Arguably one of the poorest countries in Africa, the Central African
Republic (CAR), is no stranger to scenes of extreme poverty, political
instability, violence and bloodshed. Despite an abundance of natural resources,
including gold, diamonds, uranium, oil and timber, the country is marred by financial,
political and social chaos, and, according to Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees, currently facing a ‘humanitarian catastrophe of unspeakable
proportions’.[1]
Since fighting erupted in December 2013, approximately 1,000 people were killed
during a single two day period, over 1 million have been displaced from their
homes, and, as of mid-January this year, 60% of the population had no available
food stocks[2].
Pre-colonial period
Although paid scant scholarly attention and, until recently,
largely ignored by the media and international politicians, the CAR has a long
and tumultuous history. The landlocked area that now forms the CAR has been inhabited
since the Stone Age (roughly 6000 BC)[3],
which is well before any widely publicised ancient Egyptian civilisations
emerged. Later on in its history, slave raiding was a severe problem in the
North-eastern parts of the CAR, particularly during the 1870s, and left the territory
with one of Africa’s lowest population densities. Slave-buyers were often noted
as being Muslim, but, according to Jacqueline Woodford, author of the most
recent academic book on the country in English, non-Muslim Africans were also
complicit in the trade.[4]
The French
As the power of the slave traders gradually declined, French
colonialism spread. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 left much of the central,
north and west of Africa in French hands. Although some formed alliances with
the colonists for economic or political reasons, resistance to colonial rule,
despite being largely absent from historical record, did exist. In Berbérati
(now the CAR’s third largest city) in 1954, protests emerged when a local
administrator refused to arrest a Frenchman, on whose property the bodies of
two men, one of whom had been employed by the Frenchman, were found. Meanwhile,
over 100 locals who allegedly shouted anti-French slogans and sang anti-French
songs were arrested and charged.[5]
The road to
autonomy
By this stage, however, all inhabitants of the Federation of
French Equatorial Africa (‘AEF’) (including those in what is now known as the
CAR), had been granted French citizenship and were permitted to establish local
assemblies.[6]
Accordingly, in 1949, Barthélemy Boganda, a Catholic and advocate of
African emancipation, created the colony’s first political party, the Movement
for the Social Evolution of Black Africa. A French constitutional referendum
then dissolved the AEF in 1958 and on 1 December 1958 the colony of
Ubangi-Shari became a self-governing territory known as the Central African
Republic, with Boganda becoming the country’s first prime minister.
Despite the appearance of domestic autonomy, the French
still had a significant influence over the country’s financial and military
affairs.[7] However,
full-independence dawned and, as suggested by Thomas O’Toole, author of
arguably the most comprehensive English-language book on the CAR to date, ‘Had
anyone been asked in 1959 to put together a “worse-case scenario” for the
history of the first thirty years of the CAR, one might have imagined something
close to the actual sequence of events that has unfolded’.[8]
Independence,
coups and a ‘coronation’
Boganda remained as the country’s prime minister until his
death in a mysterious plane crash in March 1959,[9] after
which David Dacko, Boganda’s nephew, took the helm. It was under Dacko’s
administration that the CAR became fully independent on 13 August 1960. However,
Dacko’s tenure came to an abrupt end on 1 January 1966 when Dacko’s cousin,
Jean Bédal Bokassa, led a coup and took control of the government. According to
the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published in January 2014,
Bokassa was implicated in massive embezzlement and human rights abuses and his
dictatorial rule culminated in his self-coronation as emperor of the CAR in
1976.[10]
France reportedly covered much of the $20 million bill for the
pseudo-coronation – a sum equal to the entirety of the country’s national gross
domestic product at the time.[11]
Following riots, a trip to Libya in search of aid and the murder of between 50
to 100 schoolchildren in the country’s capital, Bangui, Bokassa was deposed in
a coup backed by French troops in 1979. Bokassa was found guilty of murder and
embezzlement in 1987, initially receiving a death sentence which was later
commuted to life imprisonment – he was released in 1993 and died in 1996.
Following a period of further political instability, the CAR
held its first multi-party elections, in which Ange-Félix Patassé was elected
president. Instability increased and violent army mutinies between 1996 and
1997 prompted the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping operation. In 2002, Patassé
allegedly called on a rebel group based in the Democratic Republic of Congo to
supress domestic insurgents. This, according to the US CRS, led to large scale
abuses against civilians, for which the leader of the rebel group in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba, is currently on trial before
the International Criminal Court.[12]
‘Séléka’ and ‘anti-balaka’
militias
François Bozizé, an army general, eventually rebelled
against Patassé and took power in March 2003.[13] Over time, Bozizé became increasingly
unpopular and his rule was marked by insurgency in the north and North-east of
the country. It is within this context that ‘Séléka’ (translated as ‘Alliance’
from the local Sango language), a loose alliance of untrained and predominately
Muslim rebels, was formed in 2012. After capturing a string of towns across the
country, Séléka overthrew the government on 24 March 2013, leaving Bozizé
apparently fleeing the country in a helicopter with five suitcases and Séléka leader,
Michel Djotodia, declaring himself as the country’s first Muslim president.[14]
According to Dodfrey Byaruhanga, Amnesty International’s CAR
researcher, Séléka forces attacked, executed and tortured civilians, indiscriminately
shelled communities and forcibly conscripted children to their army.[15] The
level of unrest prompted Djotdodia to call for Séléka to disband on 13
September 2013, but the violence continued.
Humanitarian
crisis
In December 2013, ex- Séléka rebels are reported to have
killed nearly 1,000 people in the country’s capital, Bangui, over a single two
day period.[16]
Brutal reprisal attacks against the country’s Muslim population (comprising
approximately 15 per cent of the population[17]) have
since been carried out by Christian ‘anti-balaka’ (‘anti-machete’) militias. Although
religious tensions are almost certainly not the only cause of the current
crisis, ‘inter-communal tensions over access to resources, control over trade
and national identity are being expressed along ethno-religious lines’.[18] Former
colonizer France has sent over 1,600 troops to help stabilise the situation and
there are currently nearly 6,000 peacekeepers from the African Union on the
ground.[19]
Even the peacekeeping efforts are not straightforward. Chadian
forces are among the African troops who comprise the bulk of the peacekeepers
in and around Bangui. They have been closely allied with the Séléka and have been accused of joining them in attacks on Christian
communities.[20]
Central African leaders forced Djotodia to step down as
CAR’s president during a regional summit hosted in Chad on 10 January 2014. On
20 January this year, Catherine Samba-Panza was elected as the country’s new
transitional president. Despite the growing presence of peacekeepers and a new
president, widespread chaos and violence continue, culminating in the
declaration by Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees on 12
February 2014, that ‘massive ethno-religious cleansing is continuing’.[21]
The CAR’s history is littered with inept and corrupt leaders, extreme poverty
and atrocious violence – a state of affairs that shows no sign of abating.
[2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/news/central-african-republic-war-crimes-and-crimes-against-humanity-bangui-2013-12-19,
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43377.pdf
and U.N. World Food Program, ‘Central African Republic – 9 hunger facts’, 17
January 2014.
[3]
Jacqueline Woodfork, Culture and Customs
of the Central African Republic (London, 2006), p. 10.
[4]
Woodfork, p. 11.
[5]
Woodfork, p. 12.
[7]
Woodfork, p. 15.
[8]
Thomas O’Toole, The Central African
Republic: The Continent’s Hidden Heart (London, 1986), p. 40.
[11]
Woodfork, p. 15.
