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Bangui’s perfect storm: Is interventionist France able to halt CAR’s drift to anarchy?

Tuesday January 14 2014
bangui

French troops of the Sangaris Operation stand guard in Bangui on January 10, 2014. FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

French President Francois Hollande’s recent decision to increase the number of his country’s troops in the Central Africa Republic (CAR) seems to resurrect France’s time-hallowed military interventionism in Africa.

But senior officials in Paris are making a case for the intervention as a “war of necessity.”

France is CAR’s former colonial master.

Paris has committed 1,600 troops to pre-empt the perceived risk of genocide. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius described CAR as a “collapsed state” where violence, rape and executions by armed militias are a recipe for a Rwanda-style genocide, this time fanned by inter-religious hatred. And by the same token, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson has talked of “pre-genocide” conditions.

Amidst the escalating sectarian violence, on Thursday President President Idriss Déby Itno of Chad convened a summit of the 10 countries making the Economic Community of Central African (ECCAS) bloc to chart the path to peaceful in CAR and to decide the destiny of President Michael Djotidia, who has not been able to restore public security and order.

ECCAS Secretary General Allami Ahmat had denied that the summit’s purpose was “regime change” in Bangui.  

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On Friday, CAR’s interim president Michel Djotodia and prime minister Nicolas Tiangaye quit under pressure after the regional leaders held him responsible for failing to halt the continuing sectarian violence in the country.

READ: Central African Republic president resigns‎

The conference accepted Djotodia’s “resignation” in a statement on Friday, calling it a “highly patriotic decision to end the country’s paralysis,” and blasting the “passivity of the Central African political class faced with the crisis which has gripped the country.”

The current meltdown in CAR started on December 12, 2012, when a coalition of rebels known as Séléka issued its first press release, making public its political, military and economic agenda.

Séléka coalesced around sections of two of CAR’s many anti-government militias, the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP) and the Patriotic Convention for Saving the Country (CPSK), which signed a coalition agreement in August 2012.

Under the banner of the alliance CPSK-CPJP, Séléka published a press release taking responsibility for attacks on three towns on September 15, 2012.

Séléka was boosted by the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) rebels. And on December 15, 2012, the group published its first press release using its new name “Séléka CPSK-CPJP-UFDR.”

Séléka bears the birthmarks of the era of brutish governance in Bangui after Independence from France on August 13, 1960, when Paris propped up the rule of unelected presidents.

The acme of French-backed despotism has its ugliest face in the self-styled “Emperor” Jean Bidel Bokassa, whom Paris supported to seize power in order to secure a supply line of rare uranium for its nuclear plants. Bokassa envisioned himself as an African Napoleon.

The takeover by Séléka ended CAR’s short-lived democratic experiment that followed local discontent with the tyranny of the Cold War era, which was supported by pressure and aid from the country’s donors — mainly France and the European Union — and the United Nations.

The first multiparty democratic elections in 1993 brought Ange-Félix Patassé to power. But he was violently deposed in 2003 by General François Bozizé, who legitimised his power by winning democratic elections in May 2005.

However, public discontent and rebellion soon brewed around Bozizé’s inability to regularly pay the public sector, postponing of elections, alleged corruption, underdevelopment, nepotism and authoritarianism.

The rebellion in Bangui has come in two main waves. The first wave, also known as “the Central African Republic Bush War” (2004–2007), started immediately Bozize seized power in 2003. It consisted of multiple rebel groups coalescing around the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) led by Djotodia.

The second wave, the 2012–2013 Central African Republic conflict, eventually saw Bozize’s ouster from power on March 24, 2013. Djotodia declared himself president.

READ: CAR rebels sign formal ceasefire

The Arc of Insecurity

The current political paralysis in CAR started when Djotodia’s coup d’état failed to completely subdue Bozize’s supporters, or to exercise full command and control over Séléka rebels who resorted to looting, rape and extreme violence.

The mayhem has turned CAR into a bridge for anarchy, terror and statelessness linking West Africa, the Northern corridor and Eastern Africa, or what security strategists have dubbed “the arc of insecurity” spanning the Sahel through the Sahara Desert and into the Horn of Africa.

So far, the violence is taking a heavy toll CAR’s 4.6 million people, displacing 935,000 people, 510, 000 in Bangui.

Some 72,000 others have fled the country as refugees in the neighbouring Chad, D.R. Congo and Cameroon. Nearly all the members of Séléka are Muslim drawn mainly from the northeastern part of the country bordering Chad and Sudan’s Darfur region. This has introduced a new religious dimension to the conflict.

Research has shown that some rebels are Arabic-speaking Islamic militants — they do not speak Sango or French, CAR’s official languages — giving credence to the speculation that Khartoum-sponsored Janjaweed militia from Darfur may be in town.

This has sparked religious tension and retaliatory attacks against Muslims in a country where 80 per cent of the population are Christians. Christian militias popularly known as anti-balaka, are said to be leading the fight against the Séléka.

The religious fault line in the CAR conflict is now gaining regional and international dimension. The military aircraft transporting Séléka’s wounded leaders are said to have flown to Khartoum and Rabat, Morocco. Séléka leaders have also made several trips to Qatar, illustrating growing linkages with Islamic countries.

Meanwhile, Christian-led South Sudan, Uganda and Congo-Brazzaville have expressed concern over this drift to Islamic fundamentalism, creating religious tensions within the country and the region.

Coupled with this is the resource-conflict nexus in the CAR conflict. CAR is a typical case of “resource-curse,” as its wealth of mineral deposits and its good climate and fertile soils have become causes of endless conflicts between leaders in Bangui and the economically-deprived but mineral-rich northeast region, which have oil deposits that go all the way into neighbouring Chad.

Last September, Djotodia announced the disbanding of Séléka. But the fighters have merely dispersed into the countryside where they are reportedly committing mass atrocities, including execution, ethnic cleansing, rapes, looting and plunder.

Humanitarian nightmare

The first bush war displaced about 10,000 people. Since the second wave, after 2012, the UN estimates that some 400,000 people have been displaced. This humanitarian crisis now provides the opening for French military intervention.

Chaos and anarchy have pushed CAR deeper into poverty. As such, the 2013 Legatum Prosperity Index, the annual ranking of 142 countries by the Legatum Institute, ranks CAR as the second poorest country in Africa. Similarly, the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance places it in the last five, with insecurity as its main downside.

So far, the CAR conflict has defied all diplomatic efforts towards lasting peace. CAR is a veritable graveyard of failed peace pacts, negotiated between 2007 and 2012. One such agreements is the Global Peace Accord following the first bush war, which was signed in Libreville, Gabon on June 21, 2008.

The accord granted amnesty for any acts perpetrated against the state prior to the agreement, and called for a disarmament and demobilisation process to re-integrate former rebels into society and the regular CAR armed forces.

It also provided a roadmap to sustainable peace and democracy, including reconciliation, a unity government and local elections in 2009 and parliamentary and presidential elections in 2010. But the agreement was not signed by all parties and was eventually violated.

Regional actors have registered minimal success in resolving the CAR conflict. On January 11, 2013, the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) brokered a peace accord signed by then president Bozize and the Séléka rebel alliance in Libreville, Gabon.

The pact called for cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of rebels from occupied towns, and the immediate dispatch of a peacekeeping mission. Under the accord, Bozize would not run for another term in office, would form a government of national unity, and hold legislative elections within one year.

The region was pulling in different directions. Even as the African Union was contemplating how to deal with the crisis, South Africa and Benin opposed the inclusion of Séléka in the government.

Bozize had drawn closer to Pretoria, especially after breaking ranks with the francophone block, and supported South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s bid for AU’s chairperson against the French-backed Gabonese candidate, Jean Ping. For this support, South African soldiers were killed during the March 2013 coup.

But soon the accord collapsed, giving way to Séléka’s military putsch in March 2013. The militias overran Bangui and took over the presidential palace. Bozize fled across the Oubangi River into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The AU suspended Bangui for the unconstitutional seizure of power. However, after the coup, it sponsored two summits in Nd’jamena, Chad, on April 3 and 18, 2013. At the summits, participants recognised the new government within a framework of a transition supervised by the international community.

In July 2013, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council authorised the deployment of an African-led International Support Mission in the CAR (Misca).

It also agreed on the modalities of the transition from the region’s Mission for the Consolidation of Peace in Central African Republic (Micopax) to Misca. And in October 2013, the Union adopted a transition roadmap for the CAR conflict.

However, in October 2013, amid escalating violence, France, CAR’s former colonial master, stepped up its military intervention declaring that it did not “want tomorrow to pay the far higher price of inaction.”

On October 10, 2013, the UN Security Council adopted a France drafted resolution on CAR supporting transition road map under Misca.

France has been keen to co-ordinate its intervention with African and global initiatives. Between December 6 and 8, 2013, the country hosted African leaders, the United Nations Secretary General and European Union chiefs at the annual France-Africa Summit.

The Central African Republic question was key on the summit’s agenda. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Drian has since unveiled Paris’s plan to send an extra 1,000 French soldiers to bolster its existing 410-odd troops who have been guarding the airport in Bangui.

The summit drafted a UN Security Council resolution authorising a UN peace operation as a bridging force to restore security in CAR pending a major reinforcement of Misca.

But France has been wary of appearing to replace the regional force and the backlash this is likely to attract. Thus, a French Defence Ministry official was quick to explain: “We won’t be there to replace the African force, but to strengthen it.”

Despite this, the terrain of war in CAR is problematic to French military strategists. CAR is different from Mali where French soldiers were involved in a straight combat against organised and armed Islamist fighters. In CAR, the disparate armed militias on the loose are making things far more dangerous.

CAR is fundamentally redefining France’s foreign policy. But the 1,600 troops France has committed are too few to end the conflict. As such, General Vincent Desproges, the former head of the French War College, maintains that either France has to add another 5,000 troops or leave the country to its own fate.

“The French troops … are too few to impose themselves on events,” argues Michael Goya, a military historian.

The French trend to take strong overt positions on CAR’s internal affairs is beginning to cause unease. On December 16, 2013 France expressed displeasure at the sacking of three ministers by former president Djotodia.

Those dismissed included Finance Minister Christophe Bremaidou, Security Minister Josue Binoua, Livestock Minister Joseph Bendounga and treasury director Nicolas Geoffroy Gourna-Douath. Vincent Floreani, deputy spokesman at France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, argued that the sackings would increase the instability in the country.

But France’s intrusion in CAR’s internal governance is likely to fuel charges of neo-colonialism. This makes a case for a peaceful approach to the CAR question.

France and other actors in CAR should fast-track the implementation of the letter and spirit of the Libreville 2 Agreement. Key to this is making timely preparations for the next elections slated by the transitional charter for January 2015.

Failure to this, CAR might become another Somalia, for decades bedevilled by state failure, war and a protracted humanitarian crisis.

Prof Peter Kagwanja is the Chief Executive of the Africa Policy Institute. Laureen Wesonga is a policy analyst with the Africa Policy Institute.

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