What we know is true: Both Wal and Julia know know Bona Malwal very well. Malwal lives in England, is editor of the Sudan Democratic Gazette (a publication opposing the Government of Sudan), has lobbied for greater US involvement in Sudan's conflict, and works with Christian Solidarity Worldwide. He is one who has -- to use Julia's words -- "been selling the idea that there is a slave trade in Sudan." The allegations of slave trading come out of western Sudan, the Abei and Gogrial areas. This area is the home of Bona Malwal. In this area is fighting between the Baggara Arabs and the African Dinka peoples. Baggara tribesmen abduct people from the Dinka villages and take them north to central Sudan. These abductions do not constitute a slave trade, however. As in all parts of the South, inter-ethnic fighting is encouraged by the Islamist Government of Sudan as a strategy of "divide and conquer." Significantly, there are no allegations of slave trading coming from the Nuer, Shilluk, or eastern Dinka areas. Only from Malwal's region.

There are terrible human rights abuses taking place in Sudan. In central Sudan live many southern people who have migrated north to escape the war. These people are being exploited by the Arabs and forced to work for little or no wages. There are also prisoners of war in the area (taken in fighting between the Baggara peoples and the Dinka). Wal and Julia work closely with Sudanese people from the grassroots to the highest levels. They work among displaced people in southern Sudan and among refugees in Kenya and in the United States and Europe. They speak the languages and they know the culture. Wal and Julia have asked many people from the Abei and Gogrial areas what is happening there. These people are not aware of the existence of a slave trade, but they are all victims, in one way or another, of the serious inter-ethnic fighting in the area. In fact, Wal is leaving today (October 14, 1999) for Sudan to participate in a grassroots peace conference in the Gogrial area beginning October 25. We can give names and phone numbers of Sudanese refugees living here in the United States who are from the area in question and who can testify that there are abuses and abductions, but there is no slave trade. I do not believe that this is an issue of semantics.

Secondary Sources:

1. In the January 25 New Yorker writer William Finnegan describes an encounter in Nyamlell, southern Sudan with an Arab who had brought 138 villagers back from captivity in the North. After interviewing the Arab, some of the captives, and, later, a researcher named Ushari Mahmud, Finnegan uncovered this story. The Arab actually lived in Nyamlell and had in previous years sold groups of captives either to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (formerly known as Christian Solidarity International) for $50 each or for "whatever the families of the escaped slaves could pay." Researcher Mahmud suspected that the Arab Finnegan saw was a man named Doku Awut who "participates in the slave raids and then tries to offer himself as a peacemaker with the Dinka, and he sells some of the slaves back to their families." One thing that especially disturbed Finnegan about the Arab was the possibility that the local Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels were "in league with his operation."

2. http://msanews.mynet.net/MSANEWS/199709/19970921.6.html

In an exchange of correspondence between Augustine A. Lado of Pax Sudani and David Hoile Regarding Allegations of Slavery in Sudan, September 1997, published online by The Sudan Foundation (Director: Sean Gabb) , David Hoile writes: In May 1996, after Louis Farrakhan claimed that there was no slavery in Sudan, the Baltimore Sun sent two journalists to Sudan to prove him wrong. Although they paid an exorbitant $500 each for two "slaves" in the small town of Manyiel, it is most probable that they were in fact paying a ransom to a go-between in a scheme whereby families pay, through a middleman, for their hostage children to be redeemed. They were not in a slave market. The 1997 Anti-Slavery International/Sudan Update Report stated that: "The 'slave-trader' they portray is more accurately a go-between, a representative in a pre-arranged settlement."

A little further into the letter, Hoile, refering to "Sudan:Slavery and Social Engineering" by Alex De Waal (Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1997) says: De Waal also had a clear warning, which echoed the concerns of Dinka elders: The difference between a hostage and a slave is important. It shows how Sudanese history must be seen in its local context, and how it is a mistake to impose stereotypes from elsewhere. It also points to solutions: intertribal negotiations rather than indiscriminate 'buying back' - which runs the risk of inflating the ransom beyond what families can afford and, even worse, creating an incentive for further raiding and abductions.

Isabel Hogue
October 14, 1999