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As the sun sets over the barren and hostile Mauritanian desert, people move in rhythm, swinging in line and beating the ground with gnarled tree branches. The wood cracks together over dry grass land, a technique perfected after fighting bushfires for more than a decade.
There is no fire today but the men – volunteer firefighters supported by the UN refugee agency – continue training.
in this area of West AfricaBushfires are deadly. They can erupt in the blink of an eye and last for days. This poor, vast region is shared by more than 250,000 Mauritanians and refugees from neighboring countries. gardenerWho depend on scarce vegetation to feed their animals.
For refugee firefighters, fighting fires is a way to give back to the community that embraced them after fleeing violence and instability at home in Mali.
newcomers with old traditions
Hantam Ag Ahmadou was 11 years old when his family left Mali in 2012 to settle in the Mbera refugee camp in Mauritania, 48 kilometers (30 miles) from the Mali border. Like most refugees and locals, his family are pastoralists and once in Mbera he saw how quickly bushfires spread and how devastating they can be.
“We said to ourselves: There’s this amazing generosity of the host community. These people share with us everything they have,” he told The Associated Press. “We needed to do something to ease the burden.”
His father began organizing volunteer firefighters, with about 200 refugees at the time. Ag Ahmedou said the people of Mauritania had been battling forest fires for decades, but Malian refugees brought information that helped them.
“You can’t stop bushfires with water,” Ag Ahmadou said. “It is impossible, sometimes fires break out a hundred kilometers from the nearest water source.”
Instead, he said, they use tree branches to put out fires.
“That’s the only way to do it,” he said.
Volunteer ‘Brigade’
Since 2018, the firefighters have been under the protection of UNHCR. European Union Funds their training and equipment, as well as cleaning firebreak strips to prevent fires from spreading. Volunteers today number more than 360 refugees who work alongside area authorities and firefighters.
When a wildfire starts and an alert comes in, firefighters jump into their pickup trucks and head out. Once at the site of the fire, the 20-member team spreads out and begins to pelt the ground at the fire’s edge with branches of acacia – a rare tree that has high resistance to heat.
Normally, three other teams remain standing if the first team needs to be replaced.
When Ag Ahmadou was 13, he started going out with firefighters, and supplied water and food to people. He helped put out his first fire when he was 18 and has since battled hundreds of fires.
He knows how dangerous the work is but he doesn’t let fear overpower him.
“Someone has to do it,” he said. “If the fire is not stopped, it could spread into refugee camps and villages, kill animals, kill humans and devastate the economy of the entire region.”
A climate-sensitive nation
About 90% of Mauritania is covered by the Sahara Desert. Experts say that climate change has accelerated desertification and increased pressure on natural resources, especially water. The UN says tensions between local people and refugees over grazing areas are a major threat to peace.
Tayyar Sukru Cansizoglou, head of the UNHCR in Mauritania, said that due to the effects of climate change, Mauritanians in the region are also unable to find enough pasture for their cows and goats – so a “single wildfire” becomes life-threatening for everyone.
When the first refugees arrived in 2012, authorities cleared a large swath of land for the Mbira camp, which today houses more than 150,000 Malian refugees. Another 150,000 live in villages spread across the vast area, sometimes outnumbering locals by 10 to one.
Chejna Abdullah, mayor of the border town of Fassala, said tensions are rising between locals and Malians due to “high pressure on access to natural resources, especially water.”
To return
Abderrahmane Maiga, a 52-year-old member of the “Mbera Fire Brigade”, as the firefighters call themselves, presses soil around a young seedling and carefully pours water at its base.
To compensate for the loss of vegetation, firefighters have begun to establish tree and plant nurseries throughout the desert – including acacias. This year he also planted the first lemon and mango trees.
“It is absolutely right that we stand up to help people,” Maiga said.
He recalls the worst fire he encountered was in 2014, in which dozens of people – both refugees and host community members – spent 48 hours inside. By the time it was over, some of the volunteers had collapsed from exhaustion.
AG Ahmadou said he was aware of the tensions, especially as violence has intensified in Mali and going back is not an option for most refugees.
He said that he was born into this life – a life in the desert, a life of lack of food and a “degraded land” – and there is nowhere else for him to go. fighting This is the only option to survive.
“We cannot leave our home by going to Europe,” he said. “So we have to protest. We have to fight.”
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