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
