Days after the sudden fall of the Central African Republic to Séléka rebels, questions are being raised about the circumstances surrounding the hasty departure of President Francois Bozizé.

Explosions could be heard late on Saturday as government forces clashed with the Séléka fighters, who had taken control of a power station in the north and cut the supply during the final battle for control of the country.

Bozizé’s administration gave assurances that everything was under control, but by the following morning, the president had fled, leaving the Séléka – a northern-based rebel coalition – in control of the presidential palace, and much of the rest of the country.

Despite the formation of a national unity government and a January peace deal that briefly ended hostilities, the Séléka continued to seize towns in northern and southeast CAR until the final onslaught on Bangui this weekend.

Shortly after Bozizé’s swift exit, the Séléka issued a communique proclaiming control of CAR. Signed by Secretary-General Justin Kombo Moustapha, and emblazoned with the group’s oval-shaped blue stamp, the group claimed the departure of Bozizé was a fulfillment of the Libreville peace deal, and it urged people to remain calm.

“Prepare to welcome the revolutionary forces of the Seleka,” the communique said.

Professor Andreas Mehler, from the German Institute for Global Area Studies, told Al Jazeera the rebel takeover that ended Bozizé’s decade-long rule may mark the beginning of a more authoritarian regime.

“It could also mean that less inclusionary politics could see the light, particularly with regard to the Muslim part of the population,” Mehler said. “At least some of the rebel components are considered to have such an agenda.”

Fear of reprisals

An official in Cameroon announced Monday that Bozizé had taken sanctuary there. His son is believed to be in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Reports of human rights abuses have surfaced, including allegations of killings, rapes and looting. Residents in some quarters of Bangui have already expressed fear of reprisals for supporting Bozizé.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the rebel takeover, and the African Union suspended CAR’s membership on Monday.

“We are very concerned by the worsening humanitarian situation in CAR and credible, widespread reports of human rights abuses by both national security forces and Séléka fighters,” said Victoria Nuland, U.S. State Department spokeswoman. “Perpetrators of such abuses must be held accountable.”

Rebel leader Michel Djotodia, meanwhile, has declared himself president, but not all Séléka factions endorse that claim.

Djotodia had been the vice prime minister and defence minister in the unity government until a week ago. He has pledged to keep many ministers in the unity government, including Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye.

In an interview with a Central African Republic news agency, Nelson Njadder, leader of the CPSK faction of Séléka, said elections would be held in a year’s time.

But Mehler expressed scepticism over the post-coup announcements, saying the material interests of the group were a key factor in determining the rebels’ future actions. The movement is made up of many “politico-military entrepreneurs,” he said.

“Coup leaders and rebels want to win hearts and minds from the outset and usually announce grandiose things,” Mehler said. “Everything should be taken with a grain of salt. Corporate interests of the rebel combatants … will certainly play a major role (in what happens next).”

Questions are also being asked about Djotodia’s specific role in the ousting of Bozizé.

Unanswered questions

The situation in the Central African Republic deteriorated after five government ministers were detained by the rebels after a Mar. 17 meeting, which also involved representatives from the African Union and United Nations, in the town of Sibut, 185 kilometres north of Bangui.

One of those held by the Séléka was Djotodia, who said the decision to detain the ministers was made by rebels on the ground.

“I am not the one who decided this. There are units who have made this decision,” Djotodia said. “It a type of pressure. They want the head of state to respect the terms of the accord that was signed.”

The Séléka have complained that, under the unity government, their demands for military integration and prisoner releases have been ignored.

Details of what exactly happened last week still remain unclear. Professor Mehler said the circumstances were unknown, but he suggested the hostage taking of the five ministers may have been part of a wider plot to seize power and oust Bozizé.

“It now looks as if the move to ‘arrest’ a couple of ministers, including Michel Djotodia, was just a small ploy in a wider game to install him at the head of CAR,” he said.

The events of the past few days are nothing new to the country. Violence has gripped the Central African Republic since independence from France in 1960. Four major offensives were launched to take Bangui between 1996 and 2003, when acting army chief Bozizé seized power from then-President Angel Felix Patassé in a coup.

On the tenth anniversary of Bozizé’s takeover on Mar. 15, the rebels demanded their grievances be addressed and issued a three-day ultimatum to comply, or face an overthrow. Apparently those demands were not satisfactorily met.

Failure to protect Bangui

Soldiers from the Congo, France, Gabon and South Africa were deployed after the Libreville peace agreement was signed in January.

Thierry Vircoulon, from the International Crisis Group, was critical of the regional armed forces tasked with keeping the peace. Known as the Mission for the Consolidation of Peace in Central African Republic (Micopax), the European Union-funded African force had orders to protect civilians and secure territory in CAR since 2008.

Vircoulon described Micopax’s apparent absence during the recent march on Bangui as “disturbing,” noting South African soldiers appeared to be the only ones who tried to fend off the rebels – a task they paid for with 13 soldiers killed, 27 wounded, and one who remains missing.

“Micopax was not doing anything, but they were supposed to protect Bangui. It was the South African forces who were fighting,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday.

Vircoulon suggested the African coalition forces could and should have engaged the rebels militarily. “I don’t know why this happened. Micopax was there to fight the rebels but they did not, and this let the rebels take the road to Bangui. Perhaps they had instructions … not to do anything,” he said.

“It looks like a similar situation to 2003 when there was a coup by Bozizé. There was also an African force and they didn’t do anything. There is a lot of historical irony in what happened.”

The NGO Conciliation Resources said political turmoil was inevitable because the January peace deal was drafted by an Economic Community of Central African States commission – not by the warring parties.

Coupled with the extended presence of foreign troops, this made Bozizé appear to his critics as overly reliant on external help to solve internal problems, Conciliation Resources’ Kennedy Tumutegyereize and Nicolas Tillon wrote in a commentary.

“Central African Republic has a history of power sharing agreements and political dialogue … What these dialogues have in common are: power-sharing agreements, promise of demobilisation and reintegration of fighters never fully implemented; and a return to violence after a few months.”

While Bozizé and his family safely escaped, the nation of 4.5 million people is left again in disarray with an uncertain future, and an uneasy coalition of rebel factions now firmly in control.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

As Côte d’Ivoire’s bloody leadership contest draws to a close and the surrender of Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent president, seems imminent, a long list of atrocities and electoral irregularities mark the records of both him and his opponent, Alassane Ouattara.

Alassane Ouattara casts his vote in the second round of presidential elections in November 2010. Credit: Basile Zoma/UN Photo

Ethan Zuckerman, the founder and editor of Global Voices, believes the situation is more complex than a one-man blame game.

“The challenge with the situation in Ivory Coast is that neither side has clean hands. Forces working for both have committed atrocities and, unfortunately, it’s very hard to see how any resolution to the conflict will avoid further bloodshed, as both sides seek to settle scores.”

Good guy, bad guy

While Gbagbo’s behaviour deserves no defence, the role of the media and key figures in shaping the discourse of international diplomacy by casting Ouattara as the good guy and Gbagbo as the bad guy does raise uncomfortable questions about how support (and disdain) for political figures is manufactured on the world stage.

Offering some insight into the dilemmas of casting political figures in the mould of the good/bad oppositional binary, Zuckerman says: “The narrative of Gbagbo as the bad guy who won’t give up and Ouattara as the good guy with international backing and an electoral victory isn’t terribly far off base. It does, however, oversimplify and makes it harder to see crimes committed by Ouattara’s forces with the same clarity as we see those committed by Gbagbo’s.”

Although the few media organisations that have not ignored the crisis have consistently reported the violence from day one, there has been little interrogation of Ouattara and his rebel forces in the same forensic manner as critiques on Gbagbo and his Young Patriots. Both sides have burnt and butchered hundreds of non-combatants. And both sides have, at different times, rejected African Union (AU) efforts at mediation.

Before the massacres in Duékoué, which shifted international opinion on Ouattara’s forces, the greater violence was rightly attributed to Gbagbo. But the atrocities committed by pro-Ouattara forces have not received the same attention as those committed by pro-Gbagbo troops.

Compare the wide coverage of the fatal shooting of six women protesters in Abidjan on Mar. 6, with the minimal reports of violence in Attecoube, a suburb of Abidjan, or the displacement of 700 people in the village of Anokua-Koute by pro-Ouattara forces, a few days later.

Zuckerman cites the lack of attention to the Ivorian crisis as one of the main reasons for the absence of critical perspective.

“It’s unfortunate for the Ivory Coast that there’s been so many other high profile international stories demanding attention, from the Arab Spring revolutions and protests to the tragedies in Japan. It’s possible that, if Ivory Coast were the major international story unfolding, we might have gotten more subtlety in reporting,” he says.

As more details emerge about the massacres in Duékoué and elsewhere, about the atrocities committed in the struggle for Côte d’Ivoire, the international community finds itself in a difficult position. As Salon asked of U.S. Republican Senator James Inhofe’s “backing [of] a brutal despot,” it must be asked: Will the international community, led by the U.N. and France, continue to support a man implicated in such gross violations?

Daniel Balint-Kurti, a researcher and campaigner at Global Witness, suggests that global endorsement hinges on what happens in the future. “A lot will depend on Ouattara’s reaction to investigation. If he takes responsibility for atrocities committed, it will be much easier for him to benefit from the huge international support he’s gotten, but if he doesn’t it will be problematic.”

For now, the tone of diplomacy seems to be one of lamentation and regret, rather than condemnation. Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, responded with “concern and surprise” to the news of mass killings in western Côte d’Ivoire, while Hillary Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, was “deeply concerned” and Jean Ping, the chairman of the AU, has urged both sides to “show restraint and protect civilians”.

By contrast, after the shooting of six women protesters by pro-Gbagbo forces, the world upped the ante in a united call for the incumbent to “step down immediately”. Even after allegations of pro-Ouattara fighters massacring 800 civilians were made, on Monday, Apr. 4, Yousouffou Bamba, Côte d’Ivoire’s ambassador to the U.N., said: “Mr Gbagbo is a shame on Africa. He is a dictator, he is killing his own people.” Nothing on our guy, the good guy, Ouattara.

That his name as genocidaire does not appear on a Google search while ‘Gbagbo genocide’ is a pre-figured search phrase, may seem superficial, but it is nonetheless an indicator that, thankfully, the world will not play the same trial by media game with Ouattara. That will be a post-conflict task for the International Criminal Court (ICC).

At that point journalists may have to work backwards filling in the blanks that were missed when the world’s cameras were focused on revolutions in the Arab world and events elsewhere.

Not that Sanaa, Benghazi or Fukushima did not deserve attention, they most certainly did. But Côte d’Ivoire also needed the likes of Anderson Cooper to fulfill his Twitter promise on Feb. 26, that on “Monday [he’d] try to do something”.

A pound of flesh

For now, a defence of Ouattara may be that the massacres in Duékoué were largely carried out by traditional hunters known as dozos, an independent militia acting in Ouattara’s name. Therefore, neither he nor Guilliame Soro can be held responsible.

But the fact that Ouattara and Soro, as minister of defence and prime minister in-waiting, are leading this offensive means they are accountable and have a duty to reprimand the perpetrators. When Ouattara’s hour of triumph finally comes to pass, what will the dozos and little militias within the FRCI (Republican Force of Ivory Coast), demand in return for their support? Immunity? Money? Power? Cocoa beans?

Aware of the tough road that lies ahead for Ouattara, TIME magazine’s Monica Mark, based in Abidjan thinks, “it’s going to be unstable for quite a while”.

“He [Ouattara] needs to address the issue of national reconciliation. That will be difficult because he relied on rebel forces so now he owes them. And these people, they don’t do things the proper way … he’s going to have a low-level insurgency on his hands as the leader,” Mark says.

Echoing similar sentiments, Balint-Kurti explains: “He’s going to have a hell of a job. The country is very divided and he [Ouattara] is hated in parts [of the country] and he’s not just going to take the presidency and everything is going to be okay.”

In Ouattara’s final transition from his luxury suite at the Hotel du Golf to the presidential palace, it is sincerely hoped that he can unite the country and restore peace. However, hard questions will need to be asked of him by seekers of truth and justice.

Despite the efforts by the media and international community to produce a clear-cut good guy, bad guy narrative for easy mass consumption, countless disturbing images and stories of violence perpetrated by rebel and patriot forces, show there are no clear lines distinguishing the righteous from the heathens. In war, all are sinners, even the guys with major international support.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.