BRUSSELS — What made France suddenly decide to intervene in the Central African Republic, a few months after its intervention in Mali? The official reason given by the President François Holland when he announced his decision to send French soldiers to Africa for the second time in a few months was that they had “no other objective than to save human lives,” adding that there is “a necessity to show solidarity with a small country, a friendly country, the poorest in the world, who is asking for our help.”
Holland was referring to the increased fighting between gunmen loyal to the Central African Republic’s ex-president Bozizé and the rebels of the Séléka who ousted him, which has led to the killing of several hundred people over the last month, in the deadliest clashes since the coup last March.
Already among the poorest nations in the world – although rich in minerals – this landlocked African country has seen violence intensify as attacks multiplied in areas outside Bangui, the capital.
“The situation in the Central African Republic is horrendous; the state has collapsed, and this country is now simply plundered, looted; the women are raped; people are killed by thugs. The country has fallen into anarchy,” French UN Ambassador Gerard Araud said.
According to Alphonse Zozime Tamekamta, a researcher based in Cameroon and associated to the Group for Research and information on Peace and Security, a Belgian think-tank, France is not solely motivated by humanitarian concerns.
“After their intervention in Mali, the French have considered it appropriate to redeploy their troops in Africa and to remain present in their traditional private preserve,” Tamekamta told MintPress, adding: “There is a third, more strategic reason, for this intervention, that is that France wants to reinforce its security disposition and its leadership in French-speaking Africa.”
Tamekamta considers the French decision to intervene as both timely and beneficial given the helplessness of the Economic Community of Central African States (or CEEAC), the African Union and the neighboring states. African forces – from Gabon, Cameroon, Chad and the republic of Congo – have been in the country since 2008 in the framework of a mission from CEEAC and the African Union; their mandate is to help the Central African Republic’s government forces secure the territory, contribute to national reconciliation processes and facilitate mechanisms to end armed conflict.
But the 2,500-strong regional peacekeeping force has demonstrated its ineffectiveness to secure the capital, and this has raised some doubts on its abilities to quell the violence in the county. As it happens, France looks like the only one willing and able to do the job at this stage. And being a former French colony, the Central African Republic is still largely perceived as being a “French problem.”
Organize elections?
The intervention was authorized by the U.N. Security Council Resolution 2127 that approved the deployment of up to 1,200 French and 3,500 African troops to help stabilize the country of 4.6 million.
But following the recent surge in violence, African and European leaders agreed at a recent weekend summit in Paris to increase the number of French troops to 1,600, and the number of African troops to as many as 6,000.
Five days after the launch of the Sangaris operation, French troops have started to disarm the armed groups.
“The operation will be swift; it does not have the vocation to last long,” Holland said.
France hopes that elections can be hold as soon as possible.
“The ultimate goal is to, as quickly as possible, organize an election so that they can have a legitimate authority. Once Central Africans are in charge of the situation, there will be no need for us to continue to stay there,”Araud said.
But some doubt this is a realistic objective.
“A six-month mission looks too short to me given the complexity of the situation on the ground,” Tamekamta said. “There is no real front line, and this means that French and African troops need to disarm fighters spread all over the territory; additionally, they must convey humanitarian assistance and create the conditions necessary to the reestablishment of constitutional order, taking into account the extreme versatility of the actors. The task is huge and requires much more time.”
In other words, there seems to be a certain naivety in this persistent liberal paradigm that supposes that all problems would be solved once elections can be held, even though recent history has shown time and time again in different parts of the world that elections on their own are not enough to bring peace and stability in countries that have suffered from internal strife.
The problems in the Central African Republic are deep-seated, wide-ranging and complex. The country has suffered from instability ever since winning independence from France in 1960, and much of the republic’s history has revolved around coups, low-level wars, traditional conflicts, criminal gangs, corruption and widespread mismanagement. President Bozizé himself seized power by force, after a coup in 2003; and he has never been able to fully control the north of the county.
As a result, in early December 2012, Séléka, a loose-knit and heterogeneous coalition of foreign mercenaries, criminal gangs and rebels groups from the country’s Muslim north, launched a major armed offensive to overthrow Bozizé – whom they accused of failing to abide by previous peace agreements – which culminated in the capture of Bangui on March 24, 2013. The rebel leader, Michel Djotodia, was appointed interim president, becoming the first Muslim to hold the office. His announcement in September that Séléka would be disbanded set off prolonged bouts of violence committed by disgruntled rebels.
Risk of religious conflict
Since then, Séléka fighters have turned to looting and banditry, with small units controlling parts of the territory, causing turmoil across the countryside and spurring the rise of Christian self-defense groups called “anti-balaka.”
Armed with knives and machetes, the anti-balaka groups have been targeting Muslim communities even if they are not affiliated with the Séléka. For their part, the Séléka forces have retaliated by indiscriminately shooting at any Christian civilian they suspect of supporting the anti-balaka. And so the violence has become more sectarian by the day, threatening to turn the crisis into a religious conflict.
Though the country has a long history of coups and rebellions, religion had not reared its head to such a degree – as it has in the rest of the Sahel – until now. This is remarkable, since Muslims, who mainly reside in the north and make up between 15 and 20 percent of the population, have long faced discrimination at the hands of the Christian majority.
The international forces appear to concentrate on disarming Muslims, and the risk is that they too will end up exacerbating the religious aspect of the conflict.
“The risk of interpreting the Central-African conflict through the prism of a religious strife between Muslims and Christian is very real,” Tamekamta said. “This is even more so since those that possess war weapons are former members of the Séléka, mainly Muslims, who want to remain in power. They benefit from the financial and logistical help of neighboring countries like Sudan and Chad, making them more dangerous than the Christian self-defense militias, mainly armed with knives and machetes.”
Rather than being a conflict between Muslims and Christians, or rebels against a legitimate government, the violence in the Central African Republic involves a large panel of very different actors.
“It is about former Séléka members, anti-balakas, autonomous militias, uncontrolled elements of the former FACA [the country’s former army], uncontrolled units of the current army, which is pro-Djotodia, different criminal gangs, highway robbers and bandits,” Tamekamta said.
In other words, putting an end to the violence and stabilizing the country represents a huge task that will no doubt last more than six months. And the recent death of two French soldiers seems to indicate that the price France will pay will be heavier than expected. Military options are fraught with risks, and they may end up creating more violence, especially if only one group is disarmed.
On the political front, the French president first called for the departure of the interim president Djotodia before retracting. Paris has probably realized that intervening directly in Central African Republic’s governing bodies might durably affect their reputation in the country and on the continent. Many still remember Operation Barracuda, when French paratroopers intervened in the same country in 1979 to depose Emperor Bokassa. Bokassa’s overthrow by the French was called “France’s last colonial expedition” by veteran French diplomat Jacques Foccart. But was it actually?