French Boosting Military Presence in CAR Ahead of UN Security Council Vote

According to
Reuters, armed men killed twelve civilians and wounded 30
others in the Central African Republic yesterday, one of the latest
signs of the worsening
situation in the country since rebels ousted President François
Bozizé in March this year. (Bozizé seized power in
a 2003 coup with the backing of Chad.) Rebels have said
that Bozizé did not comply with agreements made between
2007 and 2011 during the Central African Republic Bush War. A
deal
made in January to form a unity government
failed.

Tomorrow, the United Nations Security Council will vote on
whether to send an African Union force on a 12-month deployment to
CAR. Diplomats said today that the resolution is expected
to pass unanimously. The United Nation’s deputy secretary
general recently warned that the deteriorating situation
between the Muslim and Christian communities could develop into a
genocide.

In October, French President Francois Hollande warned of
religious conflict and potential spillover,
saying, “There is also an emergency at a regional level because
there is a risk of spillover. We might witness religious
conflict.”

The French have recently boosted their military
presence in their former colony amid the deteriorating
situation. In December last year,
Bozizé asked for the U.S. and France to help halt rebel
advances. At the time Hollande said that the days of the French
intervening in “the internal affairs of a country” were gone. The
next month, the French launched Operation
Serval, the intervention in Mali.

As Paul Melly, the BBC’s West Africa analyst has
explained, the intervention in Mali has laid groundwork for a
mission in CAR:

The warm sub-Saharan welcome for the Malian intervention has
helped to create a climate in which France can more easily
intervene in the CAR. And that subject will surely have been on the
menu of Mr Hollande’s talks with President Jacob Zuma during a
recent visit to South Africa.

This time, as in Mali, the African political ground for a French
deployment has been carefully prepared.

Although the U.S. has not expressed its intention to contribute
troops to a peacekeeping mission in CAR, Secretary of State John
Kerry recently
said that the U.S. is “planning to provide $40 million in
assistance to the African Union-led peacekeeping mission” there.
American forces
recently supported Ugandan troops in an operation
against Lord’s Resistance Army fighters in CAR. American Special
Forces have been assisting African troops in their fight against
the LRA since 2011.