CAR Central African Republic: Fragile, failed and forlorn

[jmm99]

You may or may not buy Marvin Harris; but, let's start with kings - actually, the lack thereof.

NY Times, Last-Ditch Effort Emerges to Restore Order in Central African Republic (by ADAM NOSSITER, JAN. 17, 2014):

BANGUI, Central African Republic — By midafternoon, a hot breeze blows down empty corridors of the mostly vacant national assembly building here. Hundreds of grim soldiers, their uniforms looted or hidden away, mass in civilian clothes after going AWOL for months. Around abandoned university buildings, idle students loiter, their classes long canceled.

The state no longer exists in the Central African Republic. Civil servants do not go to their offices, taxes are not collected and all the schools are closed. There is no budget, no army, no police force, no president, no Parliament, no judges or jails, and at least a fifth of the population has fled. After nine months of violence and well over a thousand dead since early December alone, Christians and Muslims fear and attack one another. Neighbor has turned against neighbor, and every night there are killings.

Now, an unlikely experiment in instant nation-building is underway: a vote for president. Inspired equally by desperation and pressure from abroad, a “national transition council” of 135 rebels, rivals, politicians and everyone in between is making a last-ditch lunge for order, hoping to choose a new leader for this fractured country within days. ...

Samantha Power can photo-op as much as she wants,



but the US is not about to solve this problem - even if we engage Cass Sunstein.

Cuz, here we have la piece de resistance, which takes us back to the NYT article:

Last week, dozens here witnessed the depths of the sectarian tensions as a young Muslim man was pulled from a minibus, stabbed and beaten to death, then burned and cut up by a mob of 15 young Christian men.

“I killed him, then I sucked his blood,” said Magloire Wounthnga, a 15-year-old dropout and orphan, with a sharp machete stuffed into his trousers, a dagger at his side and a thick tangle of beads and crucifixes hanging from his neck. “I burned him, then I ate him, with bread and manioc paste.”

Mr. Wounthnga said he was merely taking revenge because the Seleka had killed his pregnant sister. Next to him, His friend Stany Noakpe, 21, also said he had acted in a spirit of revenge. Their neutral tones spoke to the entrenched antagonism between Christians and the minority Muslim population here — and to the difficult task that confronts the transition council members in alleviating it.

Mr Wounthnga's recipe seems more substantial than the good doctor's side dish of fava beans - although one might want to include a nice chianti (Youtube).

Regards

Mike

PS: "Lead Photo: U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power meets with peacekeepers from Burundi in the Central African Republic." [link] From Burundi ! You can't get much better (Rwanda, Congo) - these troopers seem a civilized 21st century lot, but are they ?