‘Run, run gunshots’, could have been the appropriate
start to this post, but I am blogging tonight from the terrace of ‘Smile’ one
of Yaoundé’s popular pubs, watching my countrymen sip away at their drinks in peace, a word we have come to take for
granted so I’ll start differently.
I can’t help but relive the vivid incidents of
the last 5 hours in Bangui. I just landed at the NSIA, with about forty
relieved ‘refugees’ fleeing the conflict tearing down our doomed neighbours in
the Central African Republic. The forty claim to be Cameroonians returning to
safety. (The debate over their identity could be discussed in subsequent posts,
but tonight I want to share this evening’s experience in Bangui).
The MA 60 of
the Cameroon Air Force on the last of its four airlifts of this Thursday
December 19 (to rescue the about four thousand Cameroonian residents in CAR) had
6 journalists on board including me. Today Brigadier General Martin
Tumenta, took over control of the International Support Mission to Central Africa, an African-led force abbreviated MISCA.
We landed at
the Bangui-Mpoko airport at about 5 PM, and were immediately rushed to the
Mpoko military base for a quick debrief on the contribution of Cameroon to
international efforts to stabilize CAR.
Bam, bam, bam!
A spate of gunshots stopped our
already fifteen minute discussion. To our greatest surprise they sounded really
close. ‘We are just a few streets from
the airport’ I said to myself, and we are in a military base, nearest the
two most guarded places in Bangui after the Presidency I
assumed.
The Arab
Schwa they spoke suggested Anti-Balaka’s
(the pro-Christian militia group) had attacked them. The angry skinny, young
looking and blood-thirsty Chadians wanted immediate retaliation. Their
commanding officer had trouble calming them down.
The injured kept arriving and the number quickly swelled to eight, as more gunshots rang a few blocks away.
The injured kept arriving and the number quickly swelled to eight, as more gunshots rang a few blocks away.
Occasionally
the curious journalists, unaccustomed to war that we were had to scramble to
safety, as the gunshots drew nearer and the fighting seemed to be taking place
at the entrance to the base. French troops also headquartered in the same base
ducked as they ran towards the hotspot.
We had been
in Bangui less than an hour, but had had a graphic sense of how bad the
security situation had become.
A Chadian
Colonel told a Cameroonian soldier “this attack is certainly the outcome of
hate reports in the local media”. Chadians like Sudanese have been accused of
backing the Islamist agenda of the Seleka
rebels who seized power this year in the CAR.
Moments
later the impatient Chadian soldiers anxious to exact vengeance, shouted
accusations at the French for being the cause of the conflicts on the
continent.
Our mini-bus
driver said “it is too dangerous to go out there” when asked to drive us back
to the airport. Finally after feeling trapped in the base for about thirty minutes
which felt like thirty hours, a team of Cameroonian soldiers convoyed us back
to the runway through a detour.
We crossed
French soldiers patrolling cautiously in armoured vehicles, as we had learnt in
our quick crash course of ‘Bangui in crisis’, nightfall brings with it the most
dangerous hours of the day. And the rebels have dropped their uniforms, to
blend into the civilian population in a more elusive guerrilla warfare approach.
Clearly
Bangui today is a Wild Wild West, with the rest of the country being even more uncontrollable
as neighbouring states, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, and DR Congo scramble to protect
their borders.
This night promises, almost certainly to be
another bloody one, should the Chadians have their way.
