History of war & slavery

by Jacob on August 02, 2006

War and slavery have gone hand-in-hand throughout human history. The first written histories recount wars of conquest, the enslavement of defeated enemies, forcing the men into hard labor and the women into domestic service and sex slavery. Often, these slaves were used to fight in the conquerors’ next war, building their empire and abducting more slaves. The Roman Empire, for example, ran on slaves the way America runs on oil today.

More recently, war and slavery have continued to be linked. In Sri Lanka, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, the Congo, and Burma, men, women, and children have been forced to fight or serve as pack animals and used for sex. In the second edition of his book New Slavery, Dr. Kevin Bales has this to say about war slavery:

“A good example of slavery linked to politics is what is often called war slavery, and includes government-sponsored slavery. In Burma…today there is widespread capture and enslavement of civilians by the government and the army. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children are used as laborers or bearers in military campaigns against indigenous peoples or on government construction projects. The Burmese military dictatorship doesn’t suggest that they own the people they have enslaved—in fact, they deny that they enslave anyone—but the International Labor Organization, US State Department, and human rights organizations confirm that violence is used to hold a large number of Burmese people in bondage. War slavery was also a feature of the recent civil war in Sudan, as well as the ongoing civil war in Uganda, where children are enslaved and forced to be soldiers.”

In 1999, the military contracting firm Dyncorp, working in Bosnia, came under investigation for allegations of sex trafficking and weapons trading. Whistleblowers who reported these crimes were fired from the company; one, Kathryn Bolkovac, subsequently received £110,000 in damages after a UK tribunal determined her termination was inappropriate.

In Iraq, the US government has acknowledged that human trafficking is a problem among laborers contracted to work on military bases in the region. The contractors themselves have even acknowledged their crimes by saying that since the twelve Nepali men they had trafficked were killed by insurgents, the contractors—these men’s slaveholders—were due to be compensated for their loss.

The US government is aware of the problem of war slavery, but hasn’t yet done enough to combat the crime.