Slavery in Sudan

Sudan, the largest country in northern Africa, is still the home of nearing 210,000 slaves. The issues of slavery in Sudan are complex as they intertwine. The three biggest instigators are: racism, religion, and economics. In a confusing twist of events however, the best ways to explain the issues of slavery in Sudan, are to focus on racism, grazing rights, and civil war. First however, it is important to understand what slavery in Sudan looks like.

Sudan is currently run by President Bashir in the north, and tentatively, in the past 4 years, by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army in the south.

There are at least four different forms of slavery in Sudan: domestic, sex, cattle, and child solders. According to the Rift Valley Institute, between 1983 and 2002, 10,000 people with names, and detailed descriptions were confirmed missing, abducted, enslaved, or killed just in Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal. This area includes tribes such as the Dinka, Luo, and Fertit. The raids were carried out by the Murahaliin, tribal militias that have operated out of areas of the North under the control of the central government in Khartoum. [1]

Today there are approximately 200,000 enslaved women and children doing domestic and cattle work in Northern Sudan.[2] Most of them were taken between 1983 and 2005, in raids done by the Arab militias on the southern Sudanese tribes. The Dinka, Shilluk, Ingessana, and Beja tribes were hit the hardest by these raiders. In the essay “Beyond Abeeda”, Abuk Bak described the raiders as Arabs on horseback carrying guns. They would ride into a village shooting the village men on site. Bak described the events that happened in 1987 to her village in Achuru as the villagers tried to escape, women and children would be lassoed as if they were a wild horse. [3]

In one account by Joseph Winter a reporter from BBC News, the militia came into a village firing their guns to chase off the adults. They then proceeded to round up children and cattle. They would travel 5 miles before stopping to divide up the children and animals between them. [4]

According to Winter’s account:

Arab militias rode into her village on horseback, firing their guns. When the adults fled, the children and cattle were rounded up and made to walk north for five days before they were divided between members of the raiding party. [4]

Women and children who were captured would watch as their husbands and fathers were murdered, because they wouldn’t take grown men as slaves.

According to BBC news in a telecast on December 17:

a senior Sudanese politician who did not want to be named said kidnappings had also occurred more recently in Darfur. "The army captured many children and women hiding in the bush outside burnt villages," he told the report's authors. "They were transported by plane to Khartoum at night and divided up among soldiers as domestic workers and, in some cases, wives.” [5]

Young boys captured are taken to work in the cattle camps that are scattered across Sudan. Sudan has 37 million cattle, 46 million sheep, 38 million goats, and 3 million camels.[6] In Sudan 80% of the workers are either herding cattle, or farming.[7] This creates an easy excuse for free labor. There were approximately 8,000 slaves in Sudan cattle camps in 2007.[8] Many cattle camp owners persuaded themselves that they were doing the boys a favor, creating a false father-son relationship. In the Baggara cattle camps, boys were required to call their masters “Father”.[9] While the chores the boys were given often were the same as the Arab children, their treatment was not. They would endure beatings, stabbings, rape, racial insults, death threats and forced conversions. A twelve year old named Piol said:

My master (Ibrahim Mohammed) told me not to ask about my mother and father, and ordered me to call him “Father”. Whenever I displeased him, he beat me. Once he hit me on the head with a cow’s horn. Another time, he burned me on the arm. Sometimes he refused to allow me to eat. Ibrahim’s son, Khalid, also bullied me. He threw stones at me, and called me “dog”, “bastard”, and “slave”. Ibrahim made me go to Koranic school. The teacher, Mohammed Razik, said that we should forget about the religion of our people and become Muslims. Otherwise, we would be infidels.[10]

Thirteen year old Atak Anei Achien said:

My master was Hammad Bashir. He made me call him “Father”. But he often beat me with a bamboo stick and sometimes raped me. Hammad’s children were given good clothes, but Hammad gave me rags. My job was to look after cows in the cattle camp.[11]

Child soldiers became prevalent in 1983. According to The United Nation’s Children Fund:

A ‘child soldier’ is any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity – including, but not limited to, combatants, cooks, porters, messengers and anyone accompanying such groups, other than family members. The definition includes girls recruited for sexual purposes and for forced marriage. [12]

Civil war in Sudan between Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Sudanese Government has increased the need for soldiers. One hundred thousand children were in combat on both sides during the country’s second civil war. Both sides have kidnapped their own children in order to supply bodies for their armies. According to The United Nations Children’s Fund, “In Sudan, in March 2004, an estimated 17,000 children were associated with armed forces and groups.”[13] Some children are taken to be used as guards, porters, cooks and ‘wives’. [14]

In the 1980’s the SPLA convinced children to join a refugee camp in Ethiopia. To visitors it appeared to be a typical, if strict, refugee camp for boys. Boys 12-18 years old received full time military training. Those who were 9-11 year olds would receive normal schooling as well as military training.[15] Many of these children died in the camps from disease or hunger before they ever reached the battle field. Three thousand children from Nuba died during training in 1988 because their commander sold their food rations at the local market to make an extra profit.[16] The SPLA used the children to form the “Red Army” a battalion composed of children ages 12 to 18. Lacking strategic planning, the children never had a chance, and were massacred.[17]

The Sudanese Government did the same thing with their youth. The government would clear the streets of children, placing them in what they called orphanages. There they were trained. These children would then become part of the army or the Popular Defense Forces.[18]

Another form of slavery used in the military is that of rape. This is the most common use in the Darfur conflict. Amnesty International USA interviewed several people on the topic:

“They raped women; I saw many cases of Janjawid raping women and girls. They are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish.”
A., aged 37, from Mukjar camp

“After six days some of the girls were released. But the others, as young as eight years old were kept there. Five to six men would rape us in rounds, one after the other for hours during six days, every night. My husband could not forgive me after this, he disowned me.”
S. from Silaya, near Kulbus[19]

Slavery in Sudan is fueled by three main factors: racism, grazing rights, and civil war

Racism

Tension from racism has been a part of Sudan for thousands of years. In 1500 BC Egypt’s expansion down the Nile had gone far enough south to conquer parts of northern Sudan, then called Nubia. At this time, Sudan was probably used to find slaves, as Nubia is derived from a local word “Nob” meaning “slave”. The Egyptians begin to lose control over the area in 590 BC, and the rulers in Sudan become more localized. By this time, it is highly likely that the Sudanese northerners considered themselves very different from those around them. Their skin color is slightly lighter, and they had been ruled by a great nation; they were generally united with each other. The tribes around them to the west and to the south were still self-governed and had no such unity. In AD 652, Egypt has become a Muslim country, while Sudan followed Ethiopian’s lead in becoming Christian. In order to stop the Egyptian raids, the two countries made a pact together. Egypt agreed to stop invading Sudan, while Sudan would send 400 slaves a year to Egypt. This agreement lasted until 1275. That is about 600 years where the likely location for them to get slaves from would be the southern and western regions of their country. No one wants to take slaves from those they consider family. So the surrounding parts of Sudan were further and further put into the category of less then human. From 1600- 1874 the Darfur leaders began to engage in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.[20] During these years, nomadic tribes often raided villages in order to take and sell slaves. While slavery became less intense after the United States stopped buying slaves, the racism developed through this time did not. Somewhere in this time, the north began to consider themselves “Arab” and southern and western Sudanese were considered black.

When Turkey and Egypt conquered Northern Sudan in 1820, they demanded the people pay tribute to their war efforts through taxes of either cattle or slaves.[21] So the north stepped it up a notch, and raided southern Sudan more vigorously. Their main targets were the villages of Dinka, Shilluk, Ingessana, and Beja, all in Southern Sudan. The Arabs also began taking more slaves for personal use. Before this time they were only used for agricultural work and servants, but now they began using them as cooks, blacksmiths and construction workers.[22]

Grazing Rights

Northern Sudan is mostly desert with dust storms, drought, and seasonal rain, while Southern Sudan is a rainforest. There are many tribes in both southern and northern Sudan whose main occupation is herding. These tribes are nomadic, so they can easily move to better grazing ground. Between 1600 and 1874 it was common for nomadic tribes to raid farming villages and take people as slaves. This was especially true in the Nuba Mountains. The Baqqara Arabs were a nomatic cattle herding tribe that roamed the Nuba Mountain range. In this same area, there were also black Sudanese farming villages. These villages became an easy target for the already racist Baqqara tribes.[23] Because they traveled, picking up slaves from villages was an easy way to make money, get extra hands, and get new land for their cattle to graze on.

In recent years, the desert has begun to expand. This means that the nomadic tribes have to travel further into southern and western Sudan in order to find places for their cattle to graze. As they trample over farmers’ fields, the farmers are losing crops. Fighting breaks out among these groups.

The Janjaweed on the boarder of Darfur were raiding Darfur villages for years and the government did nothing about it.

Civil War

Oil was found in Southern Sudan in 1978. Omar al Bashir forced his way into the Presidency two years later. After only 3 years in office, he decided to impose Islamic law on all of Sudan, knowing full well that very few Muslims live in southern Sudan, the location of the oil.

When Britten took over in 1899, they attempted to solve the slavery problem, therefore limiting the influence Muslims had over the people in the south. The Arabs responded harshly, accusing Britain of creating an anti Islamic society.[24] This was partly because at this time many Christian missionaries were making their way to southern Sudan. Prior to this, most of these tribes were Anamist, very few of them were Muslim, compared to the North which was mostly Islamic. So when Bashir took over, he was able to incite people easily to declare Jihad on the “Christian” southern Sudan. Fueled further by racism, and the fighting over land, the military attacked. Bashir was able to use the profits from oil sales to countries like China, to further fund his war. [25]

During this war, slavery was no longer viewed as a commodity. Instead, it was a way to psychologically tear down the people and destroy their societies. Those who were not taken as slaves and forced to convert to Islam, were killed.

In 1986 Commander Musba entered Uduk, Chali Sudan and said “you are all going to convert from Christianity to Islam today, because here is what’s going to happen to you if you don’t”. He killed 5 church leaders. He herded men, women and children into a hut, and then ran them over with a 50 ton tank. Others were killed by 3 inch nails driven into the top of their heads.[26] These killings were a way to terrorize the villagers and break down their moral.

Before this war ended in 2005, the government found a new target: Darfur. Darfur is in the north, the people are black, and… it is sitting on oil. There are four groups that live in the Darfur area, the 3 black farming tribes: the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa, and in the border land the nomadic Arab Janjaweed. The battle over land rights between these two groups had heated up so much, that the tribes asked the government for help. The government did nothing. The farming tribes were, after all, black. President Bashir encouraged the Arab superiority, and sided with the Janjaweed. When the people of Darfur attempted to strike out at the government in protest, the government decided to slaughter them.

The genocide in Darfur is unthinkable. The government denies all ties to the Janjaweed, but individuals such as Brian Steidle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCeKK8F3gRY have taken pictures that prove otherwise.

While efforts have been made to solve each of these issues, they are far from finished. Eliminating slavery in Sudan is like pealing away an onion. Getting rid of one layer of issues such as stopping the genocide in Darfur, does not completely solve the problem, and you will always cry in the process.


Notes

1. Rift Vally Institute, “Abductee Database” 2003

http://www.riftvalley.net/index.php?view=abductee

2. Joseph Winter. “No return for Sudan's forgotten slaves” BBC News southern

Sudan http://news.bbc.co.uk/. 16 March 2007.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6455365.stm

3. Abuk Bak “Beyond Abeeda” Enslaved ed.Jesse Sage and Liora Kasten (New York:

Palgrave Macmillan) 42-44

4. Winter

5. BBC News “’Thousands made slaves’ in Darfur” 17 December 2008

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7786612.stm

6. Sudan Ebassy in South Africa “Live Stock in Sudan”

http://www.sudani.co.za/economy_agricul_livestock.htm

7. CIA “Economy – overview” Sudan. The World Factbook. 30 September

2009. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/su.html#top

8. Winter

9. Center for religious Freedom “Sudan: 56 Boy Slaves Freed from Cattle

Camps” Hudson Institute. May 3, 2004.

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=4720

10. Center for Religious Freedom

11. Christian Society International “267 Southern Sudanese Slaves Liberated”

11 March 2009. http://www.csi-int.org/press_090311.php?sId=01256756585&sucHL=cattle

12. The United Nations Children’s Fund “Children Associated with Armed

Groups” Child Protection Information Sheet. May 2006 http://www.unicef.org/protection/files/Armed_Groups.pdf

13. UNICEF “Meeting Southern Sudan’s former ‘child soldiers’” Thomos Reuters

Foundation. 27 July 2009. http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/59718/2009/06/27-135803-1.htm

14. The United Nations Children’s Fund

15. Peter Warren Singer, Children at War (California: University of California Press 2006) 24

16. Singer 24-25

17. Peter Nyaba The Politics of Liberation in South Sudan: an Insider’s View

(Fountain Publishers, Kimpala) 1997. p 55

18. Singer 24

19. Amnesty International USA “Testimony: Women in Darfur”

http://www.amnestyusa.org/darfur/darfur-facts/testimony-women-in-darfur/page.do?id=1101971

20. Ann Mosely Lesch Sudan: contested national identities (Indiana: Indiana University Press 1998) 26

21. Lesch 26

22. Lesch 27

23. Lesch 26

24. Lesch 33

25. China’s Business Newspaper “Oil-hungry China Funds Sudan Junta” The Standard.

27 April 2005. http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Focus/GD27Dh01.html

26. Art Moore “Sudan jihad forces Islam on Christians” WorldNetDaily. 4 March 2002