The war has provided only a stimulus and a pretext for something the North has long desired. Conversely, slavery in Sudan could be perceived as cumulative in its effect. Even if one were to make an argument that Sudanese slavery is a product of war, the war itself is a result of degrading views that Northerners hold of Southerners, and these views are responsible for slavery. I do not want to reduce the tragic experience of slavery to the mere use of a word, but the Arab notion that Southerners are people who are naturally slaves goes beyond demeaning terms. Many North Sudanese government officials and lay persons act out their beliefs in many areas of life such as allocation of jobs, distribution of public services, and the language used in their daily interaction with Southerners.
The reverse is also true to a certain degree: the Dinka do not hold favorable views of Northerners. The difference, however, is that southern views of Northerners do not emanate from the perspective of superiority. Most people in the South acknowledge that their cultures are different and that is the end of it. There is no indication that Southerners at any point in history have tried to change the North on account of southern cultures being superior. The South has always been on the defensive against Northerners’ efforts to become overlords in the whole country. The two wars between North and South speak for the southern rejection of Northern culture. The Dinka have cited their notions about Arab culture and Islam as one of the reasons for their vigorous opposition to the encroachment of northern cultures in the South. For example, in an interview in Nyamlel in 1998, one Dinka spiritual leader and community elder was asked to explain from the Dinka vantage point why the Arabs attack them. He characterized the Baggara as follows:
No amount of things, hard work, courtesy, or generosity of heart could one ever give the Baggara that can please them. We allow them to graze in our areas during the dry season, but when the rains begin, they do not just take their herds and go. Instead, they would look for a pretext to fight with us in hope of seizing our cattle. They do not take a moment to think about the next year. The following year, they would send peace messages begging us to allow them back. They have the right to think of us as dumb, but we are not. We simply think that we have too many mutual economic interests to be in a constant strife with them. The Baggara are shortsighted, unfortunately. You can offer your wife to a Baggara in exchange for peace, and he will turn around before reaching home to come and demand your mother. They are people who cannot have enough of another’s property. Their way of worship is strange, they pray in a strange way, they claim to be God’s people and yet commit things of which God as we know of him would not approve.15
Two events are commonly cited by the Dinka as examples of why they think the Baggara are bent on aggression for no good reason. One was the truce that the two groups had reached in 1989 over cattle vaccination against the bovine virus Rinderpest. The government veterinary services were not reaching the Baggara from the North, while the Dinka were being served by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Dinka invited the Baggara to bring their cattle for vaccination, fearing that if Baggara cattle were not vaccinated, they could reintroduce the disease into Dinka herds in the future since the herds sometimes meet in the grazing valleys of the Kiir River. The Baggara were welcomed into Dinka territory, and after they had their herds vaccinated, instead of returning peacefully, they attacked Dinka villages and cattle camps and the truce broke down.
The other event followed the truce signed in 1990 to enable the Baggara to conduct trade at three major Dinka markets: Warawar, Abin Dau, and Manyiel. The Baggara were allowed to enter Dinka territory and trade for the whole dry season, but at the end of the season when they were going back, they killed people, took slaves, and burned the markets to the ground. Some markets, such as the one in Abin Dau, have not been revived since, and the people in this area have had to travel much longer distances to other trading towns.
Both truces were renewed in 1991, and every year thereafter until 1998, when the Dinka decided they had had enough of peace agreements with the Arabs. The truces failed because the government conspired to undermine them. Peaceful coexistence between the Baggara and Dinka means the government cannot recruit anti-SPLA militia among the Baggara and thus failure of the Islamic project, of which the Baggara were to be the implementers. The government sent security agents to Dinka areas disguised as traders or cattle herders along with all the other Arabs. These agents were to get as much information as possible on the SPLA military hardware and movements and inform the army. They were also charged with creating mistrust between the leaders of the two groups. For example, some of these agents would cause havoc in the market by picking a fight with a Dinka person, which sometimes escalated, resulting in a bigger Dinka-Baggara fight. On other occasions, the security agents entered the market with guns. When the Dinka realized this and became suspicious of all the Arabs, the situation resulted in expulsion of the Arabs and shooting and retreat of the Baggara back to their areas on the borders. Once peace was destroyed in this manner, the Baggara had a pretext to carry out raids. For this reason, Simon Wol Mawien, the civilian commissioner of Aweil West County, told me in an interview at Nyamlel in June 1999 that he will not allow another peace treaty between the members of his county and the Baggara. “We cannot have another truce with these people, they do not keep their word, and they are being used against us by the government; so until they come to their senses about our common good, we will cooperate no more.”
Labor Exchange Between Groups
Slavery in Sudan occurs within a historical context of southern labor migration, especially agricultural labor, to the North. The interaction between wealthy merchant farmers in the North and southern laborers who are comparatively poor has produced asymmetrical relations that are not necessarily restricted to economic power. Racial prejudice, cultural bias, and religious intolerance have also led to exploitation of the weak as the norm. Laborers’ demands for higher pay or unpaid dues have been met with both physical and verbal violence. Over time, violence has escalated even at high levels of authority, supported by dominant ideologies that view southern workers as disposable. This was particularly true in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the North witnessed an expansion of commercial agriculture in southern Darfur and western Kordofan, for which Dinka migrants provided—and continue to provide—much of the labor. When the civil war started, the ordinary flow of migrant laborers to the North could be increased by violence inflicted on southern villages. This also makes the desperate Southerners easy to exploit. One of the factors that incited Baggara raids on the Dinka was the Baggara need to form a pool of labor for this agricultural expansion, supported by the government and Islamic banks. “There was nothing we could offer the Baggara that was equivalent to the value of seizing our cattle, fishing our pools, hunting our animals to the finish, abducting our people, and occupying our grazing land,” a Dinka elder declared in an interview in June 1999 in Nyamlel.16
Recent research in Baggara territory indicates that militia raids are motivated by a combination of Baggara need for cheap labor to compete with expanding mechanized farming and the government’s “peace from within” and “peace camps” concepts. These are programs similar to the South Korean strategy during the Vietnam War, when farmers were forced at gunpoint into special areas, enclosed with barbed wire in order to put the locals out of the reach of the Vietcong, which the Koreans euphemistically called New Life Villages. “Peace camps” in Sudan are camps set up by the government to relocate the rural people in an attempt to bring all the possible supporters of the SPLA into government-controlled areas. To attract people into these camps, the government distributes propaganda among the villagers that those who move into these camps would be taken good care of by the government. Those who do not believe the propaganda are forced to go. These camps, however, have been described as no less than “concentration camps.”17 As more South Sudanese are displaced to the North, the government can undermine the SPLA administration more easily. The displaced also become hostages who attract foreign aid, which the government then taxes heavily. Because they are the “host” communities, the Baggara also demand part of the aid intended for the displaced Southerners. Displaced persons’ camps are attacked periodically to seize foreign relief, and the Baggara then use these relief items to pay for southern labor.18
Religious and Cultural Ideologies and Notions of Superiority
Slavery
