Photo Credit: Refugees International
11/19/2006

In five days of exploring parts of Ouham-Pende and Ouham provinces in the northwest Central African Republic by car, the RI team saw long stretches of roads with empty villages, burned houses, closed schools and churches. Dozens of villages had been abandoned by civilians who fled attacks from armed bandits and regular and irregular fighting forces. Where there were some signs of life along the road or in a village—homes that had not been burned, bicycles and cooking pots left outside, animals roaming around—the humanitarian convoy stopped. In most cases, people hid in fear at the sound of approaching vehicles. At one stop, a man stated, “We ran because we didn’t know if the military was here,” but he and others finally emerged after concluding that our group was non-threatening.