POCHALLA (Sudan) Girls and boys in south Sudan do not need bogeyman scare stories to make them behave the child snatchers are real.“They come with guns and steal our children, then kill the rest of us,” said Aballa Abich, a tired-looking mother waiting for food aid deliveries in the troubled state of Jonglei.

“Day or night they can attack. We are frightened to let our children out of our sight,” added Abich, who comes from the Anyuak people of Pochalla, one of several peoples in the ethnically divided region.

Hundreds of children have been abducted into slavery in a series of bloody clashes between rival groups - including Abich's five-year-old nephew.

“They took him two years ago when he was out hunting in the bush,” Abich said sadly. “There has been no news since, only attacks taking more children.”

Clashes between the Anyuak's cow-herding neighbours in south Sudan erupt frequently, often sparked by cattle rustling, disputes over grazing or in revenge for previous attacks.

But the small-scale battles have grown in frequency and size in the remote and swampy region which remains awash with automatic weapons from the 22-year civil war between north and south Sudan, which formally ended in 2005.

A series of bloody raids this year has left many people in shock, and there has been a sharp increase in attacks apparently deliberately targeting women and children.

At least 370 children have been snatched in southern Sudan during inter-ethnic violence this year alone, the United Nations estimates.

But other officials warn the total could be far larger.

“The number of children taken over the years could go into thousands,” said Kuol Manyang, the governor of Jonglei, one of the hardest-hit areas.

“Often there are over 200 children abducted every year.”

Boys are stolen to herd the cattle, while girls are valuable for the future dowry of cows they will earn, the communities say.

Some grieving parents even fear the gunmen might include their own children, snatched years earlier and now used as expendable foot soldiers.

“Sometimes, when they attack us, we wonder are our sons among those who come to fight us now?” asked Mary Ojulo, a mother in Pochalla, a simple settlement of thatched huts on Sudan's eastern border with Ethiopia.

The civil war ended in January 2005, but two decades of conflict bequeathed a legacy of bitter ethnic divisions between those who fought for the south's splintered rebel factions, and those used as proxy militiamen by the north.

Some two million people died and four million were left homeless in a conflict that often shattered traditional hierarchies of authority.

“The chiefs are not being respected by the young,” said Manyang, who controls a region the size of Austria and Switzerland combined, but where the few dirt roads are closed for much of the year because of heavy rains.

“Most people are armed... they have few jobs, but don't want to go back to the old way of life.”

However, the young men who grew up in conflict still want the herds of cattle they need for their marriage dowry.

“If you don't have cattle you can't marry, and the amount the families demand has been growing higher since the war ended,” said Othow Okoti, a youth leader in Pochalla.

“So the easy way is to abduct children, then sell them on for cows,” he added, shaking his head in disgust.

Authorities recently freed 29 children and jailed four men for abducting them.

“I was forced to work with the cattle for four months,” said Omot Ochalla, a 12-year-old boy grabbed in a cross-border raid in the Gambella region of Ethiopia.

“I was not treated well,” he added quietly, now safe in a child trauma centre in Juba, the capital of semi-autonomous south Sudan, waiting with others for their families to be traced.

Often they are too young to tell authorities where they have come from, hampering efforts to return them home.

“These processes take time - to track and trace the families,” said Hilde Johnson, deputy executive director of the UN Children's Fund.

Some people accuse the Murle tribe of leading the abductions, claiming that members of the warlike but marginalised group are infertile because of sexually transmitted diseases, a myth based on ignorance and fear rather than evidence.

But officials warn the practice is spreading to other groups, in a worrying spiral of revenge attacks.

“The Nuer are now taking the children of the Murle, because they think that will make the Murle release their children back,” said Manyang.

“We are working to stop this, and we will launch a disarmament campaign to take the guns out of the hands of the people.”

Many fear for the future, with security concerns ahead of elections next April and a referendum for the south's potential full independence slated for January 2011.

Some accuse former civil war enemies in the north of destabilising the south by renewing support for proxy militias and provoking existing ethnic divisions, claims that are dismissed by the Khartoum government.

More than 2,000 people have died and 250,000 have been displaced in inter-tribal violence across the south this year, the United Nations says.

It is a higher rate of violent deaths than in Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur.

“We have survived war and hunger for many, many years,” Mary Ojulo said.

“But taking the children is the worst thing someone can do.”—AFP