existed in nineteenth-century Sudanese society only because certain elements were present. First, the slaver had to create an atmosphere of enmity to justify the violence which was institutionalized in the razzia—the slave raids of the period of Turco-Egyptian rule (the Turkiyya, 1821–81) and the Mahdi’s Islamic revolution (the Mahdiyya, 1881–98). Second, the society to be enslaved was regarded as inferior and its humanity denied to justify the kinds of treatment characteristic of slavery. This subhuman status could be given on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, or regional identification. Third, the exploitation of the enslaved communities followed the exploitation of natural resources in their territory, which were used to strengthen the slaving forces against any resistance by the enslaved communities. Current slavery is also built upon these practices.
Indications that the North assumes superiority to justify slavery are omnipresent in the intellectual discourse of North Sudanese. Note how Sadiq al-Mahdi explains the genesis of the superiority of Arab culture, which is inseparable from Islamic culture. “The word Arab is used in the cultural sense. Arab refers to those who use Arabic as their mother tongue. Since Arabic was the language of Islam, and since the Arabs played a major role in the establishment of Islam, there is a close affinity between Muslim and Arab…. The people of the world of Islam were culturally Arabized and acquired the Islamic outlook…. Arabic, the language of a handful of desert people, became the universal language of an international community.”19 It has been the opinion of virtually all the leaders in Khartoum that the influence of British colonialism prevented Islam from spreading south, beginning first with South Sudan and hopefully into the rest of black Africa. As the foregoing statement suggests, North Sudanese hold an eclectic view of Islam that combines Arabism, Arabic language, and Arab culture in general, a sense of Arab nationalism deeply integrated with their religious identity as Muslims. They have dreamed of the day when this notion will run through black Africa, but believe that South Sudan, due to colonial influence in the area, has interrupted the mission to spread Islam in Africa. This is why the policies of assimilation and Arabization in the South have been so vigorous and bloody, turning South Sudan into a graveyard over the years. The objective has been to find areas in Uganda and Kenya where Muslims reside and then export not only Islam, but also the Sudanese politicized version of Islam, to these areas. Unfortunately, South Sudan has functioned as a stumbling block; thus the onslaught.
Although Dinka-Baggara relations have historically ranged from peace to sporadic skirmishes through frequent hostilities to full-blown war, the period beginning in September 1983 was a turning point. This was the year that Islamic shari‘a laws were imposed by then-president Nimeiri. These laws undermined the religious diversity of the country, and the South bitterly opposed them. The southern objection to these laws and to a host of other policies imposed by Khartoum was perceived in the North as anti-Arab and anti-Islam. As a result, the Nimeiri government encouraged the Baggara to attack the Dinka of Bahr el-Ghazal, who were considered sympathizers and members of the SPLA. This policy was continued at a more organized scale by the government of Sadiq al-Madhi after the fall of Nimeiri. When the current National Islamic Front government came to power in 1989, the government support for the Baggara assumed a new ideology, the determined commitment of President al-Bashir and his junta to escalate Khartoum’s jihad. Al-Bashir called on young Muslims to proceed to training camps. Islam in Sudan was quickly converted from its supposedly historic principles of decency that Sadiq al-Mahdi often spoke of into ideals that justify slavery and murder. One Dinka man asked, “What happened to the benevolence and peace of Islam that we always hear about? Could the Sudanese Islam be different from the rest of Islam?”20 One can hardly fail to sympathize with the Dinka. They were a merry lot, but they are a people fighting for what they believe to be their birthright, their pride, and their survival, both physical and cultural. They have never given up because of the belief that the suffering they face during the resistance would not equal what they could experience under Arab domination.
Historical Factors
In 1994, Ahmad Sikainga wrote that “The contemporary history of the Baḥr al-’Arab region [the Kiir River to the Africans] has been a panorama of raids and counter-raids, ethnic conflicts, and competition over water and pasture principally between the Dinka and Baggara Arabs.”21 Although there is much truth in this appraisal of Dinka-Baggara relationships, the assertion that their conflict is that of recurrent raiding and counterraiding is slightly misleading. What has happened over the past two decades could be more justly described as the government-assisted Baggara assault on the Dinka. As the Baggara are those in need of pasture south of the Kiir River—a Dinka territory—the Dinka have not had a reason to invade the northern Kiir River region. What the Dinka did was simply to attempt to stem the influx of Baggara herders and livestock into the grazing plains south of the Kiir River. Fearing overgrazing and depletion of wildlife resources and fisheries, the Dinka tried in the late 1970s to regulate and limit the Baggara influx. Any Dinka attack on the Baggara who happened to be grazing in the Dinka territory during this period was to avenge previous Baggara raids. Large Baggara cattle herds were commandeered in this manner without a Dinka raiding force ever setting foot in Baggara territory. Historically, especially in colonial times, the cross-border hostility was dealt with through government actions to restrain Baggara movements. The postcolonial governments, however, decided to use the border strife to their advantage by strengthening the Baggara position, to push them against the Dinka as a way to impose rule over them.
During the colonial period, environmental damage caused by overgrazing was avoided in areas along the borders by demarcating grazing territories between the Dinka and the Baggara Arab pastoralists. This was done by involving the traditional chiefs on both sides to negotiate new administrative borders between Bahr el-Ghazal, Darfur, and Kordofan Provinces in an attempt to resolve the border conflict and reach winter grazing, fishing, and hunting agreements. To enforce the resolution of the ethnic conflict, the British drew a line that ran through the middle of the Kiir River from the west to the east, demarcating pastoral and fishing borders as it had been before the British colonization of Sudan. Police patrols on both sides of the borders then maintained the peace between African and Arab ethnic groups on the borders. After Sudan’s independence, however, the Arab and Muslim rulers in Khartoum viewed the border demarcation as a colonial design to keep the Arabs and Africans apart. The Arab officials were quick to change every policy set during colonial times regarding North-South relations. One of the significant changes they made was the abolition of border demarcations, giving the Baggara Arab pastoralists the freedom to cross the Kiir River to graze and water their livestock, and fish and hunt without regard for the environmental integrity of the grazing plains of the borderlands.22 Dinka claims to the territory were dismissed as tribalism.
During the struggle for independence in the North, Southerners were aware of the possibility that they would fall under Arab domination when the colonial period ended, and to express this concern, they objected to the northern drive for independence in the 1940s and 1950s. They complained to the British authorities because various historical experiences in North-South relations prior to the British colonial period were extremely painful for the South, and were still fresh in the South’s collective memory. Despite all the resistance against colonial labor and economic policies, especially in Bahr el-Ghazal, the British had won southern support for themselves by the abolition of slavery. They were also comparatively popular in the South for administering the two parts of the country as separate entities. Now that the independence was supported in the North, the South was reminded that as soon as the British left, there was nothing to prevent the North from reverting to its old ways. The South feared that the North might resume the practice of treating the South as a mere source of slaves, natural resources, and land to be taken.
When Sudan was about to become independent, South Sudanese had two main opinions about independence: either the South should become a separate state, or the whole country should remain under colonial rule until such time as the South could prepare educationally and developmentally to the same level as the North. These opinions were expressed in various forums and in so many ways that today there is much confusion. For example, historians now assert that the South had no concrete position over the issue of independence.23 But careful examination
