Batons in hand, Tunisian police marched in single file down a dirt path flanked by olive trees. Ahead of them, migrants fled as their tents burned.
Some migrants stood by helplessly, watching the smoke swirl into the sky just a few hundred metres (yards) away after the authorities torched what had been their temporary homes.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Bakayo Abdelkadeur, a 26-year-old from Mali, clutching two worn blankets.
For nearly two years, olive groves around El Amra, a town south of Tunis, served as informal camps for thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.
This week, authorities launched a sweeping operation to clear out the makeshift shelters located a few kilometres (miles) from Tunisia’s Mediterranean coast.
It’s a growing flashpoint, fuelled by an anti-migrant campaign and rising tensions with local residents, who complain about the camps and demand that the land be cleared.
Tempers flared in 2023 after President Kais Saied said that “hordes of sub-Saharan migrants” threatened to change the country’s demographics.
Many migrants arrived after crossing the deserts of Algeria and Mali, hoping to reach Italy. But tighter controls on the sea route have left them stranded.
Last year, Tunisia signed a 255-million-euro (almost $280-million) deal with the European Union, nearly half of which is earmarked for tackling irregular migration.
‘Confused’
Benjamin Enna picked up a spoon and a sachet of powdered juice — remnants of the so-called “Kilometre 25” camp.
The 29-year-old Nigerian said he survived a Mediterranean shipwreck and had hoped to join his brother in Italy.
Now he’s torn between going home, working in Tunisia and trying to reach Europe again.
“My head’s all mixed up,” he said.
While some expressed a desire to go home and others insisted on pushing for Europe, nearly all migrants AFP spoke to around El Amra agreed on one thing: they want to leave Tunisia.
“We’ve suffered a lot,” said Camara Hassan, 25, a former student of international relations from Guinea who spent two months in a Tunisian prison.
Despite the many obstacles, he remains determined to reach Europe.
“One way or another we’ll make it,” he said.
Others are frustrated by delays in voluntary return flights facilitated by the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
“I want to go back to Ivory Coast, but the IOM (flights) are full,” he said, before darting away when a National Guard vehicle approached.
A visibly exhausted 29-year-old Cameroonian, who asked not to be named, described her anguish.
“It’s horrible,” she said. “They treat us like we’re not human.”
New camps?
National Guard spokesman Houcem Eddine Jebabli defended the police operation as “humane”, saying that officers did not use tear gas.
Asked what would happen to the migrants now their shelters were gone, he said many would benefit from the “voluntary returns”, while others have “dispersed into the wild”.
As of Wednesday, the IOM said it had arranged 1,740 voluntary returns, following nearly 7,000 last year — triple the 2023 figure.
But rights groups are sceptical.
Dozens of police vans and tractors were deployed in the operation, which Romdhane Ben Amor of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) said aimed to scatter migrants to ease local anger.
“It won’t work,” he warned. “They’ll regroup and build new camps because they have nowhere else to go.”
On Saturday, a short drive from El Amra, groups of migrants were already walking along the roadside, heading towards other olive groves.
