DOUANKARA, Mauritania (AP) – The girl was in a makeshift health clinic, her eyes glazed over and her mouth open, flies resting on her lips. Her chest barely moved. Drops of fever sweat rolled down her forehead as medical workers rushed around her, attaching an IV drip.
It was the last moment to save her life, said Bethsabee Djoman Elidje, the women’s health manager, who led the clinic’s effort as the heart monitor beeped rapidly. The girl had an infection after a sexual assault, said Elidje, and had been in shock, untreated, for days.
Her family said that the 14-year-old girl had been raped by Russian fighters who entered their tent in Mali two weeks before. The Russians were members of the Africa Corps, a new military unit under Russia’s defense ministry that replaced the Wagner mercenary group six months ago.
Men, women and children have been sexually assaulted by all sides during Mali’s decade-long conflict, the UN and aid workers say, with reports of gang rape and sexual slavery. But the true burden is hidden by a veil of shame that makes it difficult for women from conservative and patriarchal societies to seek help.
The silence that almost killed the 14-year-old also hurts the efforts to hold the culprits accountable.
The AP learned of the alleged rape and four other alleged cases of sexual violence that were blamed on Africa Corps fighters, commonly described by Malians as “white men,” while interviewing dozens of refugees at the border about other abuses such as beheadings and kidnappings.
Other fighters in Mali have been accused of sexual assaults. The head of a women’s health clinic in the Mopti area told AP that he treated 28 women in the last six months who said they were assaulted by militants with the al-Qaida-affiliated JNIM, the most powerful armed group in Mali.
The silence among the Malian refugees was striking.
In eastern Congo, which for decades has faced violence from dozens of armed groups, “we didn’t have to look for people,” said Mirjam Molenaar, the medical team leader in the border area for Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, who was stationed there last year. The women “came in in great numbers.”
Here it is different, she said: “People go through these things and live with them, and this shows up in post-traumatic stress.”
Speechless after an attack
The aunt of the 14-year-old girl said that the Afrika Korp fighters marched everyone out at gunpoint. The family could not understand what they wanted. The men made them see how they tied up the girl’s uncle and cut off his head.
Then two of the men took the 14-year-old into the tent as she tried to defend herself, and raped her. The family waited outside, unable to move.
“We were so scared that we couldn’t even scream anymore,” the aunt recalled, as her mother sobbed quietly next to her. She, like other women, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, and the AP does not name rape victims unless they agree to be named.
The girl came out more than half an hour later, looking terrified. Then she saw her uncle’s body and screamed. She fainted. When she woke up, she had the eyes of someone “who was no longer there,” said her aunt.
The next morning the JNIM militants came and ordered the family to leave. They got on a donkey cart and left for the border. At any sound, they hid in the bushes, holding their breath.
The girl’s condition worsened during the three-day journey. When they arrived in Mauritania, it collapsed.
The AP found her lying on the ground in the yard of a local family. Her family said they had not taken her to a clinic because they had no money.
“If you don’t have anything, how can you get someone to a doctor?” the girl’s grandmother said between sobs. The PA took the family to a free clinic run by MSF. A doctor said that the girl had signs of being raped.
The clinic had been working for barely a month and had seen three survivors of sexual violence, said manager Elidje.
“We are convinced that there are many cases like this,” she said. “But so far, very few patients come to seek treatment because it is still a taboo subject here. It really takes time and patience for these women to open up and trust in someone so they can receive treatment. They only come when things have already become complicated, like the case we saw today.”
As Elidje tried to save the girl’s life, she asked the family to describe the incident. She did not speak Arabic and asked the local nurse to find out how many men had carried out the attack. But the nurse was too shy to ask.
The scratch marks are part of the story she couldn’t tell
Thousands of new refugees from Mali, mostly women and children, have settled just inside Mauritania in recent weeks, in shelters made of cloth and branches. The nearest refugee camp is full, complicating efforts to treat and report sexual assaults.
Two recently arrived women discreetly pulled AP reporters aside, adjusting scarves over their faces. They said they arrived a week ago after armed white men came to their village.
“They took everything from us. They burned our houses. They killed our husband,” said one. “But that’s not all they did. They tried to rape us.”
The men entered the house where she was alone and removed her, she said, adding that she defended herself “by the grace of Allah.”
As soon as she spoke, the second woman began to cry and sob. She had scratch marks on her neck. She was not able to tell her story.
“We’re still scared by what we’ve been through,” she said.
Separately, the third woman said that what the white men did to her in Mali last month when she was alone at home “remains between God and me.”
The fourth said she saw several armed white men dragging her 18-year-old daughter into their home. She ran away and never saw her daughter again.
The women refused the suggestion to talk to the aid workers, some of whom are local. They said they were not ready to talk about it with anyone else.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to questions, but an information agency that the US State Department called part of the “Kremlin’s disinformation campaign” called the AP’s investigation into Africa Corps fake news.
Wagner has a legacy of sexual abuse
Allegations of rapes and other sexual assaults were already occurring before Wagner transformed into Africa Corps.
One of the refugees told the AP that she witnessed a mass rape in her village in March 2024.
“The Wagner group burned seven men alive in front of us with gasoline.” she said. Then they gathered the women and raped them, she said, including her 70-year-old mother.
“After my mother was raped, she could not live,” she said. Her mother died a month later.
In the worst known case of sexual assault involving Russian fighters in Africa, the UN in a 2023 report said at least 58 women and girls had been raped or sexually assaulted in an attack on the village of Moura by Malian troops and others who witnesses described as “armed white men”.
In response, the Malian government expelled the UN peacekeeping mission. Since then, collecting accurate on-the-ground data on conflict-related sexual violence has become almost impossible.
The AP interviewed five of the women from Moura, who now remain in a displacement camp. They said they had been naked for hours and raped by several men.
Three of the women said they didn’t talk about it to anyone except the aid workers. The other two dared to tell their husbands, months later.
“I stayed silent with my family because I’m afraid of being rejected or looked at differently. It’s a shame,” said one.
The 14-year-old whose family fled to Mauritania is recovering. She said she doesn’t remember anything from the attack. Her family and MSF said she is talking to a psychiatrist — one of only six working in the country.
Aid workers are worried about others who never say anything.
“It seems that the conflict over the years gets worse and worse. There is less attention for human life, be it men, women or children,” said MSF’s Molenaar, breaking down in tears. “It’s a battle.”
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