Attacks between Séléka-aligned Muslims and Christian vigilante militias in the Central Africa Republic displaced a quarter of the country’s 4.6 million people and plunged the nation into bloody anarchy. Credit: EU/ECHO/Patrick Lambrechts/ CC by 2.0

By Matthew Newsome
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 28 2014 (IPS)

While wrangling over Central African Republic’s (CAR) wealth in natural resources played a role in the country’s crisis, its future peace and stability still partly depends on a solution that factors in how to equitably distribute its national wealth.

“The conflict is multifaceted and does reflect tensions between groups over the control for land and natural resources. Neither side is fighting in the name of god, though paradoxically there is a religious tone that has complicated the crisis,” Comfort Ero, the Africa programme director for the International Crisis Group, told IPS. "Séléka was in the end a consortium of malcontents...It is to a large extent a fight for political power/control and safe guarding communities..." -- Comfort Ero, International Crisis Group

Violence between Séléka-aligned Muslims and and the anti-balaka Christian vigilante militias has killed two thousand people and displaced a quarter of the country’s four million population since Séléka rebels staged a coup last March.

Although the violence has escalated along religious lines between Muslims and Christians, the conflict’s origins in a political feud between ethnic groups for control over CAR’s resources, including the country’s rich diamond reserves, should not be overlooked, said Ero.

“Séléka was in the end a consortium of malcontents…It is to a large extent a fight for political power/control and safe guarding communities, especially those who have historically felt marginalised,” she said.

The Séléka coalition, whose name means “alliance”, launched a rebellion in 2012 that led to its leader Michael Djotodia seizing power from President Francis Bozizé in March 2013.

Djotodia claimed afterwards that his northern tribespeople — the Gula — felt betrayed after Bozizé requested their support for staging a coup in 2003 and then excluded them from his sphere once in power.

Bozizé proceeded to exploit the country’s wealth for the enrichment of his own ethnic group and family members, which created discontent throughout the country about rampant corruption and nepotism.

Since independence from France in 1960, CAR has suffered five coups and multiple rebellions. Although CAR is rich in diamonds, timber, gold, uranium and oil, the country’s per capita income is only 510 dollars, making the troubled country one of the poorest in Africa.

“Bozizé created major grievances throughout all the country’s ethnic groups about a discrimination of wealth from resources such as diamonds only going to his family and to his tribe — the Gbaya. It was this discrimination that fuelled the Séléka rebellion,” a researcher at the Institute of Security Studies told IPS. 

During his presidential reign, 11 members of Bozize’s family held positions in parliament.

A subsequent refusal to distribute the country’s wealth created a climate of marginalisation and disenfranchisement in the north that helped create conditions for an armed rebellion explained Ero.

“His [Bozizé’s] family’s control of the security and finance sector, including state-owned companies, and their stranglehold on the management of public finance, significantly fuelled the crisis in the country,” said Ero.

Neighbouring country, Chad, also played an understated role in triggering the bloody crisis after its ambitions of tapping into CAR’s resource wealth went awry. Chad’s President Idriss Déby Itno backed Bozizé’s seizure of power with the Chad presidential guard in 2003 but soon took affront after Bozizé started cultivating relations with South Africa.

“By 2012, Chad was openly backing the Séléka and the fact that the Chadian fighters among the rebels fought against the South African military contingent was not entirely unrelated to the fact that Bozizé had given uranium and other mineral concessions to South African firms instead of to Chad, which wanted some of the very same resources Déby sought as part of his quest for regional hegemony,” Peter Pham, director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council, a research institute for U.S. and European policy approaches to Africa, told IPS.

As a response to feeling snubbed, Chad released Séléka leaders into northern CAR, a move that helped to rally Séléka forces and foment a rebellion that led to the overthrow of Bozizé.

“These individuals were and continue to be motivated by a more personal grievance, that they themselves weren’t the ones controlling the resources,” Pham said.

Revenge killings between the Séléka militia and the anti-balaka militia has sidelined the issue of ramping up policing of the country’s warlord-controlled diamond mining industry and created a situation where the precious stones could be funding rebel activity.

“We need to be sure that diamonds are not leaking out of the country, allowing revenues to contribute to the ongoing conflict. The high risk that diamonds may have financed armed groups in CAR stresses once again why transparency is vitally needed in the diamond sector both nationally and internationally,” Alexandra Pardal, a campaign leader at anti-corruption watchdog, Global Witness, told IPS.

There are an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 mostly artisan miners working for middle men who sell the stones to smugglers.

“Séléka’s members and supporters include dissatisfied economic actors, the diamond collectors. One of the demands put forward by Séléka and some rebel commanders was for the ‘unconditional return of diamonds, gold, cash and other goods taken by the government in 2008,’” Ero said.

CAR has been suspended from the Kimberley Process, an international body responsible for halting the trade in conflict-tainted diamonds, due to the military clashes in the country.

A plan for reform and stronger governance of CAR’s resource industry would substantially help break the cycle of armed conflict and also help to democratise the benefits of the country’s major sources of wealth.

“Rebuilding the country’s economy, including protecting the diamond sector — the country’s main export is an immediate priority,” Ero said.

Residents of Bossangoa, in Central African Republic, shelter from gunfire as Multinational Force of Central Africa (FOMAC) peacekeeping troops move to try to protect the population from anti-balaka attacks in the town. Dec. 5, 2013. Courtesy: Marcus Bleasdale/VII for Human Rights Watch

By Jacey Fortin
ADDIS ABABA , Dec 10 2013 (IPS)

The African Union is preparing to deploy thousands of troops in the Central African Republic as a deadly conflict there spirals further out of control.

On Monday, Dec. 9, African Union (AU) Deputy Chairperson Erastus Mwencha met with diplomats at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to work out the details of AU troops’ deployments, logistics and funding. After the meeting, he told IPS that Burundi is the only confirmed troop supplier so far, but several other countries including Rwanda and the Republic of the Congo are discussing sending forces as well.

French troops have already begun deployments in the capital city of Bangui, which was taken over by a rebel coalition called Seleka in March. Since beginning their advance across the country in December 2012, Seleka fighters have caused turmoil across the countryside, further destabilising areas already plagued by rampant poverty and food insecurity.

In Bangui the situation has been especially dire since Thursday, Dec. 5, Amy Martin, head of the Bangui branch of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told IPS. “Heavy arms were being fired, light weapons were being fired, and tensions remain very high in some neighbourhoods,” she said, adding that the problems are just as serious outside of the capital.“The population is fatigued – they have no food left for their families, and they've been looted so many times.” -- Amy Martin, head of the Bangui branch of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

“In the interior, Seleka units have taken control of territories, and whoever was the commander became the law in each town. Those people, having no support from the central government, are basically living off the population, partly through illegal taxation. So you end up with a bunch of warlords and criminal gangs.”

A U.N. resolution last week approved the deployment of up to 1,200 French and 3,500 African troops to help stabilise the country of 4.6 million. But following the recent surge in violence, which has already killed at least 400 people in Bangui since Thursday according to the Red Cross, African and European leaders agreed at a weekend summit in Paris to increase the number of French troops to 1,600, and the number of African troops to as much as 6,000.

Regarding funding, Mwencha noted that “we have been grateful that the U.S. and the European Union have already made some indication to support these operations, and so we are also trying to coordinate to see how their support can be channelled to support this mission.”

The International Support Mission to the Central African Republic, or MISCA, will be fully deployed as soon as possible. They will join the African forces that were already in CAR as part of the Mission for the consolidation of peace in Central African Republic (MICOPAX), a peacekeeping group first stationed there on the initiative of the Economic Community of Central African States.

“MISCA is going to be an African mission, so all troops [will] be under the command of the African forces, but there will of course be a transition,” Mwencha said. “There was MICOPAX and there are the French, but all those will converge with the African forces once we’re on the ground.”

Local Seleka forces exit the Multinational Force of Central Africa (FOMAC) compound after their commander, Colonel Saleh, met with Captain Wilson of the FOMAC peacekeepers at the FOMAC compound during a lull in the fighting between anti-balaka and Seleka forces. Dec. 7, 2013. Courtesy: Marcus Bleasdale/VII for Human Rights Watch

But the CAR crisis has raised some doubts of African troops’ abilities to quell violence on the continent, according to Thierry Vircoulon, the International Crisis Groups’ project director for Central Africa. “Unfortunately, the French are the only ones willing and able to do the job at this stage. The African peacekeeping force demonstrated its ineffectiveness to secure Bangui,” he said to IPS, noting that the French troop deployment was welcomed by CAR and its neighbours during the U.N. summit.

At the Paris summit, leaders discussed the prospects of setting up a permanent African force capable of intervening independently in times of crisis, rather than wading through the logistics of each individual deployment whenever crises occur.

“The African countries must now fulfil the 6,000 troops ceiling for MISCA, and everybody wonders whether they can do this, and how fast,” said Vircoulon. “The CAR crisis has reinforced the scepticism about the peace and security architecture to say the least.”

As African soldiers gear up for deployment, the humanitarian situation in CAR is worsening by the day. Hundreds of thousands of people – about 10 percent of the population – have been displaced and about 25 percent are in need of food aid, according to the U.N. Seleka rebels have been accused of committing severe human rights abuses against men, women and children over the past year.

Seleka first coalesced for political reasons – its leaders sought the ouster of former president Francois Bozize. Former Seleka commander Michel Djotodia has taken over as president of CAR and has promised to hold elections within 18 months. He formally dissolved his already-disintegrating rebel coalition in September but has failed to enforce law and order.

Many one-time Seleka members have turned to looting and banditry, spurring the rise of self-defence groups called “anti-balaka”. The worsening tensions between the mostly-Muslim rebels and the majority-Christian civilian population now threaten to turn the crisis into a religious conflict.

“The population is fatigued – they have no food left for their families, and they’ve been looted so many times,” said Martin. “And out of this evolved more organised armed groups, and that’s what we’ve seen since August: anti-balaka groups have been gaining strength and becoming more organised. But there’s no government; there’s no vision of leadership to put this country back on track. It’s anarchy.”

Now that the troops are rolling in, CAR citizens are waiting to see whether the escalating conflict can finally be subdued. AU Deputy Chair Mwencha gave no specific time frame for MISCA, saying it would be operational until CAR achieved a stable system of governance.

“First of all, there has to be peace and security to get the institutions up and running again, and to start organising elections,” he said. “But the ultimate game is to, as quickly as possible, organise an election so that they can have an a legitimate authority. Once Central Africans are in charge of the situation, there will be no need for us to continue to stay there.”