Stigmas of a war that never really ended, buildings in tatters or with bullet holes line the bumpy track leading to the largest camp for displaced people in the Central African Republic, PK3. In “Scintillating Bria”, the former diamond capital, a serious humanitarian crisis drags on. As in the whole country.
If the last civil war, which began in 2013, has decreased considerably in intensity, it has turned, more than ten years later and outside the agglomerations, into incessant skirmishes between rebel or predatory armed groups on the one hand, and soldiers backed by Wagner’s Russian mercenaries on the other.
With civilians as eternal martyrs, still victims, according to the UN, of crimes and abuses on both sides in this Central African country whose society and economy have been devastated by an infernal succession of coups, dictatorships and wars civilians since its independence from France in 1960.
The PK3 is its dramatic symbol.
An ocean of tarpaulins covers precarious dwellings bypassing deep trenches dug by the rains.
Resignation has forced its inhabitants into an apparent normality. Stalls from which escape the smell of meals, or others screaming music, border muddy tracks swarming with itinerant merchants. A city within the city. At the gates of Bria, once a prosperous town, more than 600 km northeast of the capital Bangui.
The Central African Republic is the second least developed country in the world according to the UN, and survives on the infusion of international aid.
More than 3.4 million people, or 56% of the population, “are in need of assistance and protection”, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Half of Central Africans “do not have enough to eat”, “one of the largest proportions of people in a situation of critical food insecurity in the world”, writes the agency in May 2023.
One in five people — 1.2 million — is uprooted: 743,000 refugees in neighboring countries, more than 490,000 internally displaced people, according to OCHA for whom “displacements continue because the conflict is not over”.
“There are about 32,000 people in PK3,” explains Adama Banaon, base manager of the international NGO Oxfam in Bria as part of a multisector project funded by the European Union.
If, since 2021, the army, and especially Wagner, have repelled the rebels and the militias from a large part of the two-thirds of the country they controlled, guerrilla warfare and abuses on the outskirts of cities and on the main roads persist.
“It’s war,” says Pauline Abrou, in her fifties, in front of her brick “house” of barely 2 m2 at PK3. The war has never stopped for her, especially since that disastrous day “towards” the end of 2016, when “everything changed”.
“It was crackling everywhere, houses were being looted and people were being killed, I couldn’t walk because of my disability, but I had to flee because, out of fear, everyone had forgotten me. . So I crawled to PK3,” she recalled.
Pauline lost the use of her legs at age 10. While fleeing Bria, she had to abandon the tricycle that served as her wheelchair. She now walks on her forearms, even to go to the common latrines of the camp, in a filthy state.
At the end of 2016, 80% of the population of Bria fled the deadly fighting between rival militias, predators of the resources of this diamond and gold-bearing region.
Many have seen their homes looted and destroyed. The displaced have taken refuge near the base of the UN peacekeepers, 3 km from the city center. Since then, the PK3 has become the largest camp for displaced people in the Central African Republic.
“Before, I was independent, I lived in my house, my tricycle allowed me to trade,” recalls Pauline, shelling pistachios tirelessly. “I would like to find this life again but, without money or housing, what can I do??” Cowardly, with her head held high, this woman who remains flirtatious with her plum nail polish and pretty golden earrings. Her life is an ordeal but, with a mischievous gaze, she remains smiling. At PK3, we want to keep our dignity even when we have lost everything.
– Wagner-
As for work, it is rare in this agricultural and mining region. Before soldiers and Wagner retook Bria and its immediate surroundings in 2021, the diamond and gold mines were in the hands of militias. Most are now operated by Russian companies linked to Wagner. Further on, the forest and the crops are the hideouts of the rebels.
The UN, international NGOs and European capitals, including Paris, regularly accuse the regime of President Faustin Archange Touadéra, threatened by the rebellion until the gates of Bangui at the end of 2020, of having bartered the wealth of his country for his survival. and the fight against armed groups by appealing to Moscow, which massively dispatched paramilitaries.
To stave off death or hunger, the displaced people of PK3 often endure terrible living conditions, despite aid from the UN and NGOs such as Oxfam. “Challenges remain in almost all sectors”, laments Adama Banaon: access to water, sanitation, food, education… Not to mention crimes and abuses: “rape, violence against women and girls, drugs, alcohol…”.
And with the “new crises” like Ukraine and then Sudan, international donors are beginning to be less sensitive to the fate of the Central African Republic, laments Mr. Banaon.
A UN “humanitarian response plan” for 2023, “which aims to assist 2.4 million of the most vulnerable Central Africans, is only 24% funded”, lamented OCHA in its May report.
06/08/2023 08:58:50 – Bria (Centrafrique) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
