The Corsair
The Corsair
What the Hell is going on in the Central African Republic?
I ask myself, often, what the hell is going on in the Central African Republic? I usually ask myself this question when I watch France24 News, one of the few news sources that covers the country, and see heartbreaking scenes of dirt roads and children in secondhand clothing with American logos, lacking shoes, roaming, aimlessly. What the cameras did not show were the various rebel groups controlling large swaths of the country and operating with impunity in the absence of a legitimate government. My immediate impression when observing scenes from the CAF is — What the hell? What. The. Hell. Even by the insufferable standards of African strongmen misappropriating entire economies for their Belgian chateaus in the 80s, the CAF is more of a psychotic case of a country than even the 70s clichés of an African basket case.
And then, I wonder — human beings being what they are — what, exactly, is going on in the country. Behind the scenes, I mean. What is not being covered, what is not meant to be seen. Because countries that are basket cases, or even worse, are where mercenaries, and human rights atrocities and all other manner of arcane forms of high darkness multiply, at bacterial velocity. In the shadows; beneath the world’s gaze; just before our attention.
Getting the Story: A reporter’s perilous trip to document war in the Central African Republic, in the latest issue of CJR, is a harrowing read into a surreal and largely uncovered war zone. Anjun Sundaram in the Columbia Journalism Review accounts just how daunting it is to report from the CAR. He writes of talking to his driver, at the beginning of his trip to the site of a massacre in Gaga, getting the lay of the land:
He pointed out many roads that had been blocked, and others that were too dangerous. He indicated off-map routes. “You’ll have to trust me,” he said. It was true: in many places we would have no cellphone network, and our compasses would be useless, because the Central African Republic lay over a “magnetic anomaly”—a variation in magnetic fields caused by changes in the underlying rock. (This anomaly extended over nearly 70 percent of the Central African Republic, centered at Bangui, and was the largest in Africa.)
Eccentric magnetic anomalies notwithstanding, the take even gets stranger. Torture chambers named after Guantanamo Bay, with scorpion pits; radio stations playing rumba music while a rebellion throughout the country spreads; obscene relics of the colonial French bureaucracy; people fleeing their homes recreating a city in the bush; possible mass graves disinfected with chemicals. Then when Sundranam gets to the abandoned city of Gaga, Central African Republic, things turn even more profoundly sideways:
A boy soldier appeared, strutting and looking sideways, as if soliciting applause from his unit. Holding a whip in his left hand, he offered me a handshake with his right. “Tony Montana,” he said, in an affected Italian-meets-Cuban accent. I nodded. Tony frowned. “You don’t know that movie?” His voice hadn’t dropped. He was maybe thirteen years old. “I want to be méchant,” he said. “Cruel, like Al Pacino in Scarface.”
In moments, a pickup truck burst over the hilltop. Armed boys on its back wore sunglasses and necklaces of bullets. Their faces and arms were scarred. Government reinforcements had arrived.
It is an incredible account about a war that is barely even reported upon. CJR has an excerpt here. It’s a must read, as depressing as it is fascinating.
That article, which focuses on the Christian-Muslim violence, doesn’t even touch upon Russian mercenaries and rape in the Central African Republic. Another underreported story. The Wagner Group, employed by the CAF’s weak government since 2018 — and paid for by looted mines — has had free reign to kill rebels, within and beyond the border of the CAF. The Daily Beast is now reporting that rape and acts of sexual violence have now entered the mercenaries’ war obscene vocabulary. Two men — Kolimba and Bosafi; names changed to protect their identities — spoke with Philip Obaji, Jr. of the Daily Beast about their encounter with the Wagner Group after the mercenaries suffered a loss to rebels:
In the evening of Jan. 28, about a dozen Russian Wagner mercenaries, seeking to avenge the killing of their colleagues, allegedly ordered Kolimba and Bissafi to accompany them to the nearby Pendere village, where they believed CPC rebels were taking refuge, according to the two FACA soldiers. Once they arrived in Pendere, they said, the Russians began to burn down houses, shoot sporadically, and vandalize shops and storehouses.
“Several people were killed [by the Russians],” said Bissafi. "They were slaughtering people like animals."
… According to Kolimba and Bissafi, the Russians then stormed a compound and marched men and women—who were separated from their children—out of their homes to a number of waiting pickup vehicles packed outside.
“We felt for the children who were crying when their parents were forced out of their homes, so we summoned up the courage to plead with the Russians to let the men and women go,” said Bissafi. “Unfortunately, that was when our problems began.”
Rather than listen to the plea of the local soldiers, Kolimba and Bissafi said the Wagner mercenaries turned around and accused the two men of working as spies for the rebels. Six Wagner mercenaries, they said, marched them to a nearby bush, beat them up and tied them to a tree. Hours later, under the cover of darkness, the Russians allegedly returned—and raped them.
Will these men ever receive justice? Probably not. Is there more of this going on in the CAF? Almost definitely. Who is reporting on this? Very few news organizations, unfortunately. International news just does not hold the interest of people as well as divisive national political hot takes suffused with outrage triggers. There are so many more eyeballs for the latest outrage of Lauren Boehbert and Matt Gaetz than the growing problem of mercenaries — particularly the Wagner Group — acting with impunity throughout Africa. And yet, what is more triggering, what is more morally outrageous than foreign mercenaries killing and raping civilians at will, at the invitation of a so-called “strongman,” while the world’s gaze is conveniently averted.
One piece of good news to end this with is that Joe Biden takes Africa seriously. And Barack Obama, the last Democrat President before Biden (and the son of a Kenyan), has immense positive sentiment on the Continent. To his credit, Secretary of State Blinken realizes that the United States is falling behind in its standing on the African continent and its doing his level best to catch up, utilizing shuttle diplomacy.
I would add, in closing, that Secretary Blinken needs help in this. He is behind China and the increasingly aggressive Russia on the Continent of Africa. Blinken approaches Africa from a deficit position. And that is not his fault, for how could it be otherwise when the previous President of the United States referred to the Continent as having “shithole countries.”
I would suggest that Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States, be deployed to the region as not only a direct representative of the President of the United States, but also as the first African-American Vice President. Why not deploy Kamala Harris in a monthlong “listening tour,” crisscrossing the Continent, from Morocco to Mozambique, from Alexandria to the library at Timbuktu …
Vice President Harris is, in my opinion, America’s greatest asset that has not yet been effectively used in our diplomacy in Africa. And I do not, for the life of me, know why this is the case. Why put so much of our efforts at diplomacy on the continent in the hands of Tony Blinken? Kamala Harris’s portfolio ought to have been as point-person on all African diplomacy — especially pulling South Africa out of the BRICS orbit and towards the West —and immigration reform. If Kamala Harris had come into the Vice Presidency with a hard portfolio of being the administration’s point person on Africa and India (her mother was born in Chennai), on securing the black vote for Biden, on raising campaign money from Asian-American donors as well the team’s expert on all things bipartisan immigration reform, there would be zero conversation about replacing her on the ticket.
Alas.
Head of Russia’s Wagner group confirms recruitment of US-trained Afghan soldiers (SEMAFOR)
Libyan general says 2.5 tonnes of missing uranium found near storage base (The Guardian)
Canada imitates Australia’s news-bargaining law, but to what end? (CJR)
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Evgenii Serebriakov now runs the most aggressive hacking team of Russia’s GRU military spy agency. To Western intelligence, he’s a familiar face. (WIRED)
Its the end of DC as we know it. (THR)