The Sudan story has been reported on fairly continuously since the current problems started, apparently in 1985 or so. The newspaper databases I have access to don't cover the NYT before '98 very well, but there was this story that, given the source, the mavens in W's father's administration couldn't easily write off due to "liberal bias". I'm sure they had some other good reason for ignoring it, though.
Dinka Tribes Made Slaves in Sudan's Civil War
Wall Street Journal; New York; Apr 11, 1989; By Tony Horwitz;
BABANUSA CAMP, Sudan -- Lual Garang is unsure of his age, but he knows exactly how many hungry Dinka fled his village in March and how many remained after several weeks' walk to this teeming refugee settlement in southern Sudan.
"We began with 180 and now we are only 96," says the tall, frail teenager. "Arabs with guns took the rest as slaves." Lual was spared because of a crippling chest infection. "I am no use to anybody," he says, tapping his wasted ribcage.
Slavery is a hidden but common danger for Dinka tribesmen, caught in the crossfire of a six-year civil war between Khartoum's Islamic north and Christian and pagan rebels in the underdeveloped south. Last year, famine and disease killed an estimated 250,000 civilians, and relief workers say a further 100,000 may die of hunger this year.
Fleeing on foot from ruined farms and grazing lands, the Dinka also have become easy prey for well-armed Arab nomads.
"The Arabs want children, cattle and concubines," says Robert Collins, a University of California professor and expert on southern Sudan. He estimates that "thousands" were enslaved last year to harvest sorghum, herd cattle and perform domestic labor for Arab masters.
Slavery isn't new to southern Sudan but it has surged because of the civil war. Competing for scarce water and grazing land, African and Arab tribes have long raided each other for cattle and slaves, usually exchanging their captives in peace negotiations.
The Khartoum government upset this rough equilibrium, and ended 10 years of relative peace, when it began arming Arab tribes in 1985 to bolster its flagging campaign against the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, or SPLA. Roaming across remote areas over which the government has little control, "the Arabs have turned their Kalashnikovs {Russian-designed rifles} on the Dinka," says Mr. Collins, while "Khartoum has looked the other way."
Sudanese officials say slavery is an isolated practice, resulting from tribal custom rather than government policy. But interviews with recent arrivals at camps in Khartoum and in Babanusa and Muglad, just north of the war zone, indicate many fleeing Dinka are at risk of enslavement. The experience of Lual Garang is typical. He says his family and neighbors were so hungry this winter that they ate tree leaves and grass to stay alive. Finally, a party composed mainly of women, children, the elderly and the sick headed north, with most adult males staying behind to maintain crops and herds.
Lual says his group was near the town of El Meiram, about 50 miles south of Muglad, when 30 Arabs on horses and camels charged out of the scrub brandishing automatic weapons. Armed with a few spears and clubs, the Dinka were no match.
"The Arabs shot one man who tried to fight and took away all the healthy ones," Lual says. "It was as easy for them as herding cows."
Famine also has forced Dinka to barter children for a few days' food, or for transport north on trucks. Last year, so many parents were offering their children that the price for a healthy girl fell from $30 to about $5. "Many mothers figure slavery is the only way to save their kids from starvation," says a Western relief worker who witnessed the practice last summer.
Relief officials say the situation this year isn't as desperate, though it may become so when the rainy season starts hampering emergency food shipments, probably in May or June. Refugees already are streaming into the Muglad camp at a rate of about 150 a day.
Though well-armed, the Arab slavetakers cannot keep constant watch in seminomadic conditions, and escape is relatively easy. Nyako Deng, a Dinka woman in Khartoum, says the wife of an Arab actually helped her daughter escape because she feared the girl would become her husband's mistress.
Escaped slaves provide information and money for parents trying to reclaim abducted children. Occasionally, local Arab officials aid Dinka parents as well, for money, or because of ancient ties between some tribes. It typically costs about $50 to ransom a child, a massive sum for herdsmen who earn only about $150 a year in good years, and who are now stripped of their livelihood.
Three years ago, a Dinka man named Andreea Atyek was herding a few cows to a new pasture when Arabs burned his grain stores and snatched three of his children and 45 of his cattle. He wanted to chase after the slavers but felt he had to provide for his surviving family first.
"Two wives and eight children -- this is more important than three stolen ones," he says, revealing the grim mathematics of raising a family in southern Sudan. Even so, three of his children starved to death last year.
Finally this winter he sold his remaining cattle and headed north. Using information from escaped slaves, and aided by local officials, he recovered one son and one daughter. The girl was only 6 at the time of her capture and Mr. Atyek feared she might not recognize him. "But as soon as she saw me she cried," he says.
Mr. Atyek found another son at the Muglad camp, where he fled after escaping. Mr. Atyek is now living at Muglad with all three children while he tries to find money to return to his village. "I am a very lucky man," he says.
The upsurge in slavery has embarrassed the Khartoum government, reviving memories of colonial days when slavery was the mainstay of Sudan's economy. (In a gesture reminiscent of 19th century abolitionism, Britain's Anti-Slavery Society for the Protection of Human Rights will send a delegation to Sudan this year to investigate the current situation.)
The Khartoum government arrested one of two academics who first publicized enslavement and massacres in 1987, and officials have been refuting the allegations ever since. "Supporters of the rebels are trying to shock the world with exaggerated stories," says Abdullah Jalab, an official with Sudan's Ministry of Information. He says rebels, themselves mainly Dinka, often force southerners to join the guerrillas, "but no one calls this slavery."
Western analysts agree that the SPLA has brutalized civilians, living off their land, raping women and dragooning men into military service. "There's not much milk of human kindness on either side of this war," says a diplomat in Khartoum. "But that doesn't make the government's callousness any less reprehensible."
The renewed tribal slavery also has sown bitterness that may outlast the war. At the moment, Lual Garang is barely strong enough to hobble through the Babanusa camp with a cane. But when he recovers, the teenager says, "I want to go back home and fight the Arabs." |
