Foreign donors are ramping up aid to remote, neglected Central African Republic because they fear cross-border conflicts in neighbouring Sudan’s Darfur and Chad could expand and feed on a vacuum of state authority there.
Plagued by decades of dictatorship, unrest, coup attempts and rebellions, the vast but sparsely populated former French colony is ranked among the world’s least developed states.
Basic infrastructure is in ruins, bandits roam the bush unchecked by the army or police and borders are left unguarded.
”Everyone’s heard about Congo, Darfur, and the Great Lakes, but we’ve suddenly realised there is this big empty country in the middle of it all with very permeable borders,” Fiona Ramsey of the European Commission’s delegation in Bangui told Reuters.
”Though it’s a much smaller conflict, it is a large land mass. It allows smuggling of natural resources. It allows the circulation of arms,” she added.
Landlocked Central African Republic’s strategic significance at Africa’s heart went largely ignored until an anti-government rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur province erupted in 2003, triggering a political and ethnic conflict that sent raiders and refugees spilling into neighbouring states like Chad.
Fighters from both Chad and Sudan, states which analysts say are waging a proxy war through each other’s rebels, are known to have used CAR’s lawless north to seek refuge or launch attacks.
More recently, the feared Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group also targeted Central African Republic, where in February and March they raided south-eastern villages, looting goods and kidnapping civilians to be fighters or sex slaves.
These external conflicts added to the chaos already caused by several internal rebellions against CAR President Francois Bozize’s government, which, combined with rampant rural banditry, have displaced some 300 000 people in recent years.
”[CAR] is, if anything, worse than a failed state: it has become virtually a phantom state, lacking any meaningful institutional capacity at least since … 1979,” the Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group said in a report published last year.
Reconciliation hopes
Last month, Bozize signed a peace deal consolidating ceasefire pacts with three northern insurgent groups, and a national conference is due to bring together the government, rebels and civilian opposition for reconciliation talks.
Foreign donors hope this will help to focus more international attention on the country’s needs.
In 2006, CAR received as much humanitarian assistance as it had in the three previous years combined. That amount was tripled in 2007 and is expected to again double this year.
”Together this year, between development and humanitarian aid, CAR will probably receive $350 to $400-million,” Toby Lanzer, UN humanitarian coordinator in Bangui, told Reuters.
A small unit of the European Union military force deployed in eastern Chad to protect refugees from Darfur is based in northeast CAR. But critics question the effectiveness of the EU troops in curbing cross-border raids by heavily armed groups.
The scale of the development challenge donors face in Central African Republic is daunting.
From his home in the isolated south eastern town of Obo, 74-year-old Pierre Paitilite has watched his country’s steady decline since it gained independence in 1960.
A former soldier in France’s colonial army, he still travels to Bangui once a year to collect his army pension. A trip that once took 24 hours now takes a week, if rains or fallen trees haven’t completely blocked the route.
”We’ve been forgotten,” he said as UN officials finally visited his town, months after the Ugandan LRA rebel attack. ”If you, the international community, have made it here that means you actually think we are people.” – Reuters