Father who risked all to save family killed before reunion
Tragedy underlines plight of Muslim refugees trying desperately to flee ‘ ethnic- religious cleansing’ in troubled country
BANGUI — Who could bear to break the news to Yaman Ahmat?
Just hours earlier her husband put her and their eight children, including newborn daughter Ashta, on a private plane to Central African Republic’s capital in a desperate bid to save their lives.
Now she sat on a floor mat in an airport hangar in Bangui, among hundreds of Muslims desperately awaiting a flight, any flight, out of their increasingly violent country to neighbouring Chad. The half dozen suitcases and plastic bags behind her held everything she owned.
The man she married when she was just 17 had stayed behind to try to sell what remained of his store merchandise before joining her. But returning home from the airstrip in the town of Boda, his convoy came under a hail of gunfire.
The family’s dreams of a new together died with him.
Her relatives didn’t know how to tell her what had happened while her
life plane was in the air. Finally it was her mother who called. The Christian militiamen had attacked the car, her mother said. Her husband Markhous had been killed.
Yaman collapsed to the ground in grief, the cellphone still in her hand.
“His children were his world,” she says several days later, holding now 12- day- old Ashta in her lap. “His last words to me were ‘ The children are suffering. When they get to Bangui, be sure they eat well. Buy milk for the baby no matter what the cost.’ ”
Mass exodus
Now they are among the hundreds of Muslims sleeping in an airport hangar, some of whom have been sheltering here for weeks. Their plight underlines the mass exodus of Muslims taking place in Central African Republic that UN officials have described as “ethnic- religious cleansing.” More than 290,000 people have fled to neighbouring countries and “most of those remaining are under permanent threat,” the UN says.
Inter- communal clashes were sparked by anger toward a Muslim rebel government that tortured and killed an untold number of mostly Christian civilians during its 10- month rule. Ordinary Muslims like Yaman and her family became targets of retaliatory violence when the rebel leader turned-president went into exile in January, persecuted because they shared a religion and in many cases Chadian heritage.
After scores of gruesome mob killings, Muslims — who once made up 15 per cent of the population — fled for their lives. Christians then began desecrating mosques and burning homes to keep the Muslims from ever returning.
Before the crisis, Yaman and her husband had built their lives in the village of Ngotto south of Bangui. He was 20 years her senior, and ran a successful shop that sold everything from food to cleaning supplies. Not long after the country exploded into sectarian bloodshed between Muslim and Christian communities, the family moved to the nearby town of Boda.
With each sale, they socked away money in hopes of an escape. It would take more than one million francs ( more than $ 2,000) for enough space on a chartered plane to get out of Boda. Roads were too dangerous: The countryside surrounding town was infested with machete- wielding fighters who wanted to kill Muslims like them.
The first time they tried to go the airport, they missed the flight. The second time they went it was under armed escort by French soldiers. One by one the couple’s children climbed into the plane that normally flies diamond traders to and from Boda.
Yaman’s brother Mahamat is convinced the militiamen must have seen the family heading to the airport and decided to attack as he returned solo from the airstrip to town. He was the 12th Muslim killed in a week here, residents say. At least three others have been killed in the days since she left for Bangui, they said.
The mounds of dirt at the end of a path behind a warehouse are still fresh from where the bodies are buried.
Earlier victims had been taken to a plot behind one of the town’s mosques but it is now on the wrong side of the bridge, too dangerous for the Muslim community to bring their dead there now.
‘ Will never go back’
Now Yaman spends her days sitting on a mat inside the airport hangar in Bangui, her 15- year- old and 18- yearold daughters minding the little ones. Every few hours there is the baby to nurse and medicines to give four yearold Moura, who has contracted malaria.
As Yaman recounts all they have lost, 18- year- old Awa wipes her own tears with the ends of her head scarf and tries to comfort her mother.
Even in a future full of uncertainty, there is one thing resolute in Yaman’s mind: “With all that has happened, we will never go back.”
His children were his world. His last words to me were, ‘ The children are suffering.’ YAMAN AHMAT WIFE OF MARKHOUS