{The streets of Bangui are eerily silent, save for the periodical rat-tat-tat of gunfire that has become a routine part of daily life in the Central African capital. 189 miles north, the city of Bossangoa lies starkly divided in Christian and Muslim sectors, an ominous portent of things to come.}
This is a country teetering perilously on the edge of disaster; on the eve of unthinkable tragedy. Since the collapse of François Bozizé’s much-reviled authoritarian government and the victory of the Muslim-dominated Séléka rebels, Genocide Watch, UNICEF, and members of the U.S. State Department have warned that the C.A.R. is heading toward genocide.
Since winning independence from France in 1960, much of the republic’s history has revolved around coup d’états, low-level wars, corruption, and widespread mismanagement. Muslims, who mainly reside in the north and make up 15 percent of the population, have long faced discrimination at the hands of the 50 percent Christian majority. That is, until this March.
A coalition of rebel groups named the Séléka Front, mainly composed of Muslims with vague demands for greater representation, have been waging a war against the central government for many years. The Séléka Front rebels captured the capital city of Bangui on the March 25th, 2013. The President fled, the rebels murdered a number of African peacekeeping troops, and a small contingent of French troops stood by as the crisis unfolded.
For UN officials and diplomats worldwide, the situation in the C.A.R. brings back haunting memories of Kigali in 1994, when a plane crash that killed the Rwandan and Burundian presidents ignited a genocide that killed One million civilians in 100 days.
While Central African Muslims do hold historical grievances toward the former ruling Christian majority, their grievances are not nearly as strong as the enmity that motivated Hutu extremists to massacre one Million Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.
A conflict between the Muslim Séléka and ragtag Christian militias is engulfing the country. Set up by President Bozizé to fight bandits and gangs, these militias, named anti-balaka (“anti-machete”), have taken up arms against the new rebel government.
Armed with swords, knives, and machetes, the anti-balaka have taken to targeting Muslim communities even if they show no signs of affiliation with the Séléka. For their part, the Séléka have retaliated by indiscriminately shooting at any Christian civilians they suspect of supporting the anti-balaka. And so the violence has become more vitriolic and more sectarian, day after day.
Observers who have visited C.A.R. are quick to point out that the armed groups that are perpetrating the violence are not representative of the population as a whole. Mia Farrow, the UNICEF goodwill ambassador to the Central African Republic, has spoken with numerous civilians, both Muslim and Christian, who fervently assert they hold no grudges against the other community. It is the Séléka and the anti-balaka, they say, that are persecuting men, women, and children alike purely for their religious beliefs.
Michel Djotodia, the leader of Séléka and self-appointed President, recently publicly announced that he had lost control over his rebel forces. And thus the conflict intensifies: recruitment of child soldiers has risen, and there have been cross-border raids into neighboring countries such as Cameroon. Regional experts have raised the possibility that fundamentalist groups from the surrounding region, both Muslim and Christian, could also become involved in the conflict.
So far, there have been no episodes of mass killings or slaughter that could be characterized as genocide. But in the town center of Bossangoa, Christian refugees gathered in masses around the town church and Muslims seeking shelter in a school just across the road eye each other with fear. In Bangui, rebel fighters loot, rape, and carry out summary executions. Birao, a Muslim town in the north, lies abandoned and in ruins, destroyed by flames.
“We are in a pre-genocidal situation,” said Robert Jackson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Africa at the U.S. State Department. Killings are escalating with impunity, and the small African force that remains rarely leaves its barracks in Bangui. Many Western observers remember how General Roméo Dallaire’s skeletal peacekeeping force stood by helplessly, under orders from UN headquarters in New York, as genocide consumed Rwanda.
On Monday, November 18th, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called urgently for the deployment of a 9,000-strong multinational peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic. In an open letter to the UN Security Council, the International Crisis Group urged for a stronger mandate for the establishment of security to be given to French and African forces already in the nation in order to re-establish law and order and to curb fighting between Séléka and anti-balaka militants.
So far, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius has defined the situation as “on the verge of genocide” and has pledged at least 1,000 of his country’s troops to a multinational, mostly African-led peacekeeping force that is currently being debated on by the UN Security Council.
Genocide has not yet subsumed the C.A.R.’s 4.5 million inhabitants. But with floods of refugees fleeing and daily killings becoming the norm, the nation is spiraling toward an unimaginable catastrophe.
“It seems like just one match could set off a chain of mass killings that maybe no one could stop,” Farrow said. Haunted by the memory of Rwanda’s victims, the world must act before it is too late.
{{Source}}: Berkeley Political Review
{{Additional Reporting}}: IGIHE
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