Grandmother, Lord, Rebel.(Caroline Cox)(Brief Article)

The government of Sudan would use slavery whether or not we redeem some of the enslaved. It is an ideological, not an economic, policy.--Baroness Caroline Cox

Baroness Caroline Cox, a deputy speaker of Britain's House of Lords, recently defied a U.N. flight embargo to make her eighth undercover trip to war-ravaged Sudan. Defying the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum, Cox took along [pound]15,000 in donations to her charity, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and purchased the freedom of 353 women and children, kidnapped and sold into slavery by militias working for the government--which is fighting a holy war against the Christian and animist south. Despite her good intentions, other charities, including Anti-Slavery International, say the 60-year-old grandmother is actually fueling the slave trade. She answered those charges in an interview with NEWSWEEK's Shehnaz Suterwalla in London. Excerpts:

SUTERWALLA: Does your work with Chris-tian Solidarity Worldwide encourage the slave trade?

COX: The answer is an emphatic "no!'' The National Islamic Front [NIF] regime [in Khartoum] is a fundamentalist Islamist regime that takes and keeps power by military force. It represents no more than about 7 percent of the Sudanese people and is deeply loathed by the rest. It has declared jihad against all those who oppose it--be they Christians, animists or even other Muslims. The objective of the jihad is the forced Islamization of non-Muslims and the forced Arabization of Africans. Slavery is an effective weapon: by cutting children off from their spiritual and cultural roots, they can be brought up according to the will of their masters; also, women and girls are sexually exploited, changing the genetic identity of the dignified African Dinka people forever. The government of Sudan would use slavery whether or not we redeem some of the enslaved. It is an ideological, not an economic, policy.

Is the money that you give to free slaves used to fuel jihad?

The money goes to the Arab traders, not to the government. The money enables the traders to buy the freedom of women and children. Following the escalation of slave raids, local African leaders turned to [friendly] Arab traders for help. These peaceable Arabs do not like the brutality inflicted on the African people, with whom they come [to the south] to trade and on whose fertile land they graze their cattle in the dry season. So these Arab Muslim traders have entered into an agreement with the local Dinka people to buy back and bring back those who have been enslaved. They risk a great deal because they can get severely punished for undermining the jihad if they are identified. Obviously, the Arabs are not operating just from ...