Operation Tandroka: The HAT and its unelected members deliver the license to kill Dahalo outlaws

As for its defense, the HAT has spoken through the voice of its usual spokesman, that of its Minister of Communication Harry Lawrence Rahajason. The security forces’ current mission does not include the prospect of trial for armed Dahalo outlaws killed in action. The national radio and TV channels and the transitional leader’s private stations appeared very active into caring about propaganda concerning this guerrilla like conflict.

The men commanded by Colonel Lylison, the operational mastermind on the ground but not yet overall, are being depicted as heroes able to walk for hours in the darkness of the night, brave enough to raid a village held by the enemy and bring a dozen of armed men down without making any single collateral damage out of women and children. But the moment of glory and the assumption of a surgical war led with mere AK-47 rifles are over now.

Various other independent media groups have reported a very different reality developing on the ground. Women and children shot dead, suspected dahalo executed on the spot, targeted assassinations of suspected Dahalo leaders and major supporters of Remenabila … comparable scenes were brought to light. All these incidents might still be blamed on lethal crossfire. But what about the villages being looted, burnt down and leveled to the ground by security forces? Scores of villagers voluntarily turn into refugees and scurry for safety in the woods.

Serious violation of human rights or not, the use of scorched earth strategy has been allowed and already proved fruitful in the past. Dahalo thieves have to be harassed around the clock and prevented from recovering the villages which used to host them. The other side of the medal: all of the villagers are either Dahalo thieves or their accomplices; who, makes no difference at all in this case; men, women and children.

Transitional minister Julien Reboza advocated the HAT’s special forces’ actions and methods used in his native southern region: “People doing nothing but criticizing all the way actually know nothing about the problem and have lost no relative to Dahalo led raids,” he said, while turning any prospect of a pending ethnic cleasing down; an ethnic reshuffle deemed to be directed at a local Bara population group, for which zebu theft is a full cultural component.

Southern politicians do not have it this way and openly denounce extrajudicial executions and arbitrary destruction of villages perpetrated by the armed forces in the run of the operation Tandroka. The former parliamentarian Louisette Raharimalala recalled that the whole issue originated from “the settlement of a dispute between Remenabila and state policemen.” The Dahalo leader had, according to her say, an order of 6000 zebu heads. Then, a price related dispute would have thwarted the trade and set everything alight.

On the operation ground, Colonel Lylison’s men keep on searching for Dahalo militia village per village, and have, for the first time ever, reached the famous “zohy”; the Dahalo safe haven made of so thick forests and caves that hundreds of zebu could be hidden at once without leaving a trace… although not from satellite observation devices. The attack did not reach the capture of an allegedly still wounded Remenabila yet though.

Will Amnesty International succeed in putting the HAT and its death squadrons back to the right path, and remind them that respect for human rights is essential, even and particularly in the run of an armed conflict? In between, Louisette Raharimalala told a matter of fact out: “There has never been any more lethal ruling regime than this one.”