fbpx

Analysis: Why Stability Is Hard To Come By In CAR

Analysis: Why Stability Is Hard To Come By In CAR

1 of 1

In March, Muslim rebels known as “Seleka” marched through the Central African Republic, overthrowing the government and wreaking havoc.

In the nine months since there has been extensive reprisal attacks and Christian militias formed to “protect” civilians, which have mainly resulted in atrocities on civilian populations.

A recent Amnesty International report described a door-to-door assault by Christian “anti-Balaka” militias that killed 60 Muslims, followed by two days of reprisals by Muslim Seleka offshoots that left nearly 1000 dead.

While not always on this remarkable scale, such horrors are occurring daily, including a lynching of a Muslim man and his son at the hands of a crowd of Christians near the airport in the capital, Bangui.

According to recent United Nations estimates, half of the country’s 4.5 million people have already been affected by the conflict.

When determining the future of this violence, it is worth noting that sustained violence is most prominent when a wide variety of factors are combined.

While most reports frame the in-country violence as religion-based, this is far from the only factor, according to Dr. Louisa Lombard — perhaps the U.S.’s only CAR expert.

“Foreignness”

Instead, religion is a framing mechanism that gained prominence during the decade of Francois Bozize’s rule as Chad’s Idriss Deby sent Muslim soldiers to protect Bozize as he plundered the country’s natural resources.

These Chadian soldiers acted with impunity in the country. This leaves the religious narratives as a convenient proxy for a fear of “foreignness.”

This analysis structure applies to the current situation as some analysts have brought up the possibility of genocide, referring to the destruction or attempted destruction of a particular and discrete group.

While the anti-Balaka fighters largely self-identify as Christian and the offshoots of the Seleka militias nominally self-identify as Muslim, the religious component is only one part of the ongoing and multifaceted us-versus-them narrative.

Scholars of civil war and civil conflict tend to conclude that civil wars do not happen along one “macro-cleavage” but rather tend to “…play out across several dimensions of identity that are often invoked and shifted instrumentally…”

The shifting nature of such cleavages is particularly troubling when one sees a vague consideration such as foreignness.

In addition to the variety of interpersonal and socio-anthropological factors, there are geographic tensions as well.

Scholars of conflict have often discussed the “bad neighborhood” syndrome, where countries are expected to experience higher levels of civil conflict and discord when they are surrounded by countries that are experiencing armed conflict or have in recent memory.

Statistically, this becomes particularly prevalent when four or more neighbors are having issues of their own. The CAR is as good an example of this syndrome as any, surrounded on all sides by current and recent conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Congo.

A number of human development indicators also lend themselves to the belief that violence in the CAR will be sustained for some time. One of the best predictive statistics for such analysis is infant mortality rate. The country ranks fourth from the bottom in.

The other three countries with worse rates of infant mortality are Afghanistan, Somalia and Mali, countries either currently or perennially embroiled in conflict.

Further, while there is some current scholarly debate on the topic, it has long been believed that impoverished countries are at a much greater risk of ongoing civil conflict.

Resource Curse

Based on 2012 statistics, the CAR has the eighth-lowest gross domestic product per capita in the world. Additionally, while it is often reported that the country is resource rich, Lombardo points out that this is misleading when considered in terms of accessibility and relevance to development.

“Though it’s true that the CAR has resources, all of those resources are difficult to exploit except on an artisanal scale,” he said. “The diamonds are mostly industrial grade and widely spread; the gold is mostly in powder form; the uranium is in a form that requires a special processing treatment and the profitability of its extraction thus depends on the existence of especially high global prices; the land is copious but the tropical soils not well suited to intensive agriculture.”

The declining situation has led to French and African Union peacekeepers being brought in with American financial support, but such intervention has historically mixed results.

Chris Coyne, a professor of economics at George Mason University and a scholar of humanitarian intervention, points out that positive results have generally been experienced when such interventions take place after a ceasefire has been negotiated and have almost no positive effect (and sometimes a negative effect) when they are brought in before a ceasefire has been signed.

Combining the horrific violence already experienced with the variety of factors above, it is difficult to see a return to stability in the near future. This troubling reality makes for a difficult governance and security situation.

In addition to the untold effect it will have on countless lives, it makes conducting business in the country a problematic proposition going forward.

Andrew Friedman is a human rights attorney and consultant who works and writes on legal reform and constitutional law with an emphasis on Africa. He can be reached via email at afriedm2@gmail.com or via twitter @AndrewBFriedman.