The evil of slavery, which had been eliminated by the British and French Colonial powers during the first world war, has returned. Today thousands of black men, women and children remain in bondage. In Mauritania 100 000 blacks serve white Arab Berbers. In Sudan, an estimate 20 000 people have been enslaved as a result of the civil war. History repeats itself!

It is hard to believe that in the 20th century a person can become the property of another for life. Slaves are bought and sold, traded and inherited, branded and bred. A lucrative industry has been created. Modern day slave markets are thriving.

Like any commodity, the price of human flesh in Sudan and Mauritania has varied with supply. In Sudan in 1988, one automatic weapon could be traded for six or seven child slaves. In 1989 a woman or child could be bought for US$90, but the raids increased, the market was flooded and the price fell to $US15 per head. Not all slaves remain in Sudan, some of the children are exported to the Gulf States or to Libya, according to the US embassy in Khartoum.

The fate of these slaves is terrifying. Not only are their bodies in bondage, but they are stripped of their dignity as well as their cultural, religious and personal identities.

Chattel slaves are used for house or farm labour, for sex and for breeding. They may be exchanged for camels, trucks, guns or money. Their children are the property of the master. They are born, live and die as slaves. Deprived of the most basic rights, they cannot marry, attend school, associate with other slaves, or go to the mosque. Many are fed and kept like cattle, often sleeping beside livestock. Like cattle they are branded, sometimes just below the eye, with the name of their owner.

In 1990, Human Rights Watch/Africa reported that routine punishments for the slightest fault include beatings, denial of food and prolonged exposure to the sun with hands and feet tied together. Serious infringement of the master’s rule is punished by a variety of tortures of medieval proportions. Women selected as concubines are genitally mutilated, boys are ritually circumcised, children and some men have their Achilles tendons removed so they will not run away.

But many slaves were able to escape and have told their stories to the world. These are stories of hunger, humiliation and suffering. Stories of redemption.

Poverty and War:  The Case of Sudan

Sudan is the largest country in Africa. A country where two radically different groups, Arabs and black Africans, find themselves confined within the same borders. There are actually six hundred ethnic groups in Sudan, speaking some four hundred languages.

Sudan has been fighting an endless civil war against non-Muslim black rebels in the South, since independence in 1956, with a break from 1972 to 1983. The Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (S.P.L.A.) controls most of the territory in the South, inhabited mostly by sixty-five Dinka speaking tribes. They want independence from the central government, ruled by the National Islamic Front. The government has responded by arming Baggara tribesmen and paramilitary groups, known as Popular Defense Forces and encouraging them to attack anyone sympathetic to the S.P.L.A. Armed bands have been terrifying and raiding their neighbours, -mostly Dinkas- for decades, preventing the South from forming a united front against the North.

The Sudanese war has been described as a disaster of historic proportions. It has killed more than 2 million people (mostly civilians from the South), more than any other conflict since the Second World War. It has produced more internally displaced people than any other country in the world. Four million people have been driven from their homes. Today few people have access to clean water, few schools, hospitals and roads remain open and famine is a constant threat. The south of Sudan is one of the poorest and least accessible areas in the world. News coverage of atrocities has been limited or non existent.

Sudan has long history of slavery. In the nineteenth century it was a busy slave centre with more than two million southerners disappearing into mysterious towns and desert wastes. Many are supposed to have been taken north. The Ottoman Empire, responding to British pressure and employing British administrators, tried to abolish slavery in 1881, provoking a revolt among Muslims. The British finally ended slavery during the first world war, after a decade fighting it with their powerful army and navy.

Friction between the north and south has always existed. This division was exacerbated by the British, who treated the north and south as separate countries. Most of the development efforts were directed to the north. This resulted in an educated, technologically superior Muslim north against a poor, underdeveloped and populated Christian and animist south.

When time for independence finally came, the northern nationalists failed to communicate with the south about the terms of independence and a civil war started, even before the British had left Sudan. In 1972 peace was achieved through an agreement which gave the south a large degree of self government and control over its natural resources. Peace lasted until oil was discovered in the south in 1983. General Ja’far Nimeiri, a fundamentalist, ordered that Islamic shariah law be applied throughout Sudan and deprived the southern legislature of its powers. He also ordered that oil be refined in the north. By then the southern soldiers had revolted against the General and the S.P.L.A. was launched.

The word "genocide" has been used to describe the National Islamic Front’s approach to the war. They have used starvation as a strategy of war, preventing Operation Lifeline Sudan -aid and food relief agencies- entering the country. They have attacked civilians, hospitals, churches, refugee camps. They have destroyed water supplies and burned villages, stealing seeds, crops, animals, killing men and abducting women and children. William Finnegan wrote in his article The Invisible War in January 1999 "If such atrocities were perpetrated elsewhere –if Milosevic were to unleash similar air attacks on Kosovo, say- the outside world would probably be outraged to the point of action. In southern Sudan, it might as well be happening on the dark side of the moon."

The Resurgence of Slavery

Slavery is a by-product of war although that may not be the only cause. Since 1989 thousands of Dinkas, mostly women and children have been seized in raids and taken to the north. Slavery has contributed to the depopulation of S.P.L.A. strongholds, such as Bahr al-Ghazal, in the south, one of the most important centres of slave trade.

"The aim is to get the Dinka tribes out of the land," says Ushari Mahmud, who has been researching the resurgence of slavery in Sudan, "That is where the Army is afraid the war may break into the North, so they have been trying to depopulate the area, to get the Dinka off the land." The government has allowed slave markets to open in Khartoum, Juba, Wau and other cities it controls.

The slave trade operates in a covert way. Raiders shoot at men and abduct women and children, mostly from Dinka speaking tribes. They may earn US$5 to $15 per slave. Raiders take the captives to Khartoum, or other cities and hand them over to the slave traders who sell them in the market. Traders are privateers, local power groups or corrupt officials who have contacts with possible buyers. They play a critical role in the transactions and earn much more money than raiders do.

Sometimes raiders become double dealers. They participate in raids then they offer themselves as peacemakers with the Dinka and sell some of the captives back to their families, or to those humanitarian organisations such as Christian Solidarity International, who are prepared to pay thousands of dollars to buy slaves and set them free. This process is called slave redemption.

Powerful mafias have emerged and enriched themselves in the slave trade. Unfortunately, the money paid to raiders and traders is used to buy more guns, raid more villages and enrich themselves. It is a vicious cycle.

Abusive practices are common. As Richard Miniter pointed out in his article The False Promise of Slave Redemption: "Sometimes corrupt officials set themselves up as bankers and insist that redeemers exchange their dollars for Sudanese pounds, a nearly worthless currency. (People in the south almost always use Ugandan and Kenyan shillings or US dollars) The officials arrange by radio to have some villagers play slaves and some play slave sellers, and when the redeemers arrive, the Sudanese pounds are turned back over to the corrupt officials, who hand out a few dollars in return. Most of the dollars stay with the officials, who now also have the Sudanese pounds with which to play banker again."

Slave redemption has become a point of contention among humanitarian groups. A debate has started about the impact of such a practice on slavery. Some argue that it further promotes slavery. They say that what keeps the slave business afloat and makes it lucrative is the high prices paid by the slave redeemers. It is also said that slavery has not only been encouraged but has increased since 1995 as a result of slave redemption. According to Richard Miniter "The per capita income in Sudan, according to Sudanese embassy estimates, is about US$500 a year. In the war torn south it is much less. A small amount of money injected from the outside can create a powerful dynamic. Selling slaves back to their families for $50 to $100 each –with the financial assistance of Westerners- is far more profitable than selling them for about $15 in the northern slave markets."

There are other ethical considerations to take into account. UNICEF, The United Nations Children’s Fund, has called the practice "intolerable," because according to them "the buy-back program implicitly accepts that human beings may be bought and sold."

Supporters argue that slave redemption is good publicity that draws public attention on the political and social situation of Sudan; that it undermines the slave trade one person at a time; and most importantly it contributes to diminish the personal suffering of slaves and their families.

However the war in Sudan has intensified, the number of raids has increased in the last few years and consequently the number of slaves may be increasing as a result.

James Jacobson, head of Christian Freedom International, a former supporter of slave redemption, now believes new approaches need to be taken for fighting slavery. These could include the use of trucks to stop raiders who normally travel on horseback; paying slave rescuers a salary and providing other incentives, also using lists, databases of missing people.

Political Solutions

War, abject poverty combined with systematic methods employed by local power holders to exploit the weak, have contributed to the resurgence of slavery in Sudan. Without peace it is highly unlikely that it will be abolished. However the world seems oblivious to Sudan. No political or diplomatic effort has been made to bring the two parties to negotiation and put a stop to the endless war. American policy towards Sudan changed at the end of the Cold War. In 1997 the US imposed economic sanctions because they believed that Sudan sponsors international terrorism. According to William Finnegan "Sudan’s strategic significance to the United States today is negligible, with the Horn of Africa no longer a cockpit of American-Soviet competition. Egypt is our key regional ally; Sudan is a sideshow."

The international community has certainly invested heavily on humanitarian aid through Operation Lifeline Sudan, which so far has cost more than two billion dollars. Such funds could have been better employed in the reconstruction of the country.

Fighting slavery through foreign abolitionist policies may not be effective because the international community simply lacks the power to implement or even enforce them. On the other hand, the S.P.L.A. may lack the tools and possibly the will to fight slavery.

Abolishing slavery is the government’s responsibility. It could do so by creating and enforcing anti slavery legislation and granting power to law enforcement bodies to assist former slaves and to punish those who continue to engage in slavery.

However after having lived years of degradation the road to emancipation for slaves will be fraught with uncertainty. Freedom in itself may mean little without basic resources such as food, clothing, shelter and most importantly, having the means to gain economic independence through agricultural programs. Without some form of moral and material compensation that will grant them back their humanity, there can be no real emancipation of enslaved populations.

References

Cotton, S Silent Terror. A Journey Into Contemporary African Slavery, 1998 Harlem River Press

Finnegan W "The Invisible War", The New Yorker. January 1999

Miniter R, "The False Promise of Slave Redemption" The Atlantic Monthly. July 1999.