What is the murahaleen?

Answer 1

In Southern Sudan rebel groups arose to fight for greater political control and increased access to the resources controlled by ruling elites in Khartoum. The government in Khartoum responded by arming and training ethnically-based militias and granting them impunity to murder, rape, forcibly displace, and loot property from civilians the government accuses of supporting the rebellion. During the civil war in southern Sudan, the government armed Arab militias called the Murahaleen, meaning traveler, to attack the SPLA and the Dinka people, who were seen as rebels to the government. The Government of Sudan allowed the Murahaleen militias to take slaves. The Murahaleen raided Dinka villages, like Achak's hometown Marial Bai, in southern Sudan. They would also kidnapped civilians for these Dinka villages, and then sell them for domestic labor or fieldwork in the north. Mostly all Murahaleen soldiers were Muslim seeing as they were all from the north and northern Sudan was mostly Muslim.