The Economist has a good article on the Central African Republic . . . or had, I should say. It’s several months old, but it pretty much captures it all: Beyond a failed state.
About a quarter of the country’s 4m people have been affected by the violence. The United Nations says some 300,000 have fled their homes. A New York-based lobby group, Human Rights Watch, puts much of the blame on Mr Bozizé’s forces, who, it says, have committed hundreds of murders and burned thousands of homes in a counter-insurgency campaign that started in 2005.
[…]
The country remains mired in poverty and neglect. Unions began a series of strikes at the beginning of the year to demand the payment of over seven months of unpaid salaries for civil servants and teachers; the government says it has no money. Foreign aid-workers say that, though international aid to Africa as a whole has soared, the CAR has got even less than before. Some well-wishers hope that the presence of the incoming EU force may help stabilise the country and enable its economy to start growing again.
At least the government is trying to talk to its opponents. “Rebels or Zaraguinas, they’re just bandits,” says Dieudonné-Stanislas M’Bangot, a presidential adviser. “But we have to negotiate with them, as we don’t have the means to fight them. Do you have any better ideas?”
