Fatin Abbas - #Sudan: a war waged on women’s bodies
▻https://mondediplo.com/2025/06/11sudan
In conversations with family, I recognised an impulse to cover things up, to present them in a more acceptable way. No one spoke explicitly of rape. They spoke of enslavement, concubines, marriage. A cousin also warned me not to share this history publicly. It might ruin the marriage prospects of young people in the family. In ‘genteel’ Khartoum society, it’s common to investigate the ancestry of a potential bride or groom. The object is to determine whether they have an irq (a ‘vein’ – are related by blood to an enslaved person). Such a discovery can derail an engagement, as the ‘pure-blood’ family might seek to avoid ‘contamination’ of their line. The notions of purity and contamination that shape northern Sudanese attitudes stem from historical divisions and legacies that continue to inform violence in Sudan to the present day.
The patterns of this war go back to Ottoman-Egyptian rule over Sudan, when sexual violence and sexual slavery were key features of the enslavement of women. Victims were largely from marginalised ethnic groups from today’s South Sudan. This system persisted. After Sudan gained its independence in 1956, a series of military dictators seized power. They embraced the predatory behaviour of the Ottoman-Egyptian and British colonisers. They also employed a tactic perfected by the British: divide and rule, turning ethnic groups against one another. The division consolidated under the British ‘closed district’ policy in colonised Sudan – which concentrated development, education and infrastructure in the Arabised, Muslim north while isolating the African-identified, non-Muslim and non-Arabic-speaking south – ensured an unequal position for South Sudanese from the moment independence was declared.