War and Slavery in Sudan. Jok Madut Jok
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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