The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
ALANDONTHE BRINK OF GENOCIDE ANDA CAMBRIDGE-EDUCATED WARLORD
The Central African Republic is rich in minerals and sits at the crossroads of the continent. So why is it the least developed nation on earth and in the grip of a vicious civil war that the world is ignoring? Jack Losh tracks down ‘General’ Ibrahim Alawa
At his fortified villa in the devastated, contested diamond-mining town of Bria, rebel commander Ibrahim Alawad is puffing cigarettes between sips of thick black coffee, eager to talk revolution and religion, and tell me about his education at Cambridge University, a world away from this land torn apart by civil war. The Central African Republic (CAR) lies in a bad neighbourhood. To the north are the insurgency-prone desert states of Chad and Sudan. Nasty conflicts also blight other bordering countries – Cameroon, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since independence in 1960, a string of despots have misruled this sparsely populated former French colony, a landlocked territory three times bigger than the UK. Despite its plentiful diamonds, CAR’S state coffers have been stripped to leave an economy smaller than the Isle of Wight’s. Five years ago, this backwater came to the world’s attention when it descended into a brutal civil war. An alliance of several Muslim-led groups calling themselves the Séléka staged a violent coup, ousting CAR’S ageing, corrupt leader François Bozizé. In response, Christian communities formed rival militias known as the Anti-balaka, which carried out ethnic cleansing of Muslim communities, effectively partitioning CAR. The death toll ran into the thousands. A ceasefire and international military intervention helped bring a lull and relatively peaceful elections followed in early 2016, with a new president sworn in, Faustin-archange Touadéra, a former mathematics lecturer from the country’s Christian majority. Some even dared to hope of a fresh start. But today CAR is again in a state of anarchy. Violence spread throughout the country as the Séléka coalition split into factions, terrorising civilian communities with impunity. More than half the population of 4.5 million depend on aid. But unrest is paralysing efforts to reach the most vulnerable. There are now over 550,000 internally displaced people (IDPS) in CAR. This is one of the world’s most neglected emergencies – the humanitarian response faces a £300 million black hole in funding. And now Moscow is raising the stakes by dispatching arms and soldiers to the country. The United Nations has said the conflict shows the early warning signs of genocide.
‘There was real room for optimism in 2016 but the honeymoon is over,’ says Lewis Mudge, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, who has worked extensively in CAR. ‘State security forces are resorting to extortion. Armed groups are attacking [peacekeepers] with greater and greater confidence.’ Successive peace deals ‘are literally not worth the paper they’re printed on’, he adds. ‘Things are certainly not good in CAR.’
The appalling human cost of this spiralling conflict was encapsulated by Rose, an amiable teenager I met there. She grew up among seven siblings in a family of farmers, growing cassava, peanuts and chillies in their village. ‘Back home, we had enough food to eat,’ she tells me at a desolate and overcrowded camp for IDPS. ‘My friends were always around to play with.’ One day, though, when she was 11, Rose heard the clamour of motorbikes and gunshot as militants from the Séléka group stormed the village, torching her home and other houses around it. One of her brothers was hacked to death. Two soldiers cornered Rose, pinned her to the ground and raped her.
Now 16, Rose and her family live on a baking-hot plain, their camp protected from militants by a contingency of peacekeepers. I meet her in its ‘child-friendly space’ run by Unicef, where youngsters uprooted by fighting can attempt to reconnect with their lost childhood through learning and play, drawing and dance. For Rose (not her real name), her ordeal is not over. ‘My friends ostracise me because I was raped,’ she says. ‘These activities are helping me get over the attack and rebuild my strength.’
My encounter with Rose led me to travel deeper into CAR’S badlands to meet those implicated in these crimes. The devastated town of Bria seemed a reasonable destination, and Ibrahim Alawad, a fair target. Alawad is a trained lawyer and senior figure in one of CAR’S most powerful rebel groups, and is recognised as among the more articulate militants – one aid worker described him as that ‘slick, Western-educated guy running the show up there’. A meeting could offer some insight into these violent groups and the possibility of a peaceful settlement succeeding over a more forceful intervention in this forgotten war.
Alawad’s compound in Bria lies two hours’ flight from the capital, Bangui. He greets me enthusiastically: ‘It is a pleasure to meet you but I am sorely disappointed,’ he says, grinning. ‘An Englishman comes to my house and he does not bring me fish and chips, my favourite meal.’
A gangly, chain-smoking man in his 50s, Alawad is among those responsible for the misery endured by Rose and hundreds of thousands of Christians like her. Likewise, many Muslim civilians have suffered at the hands of Christian vigilantes. On the outskirts of Bria, 38,000 IDPS shelter outside the high walls of the UN peacekeeper base. The Popular Front for the Renaissance of the Central African Republic (FPRC), in which Alawad claims the rank of general, is one of the former factions of the Séléka, accused by human-rights groups of using child soldiers and carrying out horrific attacks on civilians.
‘We do not fight simply because we are Muslims and they are Christians,’ says Alawad, a paunch protruding from his shirt and a pistol tucked into his trousers. ‘Ever seen a fly with just one wing? No. It would not fly. So why would we try to be a country with just one wing, either just Christian or Muslim?’
He launches into a well-rehearsed lecture. ‘The problem with Africa is not a problem of religion or dictatorship,’ he puffs. ‘All the problems coming out of Africa today are from our colonial master.’ While simplistic, his argument contains some