Vigilante archers combat kidnapping epidemic in Chad

ADF STAFF

With bows, slingshots and spears in hand, the young villagers marched in a line through a forest in the southwestern Chadian town of Pala. As the early morning light filtered through the trees, some crawled through the undergrowth while others crouched behind eucalyptus trees.

Their leader gave a signal and they split up into small groups. Another signal made the men stop and they aimed their weapons at an imaginary target.

“Release the hostages and put down your weapons,” they shouted, according to Agence France-Presse. The training exercise was intended to prepare for the likelihood of confrontations with kidnappers in the area.

The Pala-Coton Tchad watchdog committee is one of the vigilante groups set up to combat the plague of kidnappings that has plagued the Mayo-Kebbi Ouest region for more than 20 years.

According to estimates by the Chadian non-governmental organization Organization for Support of Development Initiatives, which has been monitoring the problem since the early 2000s, more than 1,500 people have been killed in that time.

It says the Mayo-Kebbi Ouest, one of the country’s most populous regions, is the epicentre of a kidnapping epidemic that has spread across the tri-border region where Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Cameroon meet. Locals call it the “Triangle of Death.”

In the absence of sufficient support from local authorities in Chad, residents have formed their own vigilante groups.

Amos Mbairo Nangyo, the 35-year-old director of a security company in Pala and coordinator of the vigilance and surveillance committees in Mayo-Kebbi Ouest, said the groups operate as intelligence agencies that pass information to the security forces.

“We accompany the gendarmes in the bush, but we are also the first to go after the criminals after a kidnapping,” he told AFP. “We hunt them down, armed with our bows and our spears.”

Ulf Laessing, director of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German think tank, said the war in Sudan has shifted Chad’s security concerns to its eastern border.

“They have shifted their capacity to better police that border,” he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper in July. “That may be one reason why they can’t police the border with Cameroon as effectively as they used to.”

According to Chadian authorities, the ransom paid in the Mayo-Kebbi Ouest region in 2022 amounted to approximately 43 million Central African CFA francs (approximately 71,000 US dollars). In 2023, this amount had risen to 52.4 million CFA francs.

According to a January 2024 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), approximately CFA francs 86 million in ransoms were paid in six incidents in Cameroon’s North region between February and May 2023.

“Although military operations against the zaraguinas (the generic term for bandits) have yielded modest gains in the Northern region in 2022, the history of crime in Northern Cameroon suggests that military pressure is likely to merely shift violence geographically or catalyse a transformation in the region’s criminal dynamics,” the report said.

GI-TOC warned that the growing wave of kidnappings “could cause damaging economic ripples across the region… as Cameroon has become the main trading artery for Chad and the CAR, with the majority of imports and exports to these countries now passing through the tri-border region.”

Cameroonian and Chadian service chiefs met in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in October 2023 to discuss cooperation to tackle cross-border crime. But experts believe a broader regional effort is needed to dismantle criminal networks operating across the region’s remote forests.

Nangyo said more than 4,000 youths in the Mayo-Kebbi Ouest region have joined vigilante groups, although he admitted their bows and slingshots were no match for heavily armed kidnappers.

“It is dangerous volunteer work and we are asking the state for resources so that we can move around – on motorbikes and horses or even just boots,” he said.

It is a complex problem that deserves more attention, says Timothée Fenessoubo, a lawyer from Pala and member of a regional legal collective created in February 2023 to assist victims of kidnappings.

“Residents are leaving their lands to seek refuge in towns and villages,” he told French newspaper La Croix in July. “Agriculture and livestock farming allow families to pay for their children’s education. If the government does not address this problem and help the victims, the region could explode.”

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