South Sudanese cut off by war from any sources of reading material, the people of Bahr el-Ghazal were over-joyed when I brought these materials. They also lamented that although these works were the foundation of a history of modern South Sudan, the seventeen years of war had deprived several generations of South Sudanese of education so that no one will write that history and most South Sudanese will not comprehend what outsiders write about them. Still, at a time when many academics in social sciences and humanities are quick to criticize the production of journalistic literature as historical evidence, I found that many journalists familiarize themselves with the anthropological literature and have an understanding of Sudanese cultures before traveling to Sudan. I therefore find these sources to have value, not just for me but also for the local people. In preparation for this work I compiled (with the appreciated assistance of many aid agencies) a large body of documents, reports, unpublished papers, student theses and dissertations, and scholarly publications, which have informed this study directly or indirectly; those works most directly relevant are appropriately cited in the notes. I have also drawn on my own knowledge as a Sudanese.
This study began in a serious and systematic sense in 1998, when I collaborated with Sharon Hutchinson on a research project funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation to investigate the militarization of Nuer and Dinka ethnic identities since the split of the SPLA in 1991, and the violence against civilians that ensued from the split. That research consisted of concurrent surveys, with Hutchinson working in the Nuer areas and I in the Dinka areas, with the aim of establishing a list of factors that the people thought fueled the ethnic conflicts between the two groups, and possible ways to mitigate them. One of the important factors in conflicts among South Sudanese ethnic groups that I investigated further for the present project was the role of the central government in fanning these ethnic wars as a way to weaken these groups in their confrontation with the North. Significant results from that research are instrumental to the present study. Also, my travels throughout northern Bahr el-Ghazal in the summers of 1998 and 1999 allowed me to administer interview schedules for this study; I thus gained more than a total of six months of firsthand experience in observing the aftermath of the slave raids. Most of my time during these trips was spent at various relief stations and market towns in Aweil East, Aweil West, and Tuic Counties.
During most of these trips, I had either set out to do research on a topic other than slavery or to work as a consultant, but the issues surrounding slavery were always paramount for my respondents, and there was no way to brush them aside simply because I had come to do something else. I remembered Cynthia Nelson, my professor at the American University in Cairo, commenting that if an issue is of obvious importance to one’s research subjects, then that issue should be the topic of one’s research.12 I established contacts with local officials, traditional administration (chiefs and headmen), SPLA officers and commanders, spiritual leaders, laypersons, and former slaves who either had escaped from bondage or had been freed through redemption programs. All of them invariably regarded slave raiding to be the most tragic experience they have had during the civil war.
My most intensive and systematic data gathering took place between June and August 1998 and during June 1999. As on previous visits, I concentrated my work in the areas just a day or two days’ walk to the Dinka-Baggara border, which include the villages of Gok Machar, Manyiel, Majak Baai, Marial Baai, Warawar, and Beech, all in Aweil West and Aweil East Counties. I also traveled and conducted well over a hundred interviews in Tuic County, where both the Tuic people and the displaced Ngok have suffered constant assault by the Baggara. Most of the people with whom I spoke in these parts of northern Bahr el-Ghazal were either displaced from the border areas, returnees from displacement, or living in dilapidated villages destroyed during the raids. My interviews also included people from other parts of northern Bahr el-Ghazal who had either witnessed the destruction themselves or were host to thousands of others who were displaced from their villages. I have also interviewed local civilian officials, SPLA military personnel, chiefs, and clan leaders. The interviews about slavery focused on the experience of enslavement or bondage itself, the volume of the slave trade, the local efforts to redeem the slaves, and attempts to rebuff the militias and prevent the capture of slaves. I also probed the respondents about the fate of ex-slave children or women who have been returned to their villages but who had lost their families, and about people’s rationalizations of the resurgence of slavery. I have also conducted interviews on local perceptions of Arab and African relations and the cultural differences, racial tensions, and history of contact between these groups; why these relations create conflicts; and how these conflicts might be mitigated. The most important interviews, in my opinion, were those conducted with former slaves, for without their testimonies and narratives of what happens to the slaves, there would be no substance for this book.
Altogether, I conducted and recorded more than two hundred interviews on the topics of militia raiding and slavery over the entire period of my research stay in Bahr el-Ghazal since 1993. Some interviews were confined to individual respondents and others were done in a group setting. Each interview lasted between half an hour and one hour, not including time I spent answering respondents’ questions about America, how I got there, and why other South Sudanese in diaspora do not go back to visit their homeland as I do.
The interviews were conducted with men, women, and children. They were open-ended exchanges in which we discussed a particular topic to a point of saturation. The specific topics we explored varied but always related to war, militia raids, and their upheavals. Some interviews focused on insecurity, disruption of trade networks between North and South, food shortages as people have lost their crops and livestock to raiding, and the aftermath of the raids. Others dealt with history, the relationship between government and people, the state power or lack thereof, and SPLA administration compared to the prewar government. Still others revolved around identities, race relations, local ideas about the status of a South Sudanese person in the constitution, the state laws, and whether or not the people of South Sudan feel that they are represented in the center. The interviews with former slaves focused on their experiences while in captivity, how they got their freedom, and how they are fitting back into their communities.
I need to insert a note at the outset about three terms that are used throughout this book. They are the Kiir River, South Sudan, and Sudan. Kiir is the Dinka name for the river that the reader will find on maps as Baḥr al-‘Arab, which is the Arabic name for the same river and means “Arab Sea.” The valleys of this river serve as the dry season pastures for both groups and have historically been the source of confrontation. As I am writing from the perspective of the Dinka, I use the Dinka word for the river.
My use of “South Sudan” (instead of “southern Sudan,” used by most writers) reflects the views of my informants, who believe that the expression South Sudan confers a distinct and bounded national identity for the people who live in this region. It has a secessionist connotation, and most people I interviewed, including SPLA personnel, talked about a future nation comprising the three southern regions of Upper Nile, Equatoria, and Bahr el-Ghazal separate from the North.
My use of “Sudan” rather than “the Sudan” reflects both my ideological standpoint and a historical fact. “The Sudan” is a colonial term coined during the scramble for Africa to distinguish between the country as we know it today and the rest of bilād as-sūdān, the term used by Arab traders in reference to the whole region stretching from Senegal to the Nile Valley. Because the rest of Africa that was included in the Sudan has long been carved up into different countries, only one place bears the name, eliminating the need for the definite article.
I covered a great deal of complex material under serious time constraints and from a vast territory where travel is extremely difficult and where security is a constant concern. I was able to do this because of my association with relief agencies, without whose assistance this project would have been impossible. I have flown in aid agency aircraft from the northwestern Kenyan town of Lokichokio, where the relief consortium Operation Life-line Sudan (OLS) is based, to northern Bahr el-Ghazal. From whichever bush airstrip I was dropped off, I again relied on the hospitality of aid agency field staff for accommodation, vehicle rides, or bicycle loans. The enthusiasm of the people of Bahr el-Ghazal
