SLAVE TRADE.

Shannon News, 30 September 1924, Page 3

SLAVE TRADE.

IN RED SEA, ‘ MARKETS IN MOKHA. For some years past a notable increase has occurred in the traffic in African slaves conveyed, by dhow across the Red Sea to various obscure harbours on the Arabian coast. Towards the end of the last century —even while the Sudan was still under the thrall of the Khalifa Abdullah—the vigilant patrol of the Red Sea waters by small British gunboats, together , with the constant watch maintained along the whole length of the Egypto-Sudanese frontier, had so disheartened the raiders as practically to close down the trade. Nor for some years after Omdurman was there any opportunity for its revival along the old lines. The Britisn occupation of the Western Sudan and the extension of her influence beyond the great slaving grounds, whence Gordon’s old enemy drew his wealth, had closed completely the terrible “Forty Days' Road” along which the slave gangs dragged, in chains and laden with merchandise, to the Red Sea.

That is the route by which travelled the two thousand slaves demanded by Bonaparte from the Sultan of Tarfur. I have travelled that road my-self—-a track two miles wide (writes Frank Scudamore) carpeted throughout its whole length with the bones of men. But, inasmuch as African slaves for domestic service and as harem attendants are ever in demand in Islamic countries, fresh methods for supplying the need had to be evolved. The British Sudan being closed a fresh hunting ground and fresh hunters were found in Abyssinia, while the enforced relaxation of vigilance due to the Great War gave the slave dealers their opportunity. In Abyssinia domestic slavery is the custom of the country, but for purely economic reasons the export of slaves is by law punishable with death. Thus to supply their markets in Mokha and elsewhere in the Yemen, the Hahbashe hunters have had to seek their quarry among the Sudan and Somali tribes beyond'their borders. Among these peoples—commonly- slave holders themselves —they employ, as in old times, the methods both of raiding and of purchase by barter

Apart from increasing the difficulties of the traffic by the proposed strengthening of the Red Sea patrols, it is difficult to see what can effectively be done.