War and Slavery in Sudan. Jok Madut Jok
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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