The hellish descent of the Central African Republic

An escalating cycle of bloodshed has left tens of thousands dead and entire communities displaced in the Central African Republic. Peacekeeping forces have so far failed to stop the terror

Christian anti-balaka attack the property of Muslim civilians in an effort to destroy everything in their commumity Photo: 

The death records of the Bangui morgue in the Central African Republic read like a chapter out of Dante’s Inferno: page after page of people killed by machetes, torture, lynchings, shootings, explosions and burning. The overwhelming stench makes it impossible to stay there for long. On really bad days only the number of dead is recorded – not their names nor the causes of death – before the bodies are buried in mass graves.

The morgue is a terrible symbol of the toll of communal violence in the Central African Republic (CAR), which has raged for months and claimed tens of thousands of lives, displacing even more. Recently, the Séléka, a predominantly Muslim group of fighters that seized Bangui, the capital, and toppled the CAR’s government in early 2013, have lost some ground – although they continue to terrorise wherever possible. In response Christian forces known as anti-balaka (balaka means ‘machete’ in Sango, the local language) have stepped up attacks against Muslim civilians in places where the Séléka no longer holds the sway it did a few months ago.

In hopes of quelling the situation, international peacekeeping forces are now in the country, and a new president, Catherine Samba-Panza – a former mayor of Bangui nicknamed Madame Courage –was installed in mid-January. She has promised that the country’s security forces will be reorganised to protect Muslims as well as Christians. But so far the violence has continued unabated. On January 29 two Muslim men were hacked to death and their bodies mutilated near Bangui’s international airport as onlookers cheered and filmed the scene.

^{The wife of Nana Abdul Karim, 34, a father of eight, after learning of the death of her husband in PK12. He was shot while buying breakfast for his children by French soldiers who claim he was firing at them.} 

The violence is escalating. Already many Muslim communities of Bangui and the north-western part of the CAR have been wiped off the map, their residents massacred and survivors forced to flee. For the Rwandan military deployed on the ground here as part of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force, it brings back dark memories. ‘We remember what happened to us in 1994 when we see such killings,’ one Rwandan commander told me. ‘We are determined not to let that happen ever again.’

Source. The Telegraph