Originally published on the CGS blog on February 18, 2014.
With the situation in Central African Republic looking direr by the day, the U.N. Security Council needs to speed up its timetable for expanding operations. With mass murder already underway and major institutions collapsed, ethnic cleansing may already be under way and famine is an imminent threat.
Central African Republic was never well-managed after it gained its independence from France in 1960, but the 2005 government of General Francois Bozizé held some hope for stability and security. Those hopes never came to fruition, and Bozizé was run out of office by a group of rebels calling themselves the Seleka in March of 2013. These rebels, led by Muslim Michel Djotodia claimed to be concerned primarily with government corruption and economic opportunity. As their reign floundered, they killed hundreds of the majority-Christian citizens throughout Bangui, the capital, and around C.A.R. As the Seleka government failed, the U.N. Security Council issued a series of resolutions establishing both civilian and military aid to secure the situation (2121, 2127, 2134). At present, there is a total of around 6,600 troops assisting C.A.R., including over 5,000 African Union troops, 1,600 French troops, and ad hoc forces of neighboring states, with additional French and E.U. forces promised.
Since resolution 2127 was passed in December authorizing the international peacekeeping force, the situation in C.A.R. has changed substantially. Michel Djotodia, leader of the Seleka rebels and interim president of C.A.R., has been forced from office for his failures; Seleka’s viability as an organization has been crushed. A new interim president is now in power but after a year of mismanagement following decades of incompetence it will take time to rebuild.
Worse, though, is that the anti-balaka (anti-machete) resistance cells formed by the Christian majority during Seleka’s reign have continued to operate. After standing up to an unjust, brutal power, these militias have begun to target Muslims, indiscriminately but systematically killing and maiming any they can find. In response, the Muslim population of C.A.R. is attempting to flee to Chad and Cameroon. But even as they flee, convoys are attacked and Muslims lynched and maimed merely for being Muslim.
But with the mass exodus of Muslims from C.A.R., we find ourselves with difficult questions. Not all Muslims will be able to leave the fighting – as this last incident shows, sometimes the anti-Muslim crowds are just too dangerous for convoys to get through safely. If we can’t get everyone out, are we damning those left behind to extermination? And the economy in most Central African cities is built upon the work of Muslim merchants and tradesmen. If these key actors in the economy simply leave, how will any remaining Central Africans manage to feed themselves with food prices skyrocketing and supply lines under constant threat? In short, we have the conditions for ethnic cleansing, economic collapse, and mass starvation as a conflict rages on. We have to use all our diplomatic resources to prevent these potential outcomes from happening.
But we need more action from the international community, and especially our international institutions, to help answer these and other questions. While the long-term answers about Christian-Muslim relations and how to build a working government are necessarily left to those who live in Central African Republic themselves, well-timed action can help prevent one of these groups from exterminating the other, or prevent the situation from getting so far out of hand that a new refugee and food security crisis turns these 4 million people into permanent clients of the UN Refugee Agency. It’s cheaper to nip a conflict in the bud than to pay for the fallout from that conflict.
With strong words about cooperation coming from French President Francois Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama during a recent visit by Hollande to Washington, D.C., it is time for these two world leaders to work together to steer the UN Security Council to action on Central African Republic. We need more troops on the ground protecting vulnerable populations and ensuring that these people have a future. Whether this comes in the form of an expansion of the current international mission (known as MISCA) or putting a full-fledged UN peacekeeping force on the ground, the UN needs to act quickly as it takes time for the logistics of these operations to get underway. With a statement from UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres following a recent visit stating that he had “witnessed in the Central African Republic a humanitarian catastrophe of unspeakable proportions,” hopefully Obama, Hollande, and other key leaders on the Security Council can see how desperate this situation is.
