DURBAN, South Africa, (Reuters) – The French dubbed it the neglected “Cinderella” of their African colonial empire; modern observers have called it a “phantom state”.
Landlocked, isolated and poverty stricken, despite its reserves of gold, timber, uranium and gemstone quality diamonds, Central African Republic has been racked by debilitating rebellions for more than a decade.
In the latest revolt, fighters from a loose rebel alliance demanding an end to years of exclusion from government seized control of the riverside capital Bangui on Sunday, forcing President Francois Bozize to flee.
Bozize’s toppling by the rebel Seleka coalition is another setback for efforts in Africa to build solid foundations of constitutional rule to accompany the continent’s buoyant economic growth in an otherwise troubled global economy.
It is particularly embarrassing for South Africa, which is seeking to project itself as an influential regional power on the continent this week as it hosts a summit of the BRICS emerging states and welcomes new Chinese President Xi Jinping on his first visit to Africa as head of state.
South African troops, in Central African Republic under a defence cooperation agreement, suffered losses fighting alongside government soldiers in a failed attempt to stop the rebels entering Bangui and to keep Bozize in power.
While lacking the strategic attention gained by other African hotspots such as Mali, Somalia or eastern Congo, Central African Republic has nevertheless been a festering sore of instability at the heart of an economically rising continent.
Some of the root causes of this lie in a colonial history of isolation and neglect. This was compounded after independence in 1960 by coups and bloody mutinies, French military meddling and rule by one of the world’s most bizarre and extravagant dictators, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, self-styled Emperor Bokassa I.
Bozize, a veteran military strongman who served as a general in Bokassa’s 1977-79 “Empire” and later seized power in a 2003 coup before winning a 2005 election, had opened a so-called Inclusive Political Dialogue with his rebel foes in 2008.
But his failure to deliver genuine power sharing, followed by his re-election in disputed 2011 polls which the opposition boycotted over alleged fraud, led directly to the offensive by the Seleka coalition of five armed rebel groups.
Fighters from Seleka, which means “alliance” in the local Sango language, had already closed in on Bangui in December, forcing Bozize to agree to a mid-January power-sharing deal that saw the formation of a national unity government.
But last week the rebels ended the ceasefire accord, accusing Bozize of failing to keep his promise to send the South African troops home and incorporate 2,000 rebels into the army.
“There is a frustration that has grown and grown with Bozize’s way of governing, which has been very uninclusive,” said Louisa Lombard, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley who has studied the Central African insurgencies.
“PHANTOM STATE”
Experts point to the absence of economic development and government control in Central African Republic’s bush interior as a major driver of discontent and revolt in a nation slightly larger than France but with a population of only 4.5 million.
This is seen as an inheritance of colonial times, when the territory, named Oubangui-Chari after two prominent local rivers, was an remote and neglected outpost between better developed French possessions in Chad and Congo Brazzaville.
In recent years, CAR’s extensive borders have been porous and unprotected, with armed intruders from Chad, Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo crossing at will to raid villages and poach wildlife, joining local bandits known as “zaraguinas”.
A 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable from Bangui bluntly calls Central African Republic “a country defined by its borders on the map and not by effective state control of its territory”.
The Brussels-based International Crisis Group termed it “a phantom state” in 2007.
After the end of France’s colonial African empire in 1960, Central African Republic had the dubious distinction of being the state that experienced the most frequent French military interference in the continent’s post-independence history.
French soldiers, known locally as “barracudas” after France’s 1979 “Operation Barracuda” regime change that removed Bokassa from power, have over the years installed and ejected CAR leaders and helped quash rebellions and mutinies.
As recently as 2006 and 2007, French Mirage jets helped government soldiers repel insurgents in the restless northeast.
But while France launched a major military intervention in the Sahel state of Mali in January to drive back al Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters it considers a serious regional threat, President Francois Hollande has made clear he does not view the revolt against Bozize in the same strategic light.
Despite appeals by Bozize to “our cousins” Paris and Washington for help, France has insisted its several hundred troops in its landlocked ex-colony are there solely to protect French nationals and interests and not the local government.
