Africa / Central African Republic

On the Run as War Crosses Another Line in Africa

December 10, NYT

LYDIA POLGREEN

KALANDAO, Central African Republic — The rumble of engines, any engines, is the signal for the villagers here to flee, leaving behind smoldering pots of wild roots and leaves, a meager afternoon meal.

Their haste was so great on a recent afternoon that they left something else behind — a little girl in a filthy white shirt. She wailed as she sat, utterly alone, struggling to stand, much less flee, on slender, uncertain legs.

The Central African Republic — so important as a potential bulwark against the chaos and misery of its neighbors in Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan — is being dragged right into the dangerous and ever-expanding conflict that has begun to engulf central Africa.

So porous are its borders and ungoverned are parts of its territory that foreign rebels are using the Central African Republic as a staging ground to mount attacks over the border, spreading what the United Nations has called the world’s “gravest humanitarian crisis.”

The situation is so bad in some places that 50,000 residents have fled the Central African Republic to find refuge in Chad, of all places, while starvation threatens hundreds of thousands who remain.

“This is the soft belly of Africa,” said Jerome Chevallier, a World Bank official who is trying to help stabilize the Central African Republic. “It has little protection from whatever might strike it.”

A visit to Kalandao underscores the point. The residents here had fled their country’s own army, which has been burning villages to smoke out a homegrown rebel movement bent on overthrowing the government. Once the villagers, including the girl’s family, realized the approaching vehicles were from the United Nations World Food Program, they trickled back to tell their story.

“We are living in the bush like animals,” Leontine Makanzi said. “Our children are dying. We are eating nothing. We have no security.” Central African Republic, one of the poorest places on earth, has suffered through a series of coups and countercoups in the last decade and sits almost at the bottom of the United Nations development index. In few places do people live so short a lifespan, bury so many of their young children or succumb to more treatable disease.

But its vulnerability has only grown in recent months. On its northeast border with Sudan, Chadian rebels supported by the Sudanese government have built a base, according to government officials and diplomats, to bolster their bid to overthrow Chad’s president, Idriss Déby. Now the Central African Republic government says these foreign fighters have teamed up with local rebels to overthrow it as well, making it increasingly hard to separate one conflict in the region from another.

“The world must act now to prevent an even graver crisis here,” said Jean-Charles Dei, country director for the United Nations World Food Program, which is feeding 250,000 people in the Central African Republic, one of just a handful of organizations offering any aid at all here. “The international community must act to protect these vulnerable people or risk that they will be consumed by the crisis in the region.”

To stem the tide of destruction in this morass of cross-border enmity, the United Nations is examining the possibility of placing international troops to protect the borders of Chad, Sudan and the Central African Republic.

The hope is to avoid a broad, multicountry conflict like the one that swept Congo after the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko. That war, which followed the Rwandan genocide and pulled in fighters from Uganda, Angola and Rwanda, among others, killed four million people, mostly from hunger and disease, and its aftermath continues to kill 1,200 people a day.

“As long as the problem of Darfur is not solved, you will not have peace in Ndjamena or Bangui,” said Lamine Cisse, the top United Nations official in Central African Republic, referring to the capitals of Chad and Central African Republic. “The conflicts are all linked, and solving one requires solving all.”

The Central African Republic is a former French colony of four million people sprinkled in tiny villages across a tangle of jungle about the size of Texas. Across generous swaths of fertile soil, villagers scrape together a living using techniques as old as the Bible — hoes, water cans, human muscle and bone. The labor required for mere survival is so strenuous that the most common operation performed by doctors at a rural hospital in the northwest is for hernias.

On a continent where cellphone towers and fiber optic cables are finally snaking their way across the land, much of life here is lived as though the last few centuries never happened — as though the march of history halted at its wild frontiers.

“It is as though the whole world has simply forgotten these people,” said Sister Desiree, a Burundian nun working at a Roman Catholic mission in Ndim, a small provincial town in northwest Central African Republic. “I always ask myself, why does no one besides us come to help these people? But I find no answer.”

The four nuns at the mission, along with four nurses, some teachers and a handful of others, run a school, clinic and feeding program in Ndim, handing out food donated by the World Food Program.

Most of the people in Ndim are not actually displaced, but the isolation the conflict has caused, as well as the general poverty of the area, has left them perpetually malnourished and hungry.

“Outside of a famine situation I have never seen people in such terrible shape,” said Jean-Pierre Cebron, the top official for the World Food Program for the central African region. “In terms of weight, in terms of height, in terms of health, the population is really in rough condition.”

Hundreds of families lined up at the mission to receive biweekly rations — a few scoops of fortified flour, lentils, salt and sugar. Some were so poor they did not even have bowls — they used ragged pieces of cloth to carry their food home.

In neighboring countries, aid organizations feed, clothe and shelter the impoverished, but here there are comparatively few people to help. Here in the northwest, Doctors Without Borders; Coopi, an Italian aid organization; the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Food Program are trying to help the estimated 150,000 displaced, but they are overstretched and hampered in their work by security problems and government constraints.

Aid organizations in Paoua, a provincial town at the epicenter of the crisis in the northwest, were instructed by the military in November to suspend activities for security reasons, so more than 50 tons of food for displaced people sat in a warehouse, undistributed.

Just outside of Paoua, the remains of village after village lie in charred heaps. In one such village, behind the destroyed mud huts, deep in the forest, villagers were living beneath plastic tarps a mile away from their homes.

“They came last month to give us these shelters, but they don’t come again,” said Pauline Koibe, who had been living in the open, sleeping under trees, since January. “It is like they have forgotten us.”

People here refer only elliptically to the perpetual crises that have enveloped their nation. Its troubles are referred to as “les événements,” or the events. It is a passive phrase that carries the inevitability and randomness of a tornado or an earthquake — an unpredictable, destructive happening that has no author and for which no one really can be blamed.

The problems began even before independence, when the man who should have been the country’s first president, Barthélémy Boganda, died in a mysterious plane crash in 1958. They continued with the rise of Jean-Bédel Bokassa, a ruthless military dictator whose excesses were rumored to include cannibalism. He declared himself emperor of this tiny country in 1976, crowning himself in a lavish ceremony that cost $20 million.

Democracy arrived in the 1990s, with the election of Ange-Félix Patassé, but his rule was marked by corruption and mismanagement that only deepened the despair. He was overthrown in 2002 by Gen. François Bozizé, who eventually was elected president in 2005 in an election that was judged free and fair by international observers.

The rebellion in the northeast is led by allies of Mr. Patassé, the former president, along with Chadian rebels, who seek to overthrow Chad’s president, a close ally of Mr. Bozizé.

Like so many countries in Africa, the Central African Republic has the potential of vast wealth in its natural resources — diamonds, timber, hydroelectric power and commercial farming. But over the years its economy has shriveled. A decade ago there were more than 200 private companies working here, according to the World Bank. Today, only about 20 remain. In the past decade, disease and hunger have slashed life expectancy by 10 years, to about 40.

“Since independence our country has never known stability,” said Lea Koyassoum-Doumta, a top adviser to the government. “We have plenty of problems of our own. We don’t need these problems from outside, in Sudan and Chad, making things worse for us. We need peace so we can finally have some development and progress.”

Central African Republic History & Statistics

GEOGRAPHY

Location: landlocked country in central Africa. Boundaries: Chad to N, Sudan to E, Zaire, Congo to S, Cameroon to W. Total land area: 240,533 sq. mi. (622,980 sq km). Coastline: none. Comparative area: slightly smaller than Texas. Land use: 3% arable land; negl. % permanent crops; 97% other. Major cities: (1988) Bangui (capital) 451,690; Berbérati 41,891; Bouar 39,676.

PEOPLE

Population: 3,683,538 (July 2003 est.). Nationality: noun—Central African(s); adjective— Central African. Ethnic groups: 33% Baya, 27% Banda, 13% Mandija, 10% Sara, 7% Mboum, 4% M'Baka; 2% other. Languages: French (official), Sangho (lingua franca and national language), tribal languages. Religions: 35% indigenous beliefs, 25% Protestant, 25% Roman Catholic, 15% Muslim; indigenous beliefs and practices strongly influence Christian majority.

GOVERNMENT

Type: republic. Independence: Aug. 13, 1960 (from France). Constitution: Adopted Jan. 7, 1995. National holiday: Republic Day, Dec. 1. Heads of Government: François Bozize, head of state (since March 31, 2003); Abel Goumba, prime minister (since March 31, 2003). Structure: executive; unicameral legislature; judiciary.

ECONOMY

Monetary unit: Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA) franc. Budget: (1994 est.) income: $638 mil.; expend.: $1.9 bil. GDP: $4.7 bil., $1,300 per capita (2002 est.). Chief crops: cotton, coffee, tobacco. Natural resources: diamonds, uranium, timber, gold, oil. Major industries: sawmills, breweries, diamond mining. Labor force: 775,413 (1986 est.); 85% agriculture, 9% commerce and services. Exports: $134 mil. (f.o.b., 2002 est.); diamonds, timber, cotton, coffee, tobacco. Imports: $102 mil. (f.o.b., 2002); food, textiles, petroleum products, machinery, electrical equipment, motor vehicles. Major trading partners: exports: 53% Belgium, Kazakhstan, Spain; imports: 26% France, Cameroon, Spain.

A landlocked country in Africa's central region, the Central African Republic is one of the least-developed countries in the world. Most of its people are farmers, and the nation has little manufacturing, few reliable roads, and no railroad. Europeans first came to the area in the early 1800's in their search for slaves, but it was not until 1889 that the French established an outpost as the current capital city of Bangui. The region was organized as the territory of Ubangi-Shari five years later. In 1910 it was incorporated into French Equitorial Africa along with what are now the countries of Chad, the Congo, and Gabon.

The country was granted internal selfgovernment by the French under its present name in 1958 and became a member of the French Overseas Community. Independence was achieved on Aug. 13, 1960. The first prime minister, Barthelemy Boganda, was killed in an airplane crash in 1959 and was succeeded by his nephew, David Dacko. Dacko was elected to a seven-year term in January 1964, but an army coup in 1966 overthrew his government. The head of the army, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, was installed as president. Named president for life in 1972, in 1976 Bokassa declared himself emperor and changed the name of the country to the Central African Empire.

Dacko returned to power in 1979, however, and Bokassa went into exile in France. The name of the country was changed back to the Central African Republic. A multiparty political system was reinstated in March 1981, but army officers threw Dacko out of office again six months later and banned all political parties. Opposition parties were legalized in 1991, and Bokassa was released shortly before elections in 1993, elections that made Ange Félix Patassé president. He tried to reduce the army's power but has been met with several rebellions requiring the intervention of peacekeepers from neighboring states. After surviving numerous coup attempts, Patassé was overturned in March 2003 by fired army head General Francois Bozize who suspended the constitution and proclaimed himself president.

From THE NEW YORK TIMES ALMANAC 2004