By KARIN DAVIES
MADHOL, Sudan (AP) - Stacks of money pass from the Christian
foreigner to the Muslim trader, an exchange anxiously watched by a 13-
year-old girl with diamonds of sweat on her brow.
The Sudanese trader, his lap buried by currency worth $13,200, waves
carelessly to free his merchandise - 132 slaves.
Akuac Malong, the young Dinka girl, is among them. She has spent
seven years - more than half her life - enslaved by an Arab in northern
Sudan.
Her brilliant smile belies the beatings, near-starvation, mutilation and
attempted brainwashing she endured. ``I thought it would be better to die
than to remain a slave,'' Akuac says.
Trafficking in humans has resurged with civil war in Africa's largest and
poorest country, said John Eibner of Christian Solidarity International, a
humanitarian group that bought Akuac's freedom.
For all but a decade since Sudan's independence in 1956, southern
rebels, mainly black Christians and followers of tribal religions, have
fought for autonomy from the national government in Khartoum, which is
dominated by northern Arabs. The southerners believe the north is trying
to impose Islam and the Arabic language and to monopolize Sudan's
wealth.
Since the rebellion resumed 14 years ago, fighting, famine and disease
have killed an estimated 1.5 million Sudanese - more than died in the
genocides and civil wars in Rwanda or Bosnia. More than 3 million
people have fled or been forced from their homes.
Much of the fighting on the government side is done by local militias.
Unpaid, their bounty is as old as war itself - slaves. Sudan's radical Islamic
leaders encourage soldiers to take slaves as their compensation, according
United Nations investigators and the U.S. State Department.
Young women and children are the most valuable war booty. Eibner
said old people are beaten and robbed while young men are killed because
they cannot be trained into useful, harmless slaves.
``According to the Khartoum's regime ideology of jihad, members of
this resistant black African community - be they men, women or children -
are infidels, and may be arbitrarily killed, enslaved, looted or otherwise
abused,'' Eibner said.
The Sudanese government denies condoning slavery, insisting the
practice persists because holding prisoners for ransom is a tradition rooted
in tribal disputes.
No side has a claim on morality in this war. The rebel Sudan People's
Liberation Army has been accused of forcibly inducting teen-age boys into
its ragtag army. But the southern blacks do not take Arab prisoners for
slaves.
Paul Malong Awan, a regional rebel commander, said enslavement is a
government tactic to weaken the morale and military might of the south.
Many of the blacks taken away are Dinkas, a million-member tribe that
is the biggest ethnic group in southern Sudan. Dinkas are vulnerable
because they predominate in northern Bahr el Ghazal, a region that is
close to the front between north and south.
Christian Solidarity International estimates tens of thousands of black
slaves are owned by Arabs in northern Sudan. The Swiss-based charity has
made more than a dozen risky, clandestine bush flights to southern Sudan
to redeem 800 slaves since 1995, most recently in Madhol, 720 miles
southwest of Khartoum.
Some criticize its work
Alex de Waal, of the London-based group African Rights, said that by
paying large sums to free slaves, the Swiss charity undercuts Dinkas living
in the north who do the same secretive work for a fraction of the cost.
Eibner countered: ``There is no evidence to suggest that our work has
undermined efforts to redeem abducted women and children. In fact,
Dinka elders encourage us to press ahead with our activities.''
Gaspar Biro, a researcher for the U.N. Commission on Human Rights
for Sudan, has cited ``an alarming increase'' in ``cases of slavery,
servitude, slave trade and forced labor'' since February 1994.
``The total passivity of the government can only be regarded as tacit
political approval and support of the institution of slavery,'' he said.
A U.S. State Department report said accounts it received on the taking
of slaves in the south ``indicates the direct and general involvement'' of
Sudan's army and militias ``backed by the government.''
The centuries-old tensions between Arabs and blacks in Sudan are
linked to slaving expeditions by Arabs to the upper Nile, a trade that the
19th century explorer David Livingstone called ``an open sore on the
world.''
Akuac's mother, Abuong Malong, sobs when she sees her daughter for
the first time in seven years. ``It's like she's been born again.''
She recognizes her only from her straight, square teeth. ``She was very
small when she was taken, her features have changed, but she came back
with the same spirit.''
Recalling that traumatic day, Mrs. Malong says they were fetching water
when Arab militiamen on camels and horses thundered into their village,
Rumalong. The raiders began shooting at the clusters of mud and wattle
huts and rounding up cows and goats.
``I was running with Akuac for the trees when a horseman grabbed her,''
Mrs. Malong says. ``I was afraid that if I chased the horseman, he would
kill me.''
Akuac and her older brother were tied to horsebacks and taken north
with more than a dozen others from their village, a short walk southeast of
Madhol. The women and older children had to carry the booty of their
captors.
In Kordofan, Akuac was sold to an Arab who made her wash clothes,
haul water, gather firewood and help with cooking.
She survived on table scraps, and slept in the kitchen. ``I was badly
treated,'' Akuac says.
Her master also tried to make her a Muslim - taking her to mosque and
giving her the Arabic name of Fatima.
But Akuac says she maintained her Christian faith, praying and singing
hymns in secret and never forgetting her true name. ``My name is my
name and nobody can change that.''
She does bear scars - in the local Muslim tradition, she was forcibly
circumcised with her master's daughters when she was 11.
``It was very brutal. It is strange to our culture,'' Akuac says. ``The
master told me, `If I don't circumcise you, I will have to kill you because
you will still hold the ideas of your people, and you will try to escape.'''
Her heart is scarred, too. Her older brother, Makol, was killed two years
ago at age 13 while trying to escape.
Another returnee, Akec Kwol Kiir, who is in her 40s, says she was
repeatedly raped by four soldiers who took her north. She ended up in a
camp where slaves were bought and sold. ``They treated us like cattle,''
she says.
Her Arab master insisted that she, too, be circumcised. She refused, and
was brutally slashed. Her ear is notched and her chin and neck scarred.
Kwol finally submitted. ``Otherwise, they would have killed me.
Because I was a slave, they had the right to do whatever they wanted to
me,'' she says.
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