, Texas (cf. Bensman, 1999, A3) have been similarly engaged to raise money to purchase freedom for Sudanese slaves. This Texas group has worked with the CSI to further its goals. Other CSI support groups have appeared in Massachusetts, Colorado, and Oregon (Fisher 1999).

Sudanese officials said that such practice might only exist among rival tribes out of government control and that any practice of slavery is otherwise a punishable crime. The CSI says that they have liberated about 9,000 slaves at $50-$100 each. UNICEF has opposed the CSI practice charging that it only stimulates more abductions. Meanwhile Jemira Rone of Human Rights Watch says that hard documentation either way has not really been collected, but that the height of raiding did take place in 1988 when CSI fund raising was also high. Richard Miniter (1999) has also raised a number of pointed questions about the effectiveness of the buying freedom strategy.

Some were tortured, raped and brutalized. Some men such as Garang Deng Yel and Athian Athaian had their arms and hands chopped off so they could not fight. Since 1995, 30,021 slaves have been redeemed in this way and have been allowed to return to their families. Two prominent reports by Fisher (1999) from Yargut in Bahr al-Ghazal in the southern Sudan recorded the purchased of 535 slaves for $27,000 or about $50 each or about the local equivalent of two goats. This transaction was coordinated by Mr. John Eibner of the CSI. Since his work began in 1995 he has freed 7,725 slaves. Moving interviews with former slaves such as Achol Tong Nyan spoke of a harrowing experience of captivity including gang rape, beatings, terror, and forced marches.

Unfortunately the raids continue and on 10 March 2000, some 120 were captured in the villages of Malith and Rup Deir as well as 68 from Majok Kuom, and 231 were taken from various villages in Aweil West County. Interviews were made from among the survivors on these attacks. During the 56th session of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees was addressed by its Commissioner, Mary Robinson who stated that the Sudan is a nation where traditional slavery still exists and it is clearly defined in international law as a crime against humanity.

Field data collected and presented in April 2000 by Stephanie Beswick (2000) reports more of the same. She spoke of Rebecca Abuk Deng, a Malwal Dinka whose husband was killed and a sister child taken as a captive. Another Dinka boy told her that an Arab master slit the throats of three slaves who tried to escape. Angeth Deng Piol, Nyibol Deng, and three others reported that they were forced to be circumcised while being a slave. Others have been forced to become prostitutes. Cases of castration and branding are also known according to Beswick; slave redemption or ransoming continues to the present.

In June 2000 an escaped Dinka slave named Francis Bok Bol made his appeal to U.S. Government officials in Washington, D.C. in conjunction with the Sudan Campaign of Christian Solidarity International (Kelley, 2000). Certainly slavery is tolerated in Sudan by the current regime.

THE ISSUES

Aside from the practice of slavery under the eyes of the Sudanese government, the slave trade has raised a moral and practical issue among those who are opposed to it. Naturally the foremost opponents of the trade are the victims themselves and their international allies. Since the current practice favors the sale of women and children, the first victims are those men and boys who are simply slaughtered in the field so they may be removed from the potential ranks of the opposition and the armed defense of women and children is substantially cut. For those who remain there are numerous documented cases of forced conversion to Islam and Arab names are imposed. Forced female circumcision (that is not mandated as an Islamic practice) is also known to occur among slaves. Nor is the widespread practice of forced concubinage that has long been associated with slavery. Indeed the Quranic commentary about slavery revolves about the righteousness of those who free their slaves and the punishment to owners of slaves wh o may be invoked to free slaves, that is, to give up something of value. Slavery itself is not opposed in the holy books of the three monotheistic traditions.

But for those non-slave opponents a widespread controversy has raged. One journalistic approach has been to cast the practice in unfavorable journalistic light to levy moral pressure. Others have supported or joined the SPLA as the only practical way to protect potential victims and free some of those captured. Still others have gone to great costs to raise funds to actually purchase the freedom of slaves from the traders. This approach has been pursued under the justification that if you were in a condition of forced bondage you would not care how you achieved your liberty. But others criticize this practice as only legitimating and further stimulating the trade in human and thus it is correct from a short-term humanitarian point but not from a long-term strategic objective of abolition. Others still, believe that the practice of slavery is a simple function of the regime in Khartoum and if that can be changed then slavery will collapse of its own irrelevance in a time of peace rather that a time of war. Fi nally, some in the northern Sudan may honestly believe that southern Sudanese are in great need of Islam and Muslim civilization and that the southern souls will be saved by a period of forced 'apprenticeship'. Those were the sentiments sometimes said by Christians in the United States who were also advocates of slavery.

On this last point it is clear that the last two Khartoum governments have done nothing to stop this practice of slavery since it gives them some deniability saying that the murahileen are acting on their own. Yet at the same time it assists in the military policy of blocking incursions of the SPLA further north, particularly in the Nuba Mountains where a policy of ethnic cleansing has been effectively employed. Moreover the tolerance of slavery is very cost effective to Khartoum regimes as only minimal arms support and military coordination is needed since the operations are virtually self-financing especially considering the controversial role of ransoming. Small arms are usually sufficient to attack Dinka villages and kill the men while capturing women and children for slaves.

CONCLUSION

Obviously the presence of slavery in the modern Sudan is deeply troubling. The Sudanese governments of Sadiq al-Mahdi and Omer Beshir deny that it is taking place. These many independent accounts over a decade can leave no doubt that it is actively being practiced. Especially it seems to have been virtually institutionalized in the southern Nuba Mountains and among the Dinka of north central Bahr al Ghazal. Yes, one may say that there is a tradition of slavery in the region and one may also add that there is a civil war in the Sudan. One may add that increased regional desertification puts added stress on traditional grazing territories of Arabs and Nilotes that intensify such local conflicts that result in raids for cattle and lands. Yes, these factors do not help, but all manner of international codes of human rights, and of the Geneva conventions about war to not allow enslavement. Yes, it is also true that the current government did not start this practice, but they have done little to nothing to bring i t to an end as a criminal practice. Indeed, the local Rizeigat and Missiriya demand for arms and horses has been served by the slave trade even in the form of pawning. While there may be some measure of local autonomy it is clear that no known measures have been applied to restrict their slave raiding as long as the Dinka are targeted. In this way the government has become a facilitator and accomplice in this business.

I have elected the moral strategy of writing objectively yet passionately about this human rights abuse. As much as the practice declined, if not stopped during the early Nimieri years of peaceful accord and regional autonomy, I am confident that it will end again once peace and justice are recovered in the Sudan. Slavery was resumed before the present regime arrived in power, but they have done little to end it. Yes, it existed as a traditional practice and it was tolerated as an applied military and political policy for the administration of Sadiq al-Mahdi as well as the current NIF/Omer Beshir regime. Furthermore, a case may be made that it has expanded under the present administration in the context of the endless war in the south. Now is the time to raise the issue to a still higher plane and bring it to an end as soon as possible. There should be zero tolerance for slavery even at a time of war.

Richard Lobban is Professor of African and Afro-American Studies, Rhode Island College, Providence. The author wishes to express appreciation to Anne Fluehr who assisted by providing several relevant news items. This article is dedicated to the memory of Mohamed Omer Beshir, one of the Sudan's finest citizens dedicated to human rights.

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