African Crisis Is Tougher Than France Expected

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/world/africa/african-crisis-is-tougher-than-france-expected.html

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PARIS — With photographs emerging of children toting guns and estimates of more than 400,000 displaced people in camps, the crisis in the Central African Republic is proving more complicated, violent and desperate than the French expected, according to Western diplomats, analysts and human rights activists.

The scale of the humanitarian needs and the growing animosity between the country’s Christians and Muslims threaten to overwhelm President François Hollande’s goal of quickly restoring order, disarming militias, expediting emergency aid and preparing for elections in 2014.

The French ambassador to the United Nations, Gérard Araud, has described the country as verging “on the brink of mass atrocities.” But a number of Western diplomats and human rights advocates fear that the country is already so deep in a spiral of revenge killings that it will be difficult for the French soldiers — who have a substantial task ahead just in Bangui, the capital — to slow the mayhem nationally.

More than 600 people have been killed in the past week in the sectarian violence and lawlessness convulsing the Central African Republic, and the turmoil is getting worse, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday.

This crisis is far different from the one in Mali, another former French colony, where France intervened militarily in January to halt an advance by Islamist insurgents.

“In Mali you had a pretty identifiable enemy in one part of the country, albeit a large part, but in the Central African Republic you have communities breaking into violence all over the country — it’s not just one group,” said a Western diplomat familiar with the situation, who asked not to be named because of he was not authorized to discuss the situation with reporters.

The full contingent of 1,600 French troops arrived over the weekend, and the United States is now helping to transport reinforcements from other African countries to join an African Union force of about 2,500 soldiers already deployed, with the goal of increasing that force to 6,000. The soldiers are authorized to pre-empt violence under a United Nations Security Council resolution approved last week. President Obama has ordered $60 million in nonlethal military equipment to be sent.

It is unclear whether that will be enough.

“What we are facing today is a bit heavier than we expected,” said a French diplomat speaking in Washington this week, referring to some of the Muslim militias active in Bangui and elsewhere. “We plan for everything,” said the diplomat, who, under the diplomatic protocol established by the French government, declined to be identified. “But some have hidden weapons in the capital city and are behaving in a very unconventional way with fake uniforms. Some are wearing civilian clothes. We have to cope with that; we hope we can.”

The genocide in Rwanda in 1994 casts a long shadow. The French have been blamed for not doing more and accused of allowing the escape of some notorious figures who were involved in perpetrating the carnage, and they now appear committed to preventing a similar cycle of killing.

French military intervention in its former colonies carries other risks. Islamic insurgents linked to Al Qaeda, seething over France’s deployment in Mali, retaliated with a deadly attack on a desert gas field in neighboring Algeria that left at least 37 foreign hostages and 29 attackers dead. While Qaeda operatives are not believed to have turned their attention to the Central African Republic, some analysts worry that it has the kind of lawless and remote profile that could attract jihadist cells.

The Central African Republic is France’s fourth military engagement in Africa in 10 years, including Mali, Ivory Coast and Libya. Thirty-four French soldiers have been killed during that period in combat operations in Africa, with the largest number in Ivory Coast. All except Libya have been part of France’s colonial past, and each has a complex relationship with its former overlord.

France had hoped that its engagement in Mali, where it has deployed 2,800 troops, would be winding down by now, but those plans have been delayed.

From the start, the Central African Republic was a challenge of a different order, analysts said.

The country is poorer and farther from Europe, making it less of a celebrated cause than Mali, whose culture and tradition of democratic stability and religious tolerance are admired far beyond its borders. Mali attracted financial support from the European Union as well as from individual members to help with its rebuilding.

The Central African Republic, by contrast, is much more isolated, with the world’s fourth-highest infant mortality rate and a life expectancy of about 50 years.

One of the toughest problems France faces is trying to reach the lawless areas outside the capital. In large parts of the countryside, communities belonging to the Christian majority have formed militias known as the anti-balaka to repel attacks from the largely Muslim rebels, known as the Seleka, who took power after toppling the government this year. Some analysts say the rebels’ allies include foreign mercenaries and warlords from neighboring Sudan and Chad.

“The French haven’t reached many of the towns where the Seleka are present, and they haven’t reached the countryside, where the anti-balaka militias are, and the countryside is armed and ready to fight to overthrow the Muslim rule,” said Peter Bouckaert, director of emergencies for Human Rights Watch, who was visiting the country for the past two weeks.

“It is very scary to walk into some of these villages and see everyone other than yourself armed,” said Mr. Bouckaert, who posted a photo on Twitter of a boy, about 12 years old, carrying a gun near Bossangoa, a more heavily Christian area in the country’s west.

The child had been pressed into service by the anti-balaka Christian militias. Disarming such groups, one of the French objectives, could backfire unless both Christian and Muslim militias are disarmed, said Mr. Bouckaert and other analysts. Human rights advocates have already documented instances in which the French disarmed Seleka leaders, who were then lynched by Christian militias within hours.

Africa analysts worry that France does not have a clear plan for how to contain the sectarian violence and create an environment for a caretaker government to bring stability.

“The most difficult thing at the moment is the disarmament of the population,” said Thierry Vircoulon, the central Africa project director for the International Crisis Group.

“Communities are armed now; they will try to hide their weapons,” he said. “The second thing is what to do with the Seleka fighters,” he continued. “If they go to their barracks and agree to disarm, the French have to offer them an alternative future.”

French officials argue that they had an overriding reason for sending in troops. “If we hadn’t intervened,” said Mr. Hollande, speaking on Tuesday, shortly after French troops arrived, “there would have been further massacres, there would have been more women raped, more children would have been killed.”

<NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Washington.