‘We now face guns’: Small-scale miners fear Wagner’s advances in CAR | Conflict

Beloko, Central African Republic – When Sadock arrived in the northwestern Central African Republic (CAR) town of Koki in November 2022, he thought he had finally found a safe place to live and work.

For years, small-scale miners like him have been displaced and forced to relocate over and over again whenever foreigners entered a local area, seized surrounding gold mines and evicted local miners.

“Some of us [artisanal miners] decided to move to Koki because we thought at the time that no one was disturbing artisanal miners in the [northwest] region,” Sadock, who wanted to be…