‘Now we face guns’: Small-scale miners fear Wagner’s advances in CAR | Conflict

Beloko, Central African Republic – When Sadock arrived in the city of Koki, in the northwest of the Central African Republic (CAR), in November 2022, he thought he had finally found a safe place to live and work.

For years, small-scale miners like him were displaced and forced to move repeatedly whenever foreigners entered a local area, took over surrounding gold mines, and drove out local miners.

“Some of us [artisanal miners] we decided to move to Koki because we thought at the time that no one was bothering the artisanal miners in [northwest] region,” Sadock, who wanted to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals, told Al Jazeera.

“We soon discovered we made a big mistake,” said the 23-year-old.

After President Faustin-Archange Touadera asked for help dealing with rebel groups in CAR in 2017, Russia’s Wagner Group arrived.

Since then, the group has accumulated significant economic and security power and, according to the investigative group The Sentinelis believed to have established a plan for state capture, with reports that Wagner “created a complex network of operations to loot diamonds, gold and other natural resources” in CAR.

In 2019, the Kremlin-linked group began taking control of gold mines in the central and eastern parts of CAR. In recent years they have also extended north.

In October, less than a year after Sadock moved to Koki, locals told Al Jazeera that Russian paramilitaries, in an attempt to seize a gold mine, allegedly executed at least a dozen people who had been detained in Koki. city ​​where there were less than 5,000 people. live.

Some of the victims, witnesses said, were small-scale miners who, like Sadock, moved there after being driven from gold mines in the Andaha region of eastern Central African Republic by Wagner forces two years ago. years.

“One Sunday morning, they [Russian paramilitaries] they arrived by helicopter near the mine in Koki, where mainly miners live, and started shooting at people,” Sadock said. “They killed 12 civilians, some of whom were artisanal miners, that day.”

Wagner and CAR government officials did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment, but Russian-linked forces have been accused of similar attacks on civilians in recent years, and rights groups such as Human Rights Watch have also denounced the alleged Wagner violations in the RCA.

Wagner said his forces are in the country at the government’s request to help with security. However, analysts say the group is exchanging paramilitary services for Russian geopolitical gains.

Ndassima, Aigbado and Yanga attacks

Over the past four years, Sadock said he worked at four different mines in CAR before being forcibly displaced.

In 2018, at the age of 17, he started working at the Ndassima gold mine, in the center of the country, and earned enough to be able to buy a motorbike in the first four months of work. But things changed shortly afterwards.

The following year, the government of the Central African Republic terminated the exploration and mining licenses for the Ndassima gold mine held by Axmin, a Canadian company, and then awarded them in 2020 to Midas Ressources (PDF), a company affiliated with the Wagner Group.

The Russian private military company paid the Union for Peace (UPC) rebels, a local group that controlled the mine at the time, to ensure that personnel and property belonging to Midas Ressources were safe, The Sentry reported. When its relationship with the UPC soured, Wagner’s mercenaries began a counteroffensive in 2021 against the rebels, but also targeted civilians, especially artisanal miners who lived near the mine, he added.

“The white soldiers [Wagner paramilitaries] we came to Ndassima in 2021 and ordered all artisanal miners to leave the area, but we all refused to leave,” Sadock told Al Jazeera. “Then they started shooting at us.”

At least eight miners were killed that day, according to Sadock, who said he was lucky to escape death because he quickly fled as soon as he heard the first shot.

“The victims were people I knew so closely,” Sadock said. “They made a living from the work they did and took care of their families, but the white soldiers ended their lives and made the people they cared for begin to suffer.”

Following the incident, Midas Ressources gained full control of the Ndassima gold mine, which has a gold deposit valued by the CAR government at around US$2.8 billion. Last year, the company was sanctioned by the United States Department of the Treasury to “fund Wagner’s operations in the CAR and beyond.”

Sadock and four other artisanal miners, looking for a new gold mine to work, then moved to the village of Aigbado in the east of the Central African Republic, but tragedy struck just days after they arrived.

On January 16, 2022, two days after Sadock and his colleagues arrived in Aigbado, heavily armed mercenaries in a pickup truck entered, opened fire and torched houses near the gold mine, he said. At least 70 people were killed during attacks that extended to the neighboring community of Yanga, where hundreds of frightened Aigbado villagers fled, but were still met by Wagner’s forces.

“Many of the people who fled to Yanga were artisanal miners and that’s why the white soldiers chased us there, because they wanted to make sure they killed us so we didn’t go back to the Aigbado mine,” Sadock said. “Two of my colleagues who came with us from Ndassima were massacred when we fled to Yanga.”

‘Face consequences’

After the incidents at Aigbado and Yanga, Sadock and some other miners moved northwest in search of new mines.

They finally settled in Koki after being unwelcome in a few other places.

“First we went to Baboua and then to Abba, but the people there were not friendly to us because we were strangers,” said Sadock. “We feared for our safety, so we went to Koki, where we felt at home before the white soldiers attacked the area.”

Russian paramilitaries have always targeted local miners in mining areas where they have an interest, according to reports. Two years ago, dozens of miners were killed – some buried in a mass grave – in at least three attacks in mid-March 2022 involving Russian paramilitaries who swept through camps full of migrant miners, mainly from Sudan and Chad, in the Andaha region, in the Central African Republic, according to a report by The Guardian.

Around the same period, more than 100 gold miners from Chad, Sudan, Niger and CAR were killed during a “massacre” perpetrated by Wagner mercenaries in the same region, as Russia sought to establish control over the flow of gold and diamonds into the restive Central region. African nation, revealed an investigation by Middle East Eye.

Since the Russian Ministry of Defense stepped in to oversee the operations of Russian mercenaries in CAR, now operating under a paramilitary structure known as Africa Corps, following the death of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash near Moscow in August In the past, Russian-linked entities have attempted to seize new gold mines.

Last September, Russian representatives from Midas Ressources arrived in the central city of Ndachima, where they met with community leaders and informed them that the company had purchased the area of ​​the city where mining activities take place from the CAR government. Local artisanal miners were told to evacuate the area.

“They [the Russians] said that if the miners living in the area do not leave the site, they will face the consequences,” Tresor Baboula, one of the youth leaders who attended the meeting, told Al Jazeera. “The miners have not left yet and we hope nothing catastrophic happens in the future.”

Al Jazeera reached out to a Midas Ressources representative for comment but did not receive a response.

‘Disappearances’

The targeting of small-scale miners continued this year.

In March, Russian mercenaries carried out numerous attacks on mining sites in Kotabara and Zaranga in the northwest, killing about 60 civilians, injuring others and forcing survivors to transport stolen goods and gold, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data ( ACLED). ) project.

Despite its rich natural resources, the CAR, a former French colony with around five million people, remains one of the most impoverished countries in the world.

The country has been in conflict since 2013, when Seleka rebels seized power and dismissed the president. Militias called anti-Balaka groups fought back, forcing the United Nations to impose an arms embargo and create a peacekeeping mission.

President Touadera, who came to power in 2016, turned to Russia the following year for security assistance, securing weapons and military instructors from the Wagner Group, which has been exploiting CAR’s natural resources, committing a series of atrocities in the process. , according to rights groups.

Russian and CAR authorities did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment on allegations of the murder of artisanal miners in several locations across the conflict-hit country. Emails sent to the Russian embassy in Bangui and the CAR government spokesperson went unanswered.

After the October attack on Koki, some miners who survived the attack moved to nearby Markounda, a town just 30 miles from Koki, to find work in a gold mine, but they face new challenges there.

“Many of our colleagues have mysteriously disappeared without a trace since we arrived here last year,” Juste, an artisanal miner who also only wanted his first name mentioned for fear of reprisals, told Al Jazeera. “We don’t know who is behind these disappearances.”

Since November, when they arrived in Markounda, around 10 artisanal miners have not been seen or heard from. Their colleagues are worried that they may have been killed.

“They couldn’t have left Markounda without informing anyone,” Juste said. “It must be some people who don’t want artisanal miners to settle here who are behind these disappearances, just to scare us.”

As the persecution of local artisanal miners across CAR continues, those lucky enough to survive continue to live in fear.

“I don’t think I want to continue with artisanal mining because it has become very dangerous,” said Sadock, who fled to the northwestern village of Beloko, on the border with Cameroon, where he buys and sells vegetables. “In the gold mines, we no longer just face dust and toxic chemicals, we now face weapons.”