They are far from their urban field of intervention in France. In Mayotte, the police officers of the CRS8, under a tropical rain which knocks on the helmet fogged up by 38 ° C, anxiously scan the jungle, their shield brandished towards the “big green”. The eighth Republican Security Company, created in 2021 and presented as an elite unit specializing in the fight against urban violence capable of being sent quickly to any point in France, arrived on Wednesday from Paris to reinforce the staff of the operation to secure Mayotte, called “Wuambushu” (“recovery” in Mahorais).
This operation – which mobilizes 1,800 police and gendarmes, including hundreds of reinforcements from mainland France – aims to empty the districts of illegal immigration and to multiply the arrests of young people responsible for stoning, theft or aggression in the archipelago gangrenous by violence according to its inhabitants. And there, in front of them, from the hill with the banana trees rises a concert of war cries. Simultaneously, between the downpours of this Sunday, ocher and muddy stones crash on their column. On the ground, the pebbles are the size of a hand. In the forest, the stones are hidden, invisible.
Barricades and outback
Cougar grenade launcher propped on the dripping shoulder, the policeman fires a tear gas grenade bell-like towards the top of the hill. “Are there any injuries in your home guys? », Worries one of the CRS (of the republican security company 8), in retreat behind the white van. “Have you seen what we have in front? “replies his fellow policeman. “There, you have to go into the groves. If we remain fixed, it is sure that we will “eat”.
Since the start of the morning, tempers have been heating up in the neighboring village of Tsoundzou, one of the “hottest” in Mayotte. Located less than 6 km south of Mamoudzou, this town has become a focal point for Comorian inhabitants “displaced” in recent years from neighboring slums. Neighbors complain of thefts, rackets and stones. And the police are regularly taken to task.
Saturday, a convoy of the gendarmerie which took the main road of the island wiped stones on its way to the level of Tsoundzou, noted AFP. On Sunday morning, the police decided to raid. “An identity check operation in this district which has caused us problems in recent weeks”, summarizes the chief of police in Mayotte, commissioner Laurent Simonin. To prevent the arrests, young people from the neighborhood erected barricades in the morning, set fires and attracted the police to their strategic playground: the outback.
“A land they know and we don’t”
“We are on an operation to reconquer the land,” says their leader, divisional commander Jean-Louis Sanchet. “A ground that they know and not us”, underlines this police figure, who nevertheless lives his baptism of fire overseas for a first operation to restore order in Mayotte.
This afternoon, to pick them up on the paths around Tsoundzou, ten men from the Raid (the elite police intervention unit) – a branch of which has been permanently deployed in Mayotte since 24 November – are also sent in discreet support to challenge the young people of the hills. Hooded, automatic weapons across their chests, their camouflaged silhouettes sink down the path of the hill, to counter-ambush the stoners.
In vain. The ten men of the Raid return twenty minutes later, with a quiet step, without having challenged anyone, but surrounded by Comorian children curious about the presence of these commando policemen. “We are not going to war for war, now we have cleared [la route], we pick up and we will get closer to the houses to secure ”, comments, the jeans stained with mud and the polo shirt soaked in sweat and rain, Commissioner Simonin. Twelve police officers, according to the spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior on the spot, were slightly injured during this operation.