Leaving the village had become dangerous. Children sent on chores around Timbuktu, to collect firewood or lead animals to pasture, “were being hunted down by armed men”.
“When they attack a child who goes to look for wood … we women were afraid the men will come [into town] to attack us,” says a woman from M’bera refugee camp, who spoke anonymously for fear of reprisals.
Three months ago, she joined a wave of people leaving Mali after a rise in violence in the country’s long-running war against jihadist groups aligned with al-Qaida and Islamic State.
The woman isn’t sure which armed group turned up in her village, but the men who appeared at the market were threatening. Afraid of both staying and leaving, the woman and her family took the first car they could out of the country.
At least 8,000 people and 800,000 head of livestock have arrived in M’bera camp, in the south-east of Mauritania, since December. About 7,000 new arrivals were registered in March and April alone – three times more than during the same period last year. More Malians live in villages outside the camp.
The camp has been taking in refugees since fighting broke out between the government and armed groups in 2012. It was home to more than 75,000 people in 2013. While that number declined to a low of 41,000 in 2016, the population has steadily been increasing since 2018 and now stands at more than 78,000.
“It’s not finished,” Mohamed Fall, a Mauritanian government camp registration official says of M’bera’s growing population. “If there’s instability, they come here.”
Mohamed Abdellahil Dah, an officer overseeing distribution of cash and food earlier this month, says camp staff are still working 4am to 6pm shifts to get aid to the growing population.
The rise in new arrivals is due in part to increased instability after the deployment in Mali of mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a private military company linked to Russia. The mercenaries allegedly arrived last year to support the Malian military as relations soured between Mali and France, which had deployed troops to assist the government since 2013. Paris is in the process of drawing down its troops in Mali.
After a decade of failures to quell the violence – and amid accusations of human rights violations against Malian military leaders and France – some Malians have welcomed the support from Russia. However, some refugees at M’bera say they fled because the security situation had deteriorated since Wagner’s arrival.
“Before, the Malian army was afraid to go too far [into the countryside],” says one man from the Timbuktu region, who arrived in the camp a month ago. “But since Wagner has started coming with them, they have the courage to go further – reaching our villages.” He fled the country after a series of raids and attacks on markets in nearby towns, which he said were carried out by the Malian military and Wagner mercenaries.
Other new arrivals spoke of increased violence and extrajudicial killings since Wagner arrived. Rights researchers and conflict analysts say this tallies with the scale of brutality they have documented as being meted out by the military and mercenaries.
Malian authorities have denied the presence of Wagner in the country, as well as any potential war crimes committed by the group and the army. Russian authorities have denied the existence of Wagner.
The woman from Timbuktu said she has found peace at the camp, but at the cost of leaving her homeland, perhaps for ever.
“I don’t have any intention of returning,” she says. In M’bera, she has found security, and for the first time in a long time has had a peaceful night’s sleep. “I don’t have Mali in my head.”
