generalspeaking

Widespread Horror

"Traditional harmony among communities has been replaced by polarization and widespread horror. The population is enduring suffering beyond imagination. 
"The Central African Republic is becoming a breeding ground for extremists and armed groups in a region that is already suffering from conflict and instability. If this situation is left to fester, it may develop into a religious and ethnic conflict with long-standing consequences, even a civil war that could spread into neighbouring countries."
Jan Eliasson, United Nations deputy secretary-general

French President Francois Hollande, right, and Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian reviews the troops during a military ceremony, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2013, at the Invalides in Paris. France will send 1,000 troops to Central African Republic under an expected U.N.-backed mission to keep growing chaos at bay, the defense minister said Tuesday boosting the French military presence in Africa for the second time this year. ((AP Photo/Patrick Kovarik, Pool) )

The Central African Republic was a French colony until 1960. France now views it as being "on the verge of genocide". Over a half million of its 4.6-million population have become refugees, forced by conflict to abandon their homes, their farms, all their belongings and the life that has sustained them up until the present. Sounds like a reprise of Sudan in Darfur.

As a result France has announced a troop surge, while warning at the United Nations that the country was "descending into chaos", and in so doing "becoming a breeding ground for extremists". France has committed to tripling the number of its soldiers deployed to the Republic where fighting between Muslims and Christians has become endemic and dreadful in its consequences.

Former Muslim rebels who placed their man in power after removing the former president have refused to disarm, and are rampaging through mostly Christian areas of the country. France judges that its current 400 French forces are incapable of meeting the challenge in the country, planning to boost its numbers by an additional thousand soldiers to remain there for "up to six months".

Their role, according to Jean-Yves Le Drian, France's defence minister, would be a supportive one. The existing but lamentably ineffective African peacekeeping mission is to be the beneficiary of the increased French forces. "We cannot have a country fall apart like that. There is the violence, massacres and humanitarian chaos. It will be a short mission to allow calm and stability to return", said Mr. Le Drian.

FILE - In this Friday, March 22, 2013 file photo provided by the French Army Communications Audio Visual Office, French soldiers arrive at Bangui airport in the Central African Republic. France will send 1,000 troops to the Central African Republic under an expected U.N.-backed mission to keep growing chaos at bay, the defense minister said Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2013, boosting the French military presence in Africa for the second time this year. ((AP Photo/Elise Foucaud, ECPAD, File))

The UN Security Council was informed by Mr. Eliasson that it should plan to dispatch a UN peacekeeping force of at least six thousand troops to help cope with the five separate rebel groups that formed to march their alliance on Bangui to oust Francois Bozize, the former present, installing in his stead Michael Djotodia, in March.

Mercenaries from neighbouring Chad and Sudan are among the Muslim fighters. All of the combined militias have refused to surrender their weapons. They stand accused of murder, rape, mass looting and forcing villagers to abandon their homes by threats and by force. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has characterized the situation to be a "total breakdown of law and order".

In response to the Muslim assaults against Christian villagers, vigilante Christian militias have been formed, forced to protect themselves and fight back. Although roughly half of the Central African Republic's population is Christian and only 15% are Muslim, the psychopathy of fanaticism has infected the Muslims, slopping over from the conflict in Mali, in Somalia, in Tunisia, in Sudan, and taking inspiration from the terrorism inspired by the violently faithful toward jihad.

"The International community must take action before it is too late to ensure that CAR isn't catapulted into the international spotlight because it became a human catastrophe", cautioned Salil Shetty, head of Amnesty International. Easier said than done. Is there anywhere a more dysfunctional religious ideology than Islam with its imprecations called down upon others, its shrill calls to jihad?

The international community is being urged to save humanity from the slavering mad dogs of Islam intent on converting the world body to surrender to the only true religion. The trouble with this is that the faithful within Islam are at war with one another as well. Others may be exhorted to embrace Islam, but there is a very particular Islam that is the genuine one, all others to be shunned as heretical. And so, because of sectarian divisions, Muslims slaughter Muslims.

And in their spare time they turn their malevolence toward non-Muslims. Christians being particularly available, since most Jews living in those countries have long since been either pogromed out of existence or programmed to flee for their lives.

Labels: Africa, Atrocities, Conflict, France, Islam, United Nations

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 30, 2013