After dismantling the strongholds of Salif Sadio, the leader of the northern wing of the Casamance rebellion in the south of the country, the Senegalese army launched an assault on the bases of Cesar Atoute Badiate.
The Senegalese state has chosen to use the hard way to put an end to the rebellion in the south of the country. President Macky Sall had given the go-ahead, on the eve of the April 4 national holiday, for military operations to continue “without respite” “until all the set objectives are achieved.”
After this assault launched by the supreme commander of the army, Senegalese soldiers have been investing since Wednesday in the commune of Djibidione, in the district of Bignona (Ziguinchor, south), where rebel bases were positioned under the command of Cesar Atoute Badiate, the head of the southern wing.
Fighting in other village communities in the district led many residents to flee to the Gambia, according to media sources. Artillery fire followed by the deployment of a large contingent of the army resulted in the closure of elementary and secondary schools in the said town, the private daily EnQuête says.
For the moment, the area is occupied by the Senegalese army, although it has not yet issued a statement on the progress of operations and the losses suffered by the rebels. But a few weeks after driving Salif Sadio out of northern Sindian area, the military have just succeeded in a new coup against another Atika leader, the nickname of the armed wing of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), a pro-independence group created more than forty years ago.
Rebel leaders on the run
Cesar Atoute Badiate, who is currently unaccounted for, is also the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by the Senegalese justice system in the case of the Boffa Bayotte Forest massacre in Casamance. He is on trial with twelve other people for the murder of fourteen woodcutters in 2018.
On April 6, the prosecutor of the high court of Ziguinchor requested life imprisonment against him. However, some observers fear that his conviction and the army’s latest offensives could jeopardize the peace process for the return of peace in Casamance. In recent days, the press has reported the robbery of a convoy of traders in the Bignona area by heavily armed men believed to belong to the MFDC. They took various items, such as cell phones and money before heading into the forest.
Jean-Claude Marut, a French specialist on the Casamance conflict, explained that the MFDC is now divided into several sub-groups. They engage in criminal activities, mainly the cultivation and sale of narcotics, to survive.
While the conflict has persisted at a low intensity until it has been described as a “neither peace nor war situation,” Senegal has worked to normalize it by organizing conditions for the resettlement of displaced persons. But today, the situation seems to have changed completely.
“The Senegalese state has played the time card, the card of decay, and it has worked, since the rebellion is effectively out of breath,” the researcher associated with the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) noted in an interview with Radio France Internationale (Rfi).
ODL/cgd/fss/abj/APA