Abeed

In the Sudan, an Abid ( _ar. عبد, plural Abeed عبيد or El Abeed العبيد) is a stereotype applied mainly by the Northern Sudanese to the Southern Sudanese. The name literally means "slave", and the stereotype is in general that of an inferior, demeaned, negroid race. The intent of the stereotype is to remind the Southerners of the days of the slave trade. The Southern Sudanese, in their turn, stereotypify the Northerners as Mundukuru and Minga. [cite book|pages=52|title=The Lost Boys of Sudan: An American Story of the Refugee Experience|author=Bixler, Mark|date=2005|publisher=University of Georgia Press|id=ISBN 082032499X] [cite book|title=The Southern Sudan: The Problem of National Integration|editor=Dunstan M. Wai|author=Peter Russell and Storrrs McCall|chapter=Can Secession Be Justified?|date=1973|publisher=Routledge|id=ISBN 0714629855|pages=105]

The name has been explained as being an allusion to the submission that Muslims owe to Allah. Meyer dismisses this as "efforts by propagandists" to "explain the term away" that are "at the least, disingenuous". [cite book|title=War And Faith In Sudan|author=Gabriel Meyer|pages=131|date=2005|publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing|id=ISBN 0802829333]

Francis Deng described the north-south division imposed by the British on Anglo-Egyptian Sudan as the British saying to the Northerners: "You Northerners are slave traders and you treat the Southerners like Abeed. Don't call them Abeed! They are slaves no longer.". [cite book|title=Sudan: State and Society in Crisis|author=John Obert Voll|pages=78|date=1991|publisher=Indiana University Press|id=ISBN 0253206839]

Jok argues that the Sudanese slave trade still persists in the 21st century, and that Southern Sudanese in cities in the North who take marginal and petty jobs, because they lack the political influence that rural Northerners have in the cities and because they lack the necessary skills for city life, are regarded as Abeed because of the social standing that is concomitant with such occupations. Dinka labourers earning just enough to cover their food costs have no social standing in the eyes of Northerners, and are treated as the property of landowners and merchants. "Displaced Southerners", Jok states, "are at the bottom of the racial hierarchy in Northern Sudan.". He explains that they have no resources of their own and are thus highly dependent upon patronage and exploitative relationships with power brokers, with relations ranging from servitude through bonded work to being a means for attracting resources from foreign aid agencies. "The lines dividing slavery and cleap labour", he states, "are blurred.". [cite book|title=War and Slavery in Sudan|author=Jok Madut Jok|pages=129|date=2001|publisher=University ofPennsylvania Press|id=ISBN 0812217624|chapter=The South-North Population Displacement]

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