In a penetrating report from the Central African Republic, worth reading in full, Graeme Wood describes the state of the country:
It is a country the size of Texas, with as many people as Boston, and an economy less than a tenth the size of Chattanooga’s. Reliable data doesn’t exist for the number dead, but from December until March, street lynchings became so common that they ceased to be news. The danger is unequaled anywhere in present-day Africa except, perhaps, Nigeria on a bad day. Bangui competes with Damascus for the title of world’s grimmest capital city. …
The government of CAR has already begun taking steps to make its most powerful institutions Muslim-free. The armed forces, or FACA, dissolved when the Séléka arrived, and they are now being reconstituted without much care for the histories of its members—whether they are implicated in communal or political violence or whether they remain loyal to the Anti-Balaka. No one is sure if the FACA will represent the whole country or just the Christians.
(Photo: A man holds his machete as young people, who created a self-defense committee for their district, meet before leaving for a patrol on March 12, 2014 in Bangui. By Sia Kambou/AFP/Getty Images)
