Alex Duval Smith in Casamance
A quarter of a million West Africans fleeing on foot from fighting in Guinea-Bissau without food or water are heading north into another civil war where they face landmines, hostile Senegalese troops and swamps.
As this human emergency advances on Casamance – the region of Senegal where a 16-year independence conflict has turned into a guerrilla war – international aid agencies are unable to intervene.
Sixteen days after a rebellion in one of Africa’s smallest countries, the Guinea- Bissauan refugees have been forced by the rainy season to flee towards Casamance. They are now caught just inside their own country, between shelling in the south and landmines in the north.
A United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Casamance’s capital, Ziguinchor, puts their number at about 300 000 – a figure based on the population of their capital, Bissau, which is now virtually empty.
Signs of the unfolding emergency can be seen on the Senegalese border with Guinea-Bissau.
Youtou, a village of 800 people near the border, can only be reached by a three-hour canoe ride through mangroves and rice paddies, thanks to landmines laid by Casamance rebels.
In common with most people here, Alpha Didou has relatives in Guinea-Bissau and, at this time of year, they would normally be planting rice together in paddies.
“We hear the landmines going off just a few hundred metres away. Of course, we do not know if they are being activated by animals or people, because the mines mean we cannot leave the village any more,” said Didou.
“Every night the drummer in Suzana, where our brothers live just across the border, plays so we know he is OK.”
Curfew in Youtou, which does not have electricity generators, is made up of darkness and bush sounds – crickets and hyenas. But the thud of cannons from Bissau and occasional flashes of light provide reminders that thousands of “brothers” are stranded there.
The Senegalese army is here: jittery soldiers with automatic weapons crouched in bunkers and behind sandbags and ready to fire at the slightest sound, even a ripe mango falling from a tree.
The garrison was posted here last year, officially to protect Youtou from the Casamance rebels – jungle fighters who are said to fund themselves through extortion and growing cannabis.
Allegations by Guinea-Bissau’s government that its military chiefs were selling weapons and landmines to the Casamance rebels sparked the rebellion in Bissau on June 7.
President Abdou Diouf of Senegal immediately sent 1 300 troops – since then reinforced – to quell the rebellion led by Ansumane Mane against President Joao Bernardo “Nino” Vieira. He may also have hoped to disrupt Casamance rebel bases in Guinea- Bissau.
Casamance, known as the breadbasket of Senegal, was given to France by Portugal after the Congress of Berlin in 1886. The highly fertile area, where Club Mediterrane has a luxury development, is isolated from the rest of Senegal by Gambia.
Although both the Senegalese government and the Casamance rebels claim the 16-year conflict is centred on the rights of the Diala tribe, it is only one of many ethnic groups in the region.
The rebels began their fight in 1982 over the rights to oil exploration. In the event, only small amounts of oil were found.
When he ordered troops into Guinea-Bissau, Diouf said that the operation would last just 48 hours. But more than two weeks later it is continuing, amid reports that most if not all of the former Portuguese colony’s army is fighting with Mane’s forces and that Casamance rebels are providing support.
It is clear where Youtou’s elderly chief, Souley Diata, stands. He wears a white cap marked “vote Diouf” and does not want any refugees in his village. He greets visitors with the customary “kasumai, kasumai keup [peace, nothing but peace]”.
An Amnesty International report earlier this year denounced widespread torture tactics by the Senegalese army and intimidation by the rebels. It said that both the military and the Mouvement des Forces Dmocratiques de Casamance had opted to “terrorise the civilian population” after failing to find a military solution.
Youtou is one of hundreds of villages which have been attacked, burnt or, more recently, circled with landmines, by rebels apparently extorting money. Last month, in before the Senegalese elections, supporters of Diouf’s Socialist Party were attacked and others threatened to stop them voting.
According to Amnesty, the Senegalese army has tortured hundreds of men, women and even children, using such means as setting fire to their genitals, electric shocks, burning plastic or cigarettes on their bodies, or forcing them to ingest petrol and other detainees’ blood and faeces.
The Casamance conflict has worsened since November when landmines, apparently planted by the rebels and said to be available from dealers here for around R5 each, began exploding. At least 90 people have died in Casamance – 12 of them in Youtou – since then.