The armored vehicle stood at Cameroon’s Garoua-Boulai border crossing, the barrel of its machine gun pointing unmistakably toward the Central African Republic (CAR).
Border police said that they are on maximum alert after rebels attacked a crucial highway in the CAR, blocking hundreds of trucks and prompting an exodus of terrified people into Cameroon.
An alliance of armed groups tried to advance on the CAR capital Bangui ahead of presidential elections on Dec. 27.
Photo: AFP
The gunmen were swiftly thwarted by UN peacekeepers, CAR troops, and Rwandan and Russian reinforcements.
However, they then switched tactics, trying to strangle Bangui by launching hit-and-run raids on the RN1 Highway, the lifeline linking the city to Cameroon.
Garoua-Boulai, 725km west of Bangui, is a border town of 80,000 people where before the crisis, about 200 trucks rolled across the border each day, laden with essentials for the landlocked CAR’s capital.
The border point has become a parking lot — more than 400 trucks are stacked up, waiting to cross.
A couple of weeks ago, some truckers ventured over, but swiftly turned back because of the poor security.
“The border is now closed,” a senior police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Soldiers from the elite Rapid Intervention Brigade have taken up a position at the edge of the border perimeter to tackle any rebel incursion.
In the town, police have stepped up patrols and identity checks in the streets — even in hotels and bars — and take away people unable to produce identification documents.
The attacks on CAR’s supply backbone are the latest crisis to roil a country that ranks second-poorest in the world, and has seen little but bloodshed and misery since a coup seven years ago.
About two-thirds of the country is in the hands of armed groups that sprang up in the turmoil in 2013.
So far, there have been no shortages in Bangui, but the effects of a de facto blockade is starting to be felt in higher prices for certain foods, and supermarkets and wholesalers have said that their inventories are starting to dwindle.
In Garoua-Boulai, hundreds of trucks are parked on the roadside, and hundreds more on land in front of a government building.
Nickson, a young Cameroonian “moto-boy,” or assistant driver, was lying on a sheet under his truck, his face barely lit by his mobile phone.
“I’ve been sleeping here for 21 days,” he said. “It gets cold at night and we don’t have much to eat.”
Gabin, a 22-year-old assistant driver from the CAR, blew on a fire to warm up a pot of food. He was cooking for a group of 44 drivers and their assistants.
Some of the drivers had come very far. They included 17 truckers hauling fuel from Chad — a trip of 1,000km — and heading for Bangui.
“It’s impossible — they have to make the road secure,” said one of them, Abdel Habid.
Just a few weeks ago, hundreds of CAR residents in a nearby refugee camp crossed the border post each day to return home.
These days, the flow has been reversed, as their compatriots seek the haven of Cameroon.
Four thousand have crossed, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights data showed.
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