Ehya prepares tea while sitting in a makeshift tent in Mbera refugee camp in Mauritania, his new home. He lived in the bushes of Mali until the threat came too dangerously close.
Ehya, in her 50s, is one of thousands of Malians who have flocked here in recent months, fleeing rising jihadist attacks and intensifying fighting with the army in what is commonly known as central Mali, south of the border with Mauritania.
He and his family packed up their things and hit the road in May. “For years, we tried to be patient, to stay on our land, telling ourselves that it was going to pass,” says Ehya, her head wrapped in a long white turban that falls on her chest.
After a new jihadist attack on a nearby camp, “we knew that if we didn’t flee, it would be our turn,” he recalls. Now in the center, men kill “as they slaughter chickens”.
Central Mali is one of the hotbeds of violence that has been spreading relentlessly across the Sahel since 2012, killing thousands and displacing millions of civilians.
Some of the displaced will pile up in the suburbs of the cities.
For many others, exposed not only to the actions of groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State organization but also to inter-community reprisals and villainous misdeeds, the Mbera camp, opened at the start of the just conflict of the other side of the border, looks like a sanctuary.
Mauritania, struck years ago, has indeed been able to stem the jihadist expansion.
– “White men” –
With more than 78,000 refugees, Mbera is one of the largest camps in the Sahel. It has never welcomed so many people. Since the beginning of the year nearly 8,000 Malians have arrived there on their own, says the UN refugee agency (UNHCR)
“For six months, the camp has received a large number of people from the areas of Sokolo, Dogofry, Ouagadou, Nampala,” explains Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed, a member of the camp administration.
Others come from the Timbuktu region (northern Mali). He speaks of a “two-speed” camp, where long-term refugees coexist, who are in a “dynamic of empowerment”, and newcomers “who are in a hurry”.
A large part of the displaced are nomads roaming the immense bushes. Even they felt the noose tightening in these expanses from which the state is absent.
Ehya, whose name AFP withheld for his safety, and a dozen refugees from Mbera recount the succession of attacks.
They describe an increased conflict since the Malian army has amplified its operations in the center. They denounce the reprisals exerted by all the camps. And they report the presence of a new actor, designating by name the Russian security company Wagner, or more vaguely “white men”.
“Daesh (the Islamic State organization) arrives in the camps, kills without difference the women, the men, the children, leaves by taking the cattle”, relates Ehya.
But “the Malian army accuses us of supporting the mujahideen (the jihadists) when we refuse to tell them where the jihadists are, and the mujahideen accuse us of being with the Malian state if we do not become a mujahideen”, says- he.
“The Malian army and the Wagner army, the mujahideen… we are caught between two fires”.
– Sexual violence –
The young Seghad, 25, has just arrived from Sokolo, some 200 km from Mbera. She says that she fled the fighting and the violence committed against women.
Men, Fulani according to her, a community willingly accused of feeding the jihadist ranks, “come, put a blindfold on the women’s eyes, take them to do what they have to do and then bring them back”, assures- she. “This is our reality: the reality of the war between the Malian army and the Wagners against the jihadists”.
Wagner “never operates alone, they are always with the Malian army”, says Ehya. In Hombori, a locality not far from where his camp was set up, more than 1,000 km from Mbera, “they came on market day and opened fire on herders who had come to pay for the supply of their cattle”.
The UN has announced that it has opened an investigation into the alleged summary execution of numerous civilians by Malian soldiers, “who (allegedly) were accompanied by foreign security personnel” in Hombori on 19 April.
The Malian authorities constantly repeat that they respect human rights and open investigations if necessary.
But Ehya insists on his good faith: if he testifies, “it’s because I saw him myself”.