State Collapse in the Central African Republic
A rebel coalition took the Central African Republic in March 2013 and the country has not had a functioning state since. Séléka — the word means alliance in Sango — was assembled from several northern rebel groups in late 2012 on the grievance that the peace agreements of 2007 and 2011 had never been implemented, and it took Bangui in ten days against an army that did not fight. François Bozizé, who had himself taken power in a coup in 2003, fled, and Michel Djotodia became the first Muslim president of a country that is about fifteen per cent Muslim. The coalition then dissolved into its parts. Djotodia formally disbanded it in September 2013 and the fighters ignored him, and the looting, killing and extortion in the countryside took on a religious character it had not originally had. Anti-balaka militias formed in response, nominally Christian and animist self-defence groups, and began killing Muslim civilians and driving them out of the west and south of the country entirely. French and African Union troops intervened in December 2013 and a United Nations mission followed in 2014. Some 1.1 million people were displaced out of a population of under five million, and tens of thousands died. The country is among the poorest on earth, with diamonds, gold, uranium and timber, and armed groups holding most of the territory outside the capital. Russian Wagner contractors arrived from 2018 and are paid in mining concessions. The country's history explains a good deal of its condition. It was governed by France through concession companies that worked the population as forced labour for rubber and ivory, and has had five successful coups and several failed ones since independence in 1960.
- Year: 2013 CE
- Category: Civil War
