Friday, August 20, 1999 - National Post

An ancient evil, revived in Sudan
While a Canadian company pumps oil, slave raiders hunt human quarry

Jonathan Kay

Where slavery is concerned, Westerners are stuck in the
past. Best-selling books and sold-out movies fetishize
the subject -- but always in the context of America's
antebellum history. How many of those who saw
Amistad know that chattel slavery still exists in parts of
Africa, including Sudan?

Americans have some excuse for being ignorant. Their
government banned trade with Sudan two years ago.
Not Canada. Several Canadian corporations operate in
that country, including Talisman Energy Inc., a
Calgary-based company that is working with
international partners to develop a massive oil field in
south central Sudan. Recently, the project became
operational, and more than 100,000 barrels a day are
now being pumped. The company's president, Jim
Buckee, recently boasted that production from
Sudanese operations will help make 1999 "a spectacular
year."

But the boom in oil may be exacerbating a boom in
slaves. That's because the flow of oil, like the flow of
slaves, originates in the Christian and animist south and
ends in the Muslim north. While Talisman deals with
Sudan's Islamic government in Khartoum, it pumps its
oil from under the feet of southern Sudan's indigenous
tribes (the Dinka most notably), whose members have
been terrorized and enslaved by Muslim raiders since
the current regime took control of the country 10 years
ago. In recent months, the government has supported
large raids on villages located near Talisman's oil fields.
More than 6,000 homes have been burned; and
hundreds of women and children taken away as slaves.
Many see a link between the slave raids and the oil. The
American Anti-Slavery Group, for instance, writes in a
recent report that "Talisman's investments provide the
Sudanese government with both a motivation and a
means for waging its war against the country's southern
inhabitants ... [I]t is to the government's -- and
Talisman's -- advantage to clear these people from their
lands."

For his part, Talisman's president has adopted the
government's position that the pogroms do not amount
to slave-taking. "There is a longstanding practice of
hostage-taking which we wouldn't characterize as
slavery," said Mr. Buckee. "You abuse the words by
calling this 'slavery.' "

If what is happening in Sudan is not slavery, then what
is it? Since 1995, Western non-governmental
organizations have made dozens of investigative trips to
Sudan, interviewing thousands of slave traders, raid
survivors and former slaves. Eyewitnesses consistently
describe a deliberate state-sponsored campaign to kill
and enslave non-Muslim tribes. The government's
modus operandi is well-known: Officials not only target
the villages, they provide weapons, horses and military
support to the militias who do the dirty work. The
militias are permitted to keep any slaves they capture,
who are retained by the raiders, given to relatives or
sold in the northern slave markets. (What happens then,
of course, depends on the individual slaveholder. Many
former slaves describe being tortured, circumcised,
branded with their owner's mark and forcibly converted
to Islam.)

Mr. Buckee, like the government of Sudan, has argued
that what goes on represents nothing but an extension of
ancient tribal rivalries. This is simply not the case. The
British put an end to Sudan's slave trade during the First
World War. It was resurrected only recently, as a means
to cleanse the country of non-Muslims.

If slavery and oil go hand in hand, where does that leave
Talisman? Divestment, to suggest the most radical
solution, is a noble option, but it's not clear what good it
would do. There are several European firms willing to
take Talisman's place. If the company left, its departure
would inconvenience no one but its shareholders.

If Talisman continues to do business in Sudan,
however, it must stop paying lip service to the Sudanese
government's denials with regard to the killing and
enslavement of non-Muslims. Moreover, Talisman must
use whatever influence it has with the Khartoum
government to campaign for the sharing of oil wealth
with the indigenous southern population. Sudanese
officials have promised to spend a portion of their
revenues in the south, but given the government's
record, this pledge is dubious. The best solution, as Mr.
Buckee has acknowledged, is to transfer as much of the
oil revenue as possible to an internationally administered
trust for the benefit of Southern tribes.

If, instead, the government is given carte blanche, it's
more likely than not the flow of oil will bring nothing to
the local tribes other than a spate of new raids. Talisman
should do everything in its power to avoid this outcome
-- even if all this amounts to is sharing intelligence with
NGOs and breaking publicly with the Sudanese
government's party line where truth requires. This is the
minimum that is owed to Sudan's southern minorities. It
would bring shame to all of us if a Canadian corporation
were to sit idly by while one of the world's only active
slave trades flourished under the shadow of its oil wells.