By Jared Kleinman
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

POCHALLA, Sudan — Hundreds of girls and boys in south Sudan continue to be abducted and forced into slavery as part of a serious of bloody clashes between rival groups. The United Nations estimates that at least 370 children have been snatched in south Sudan during inter-ethnic violence this year alone, but other officials warn the total could be far larger.

“The numbers of children taken over the years could go into thousands,” said Kuol Manyang, the governor of Jonglei, one of the hardest-hit areas. “Often there are over 200 children abducted every year.” Clashes between cow-herding neighbors in south Sudan erupt frequently, often sparked by cattle rustling disputes over grazing or in revenge for previous attacks. Boys are stolen to herd the cattle, while girls are valuable for the future dowry of cows they will earn, the communities say.

“They come with guns and steal our children, then kill the rest of us,” said Aballa Abich, a tired-looking mother waiting for food aid deliveries in the troubled state of Jonglei. “Day or night they can attack. We are frightened to let our children out of our sight,” added Abich, who comes from the Anyuak people of Pochalla, one of several peoples in the ethnically divided region. Some grieving parents even fear the gunmen might include their own children, snatched years earlier and now used as expendable foot soldiers.

These small-scale battles have grown in frequency and size in the remote and swampy Southern Sudan region which remains rich with automatic weapons from the 22-year civil war between north and south Sudan. A series of bloody raids this year has left many people in shock, and there has been a sharp increase in attacks apparently deliberately targeting children.

The civil war ended in January 2005, but two decades of conflict bequeathed a legacy of bitter ethnic divisions between those who fought for the south’s splintered rebel factions, and those used as proxy militiamen by the north. Some two million people died and four million were left homeless in a conflict that often shattered traditional hierarchies of authority.

Young men who grew up in conflict want the herds of cattle for their marriage dowry. “If you don’t have cattle you can’t marry, and the amount the families demand has been growing higher since the war ended,” said Othow Okoti, a youth leader in Pochalla. “So the easy way is to abduct children, then sell them on for cows,” he added, shaking his head in disgust.

Authorities recently freed 29 children and jailed four men for abducting them. “I was forced to work with the cattle for four months,” said Omot Ochalla, a 12-year-old boy grabbed in a cross-border raid in the Gambella region of Ethiopia. “I was not treated well,” he added quietly, now safe in a child trauma centre in Juba, the capital of semi-autonomous south Sudan, waiting with others for their families to be traced.

Some people accuse the Murle tribe of leading the abductions, claiming that members of the warlike but marginalized group are infertile because of sexually transmitted diseases, a myth based on ignorance and fear rather than evidence. Officials however have warned that the practice is spreading to other groups, in a worrying spiral of revenge attacks. “The Nuer are now taking the children of the Murle, because they think that will make the Murle release their children back,” said Manyang. “We are working to stop this, and we will launch a disarmament campaign to take the guns out of the hands of the people.”

More than 2,000 people have died and 250,000 have been displaced in inter-tribal violence across the south this year, the United Nations says. It is a higher rate of violent deaths than in Sudan’s war-torn western region of Darfur. “We have survived war and hunger for many, many years,” Mary Ojulo said. “But taking the children is the worst thing someone can do.”

For more information, please see:

AFP – Terror of the Child Snatchers of South Sudan – 8 December 2009

The International – Sudanese People’s Liberation Army Agrees to End Use of Child Soldiers – 8 December 2009

Arab times- Terror of the Child Snatchers of South Sudan – 7 December 2009

Jonglei State News – Gun Men Kill Three, Abduct Six Children in Jonglei’s Bor County – 21 November 2009