International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Central African Republic: looting as retribution

Paul Martial — 2024-08-06T17:17:12Z

Russian mercenaries and Rwandan soldiers are protecting the authoritarian regime in the Central African Republic (CAR). In return, they lay their hands on the country's riches. Yesterday, at the gates of Bangui, the capital of the CAR, the various armed groups operating in the country were partly defeated by the combined action of Wagner's troops, the UN mission, Minusca, and Rwandan special forces.

- IV595 - August 2024 / Russia, Rwanda, Central African Republic

Is Wagner facing a new challenge in Africa?

Paul Martial — 2023-07-07T11:05:32Z

The failed power grab by the head of the Wagner group, Evgeny Prigozhin, will have repercussions in Africa, even if the Russian authorities have spared no effort to mitigate the effects and reassure their African partners.

- IV582 - July 2023 / Russia, Africa, Mali, Libya, Sudan, Central African Republic, Cameroon

Russia in Africa: mercenaries and predatoriness

Paul Martial — 2021-12-31T19:50:15Z

“The solution to conflicts on the continent, whether in the Sahel, Cameroon, or East Africa, will not come from armed interventions by Western troops or mercenary companies of any kind.”

- IV563 - December 2021 / Africa, Central African Republic

The shipwreck of the Central African Republic...

Paul Martial — 2021-03-15T08:34:25Z

The Central African Republic is still not emerging from the most serious crisis it has known since it became independent. France's policy, from the colonial period until now, partly explains the endemic violence that reigns in the Central African Republic.

- IV554 - March 2021 / Central African Republic

Social struggles and the birth of a new consciousness

Jean Nanga — 2017-09-07T11:36:08Z

The Yaoundé Summit of Central African heads of state – Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic and Chad – was held during the second half of 2016, a fairly volatile period in the sub-region. Alongside the Central African Republic, where the violence which began in 2013 has sporadically re-emerged; Equatorial Guinea where, in order to develop his “Abayak holding” and his “shares in all the economic sector” the autocrat Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (in power since 1979 when he ousted his uncle, the previous president), had himself re-elected in April with 97% of the vote with his repressive apparatus dissuading any popular mobilisation; and the Republic of the Congo, where opposition to the regime has generated a confused and murderous military situation which began in Brazzaville and has since spread to the neighbouring department of Pool; the three other countries of the sub-region entered 2017 in an atmosphere of popular mobilisation.

- IV512 - September 2017 / Africa, Equatorial Guinea , Congo, Chad, Central African Republic, Gabon, Cameroon

Constitutional gerrymandering and murderous consolidation of capitalist nepotism

Jean Nanga — 2017-01-18T17:04:31Z

From Angola to Chad, Central Africa, including Equatorial Guinea, is the sub-region most affected by the decline in oil prices, because it is dependent on oil revenues. An oligarchic resistance to the respect of the rules of the democratic game, in the form of a new type of authoritarian regime combining a formal multiparty regime with a repressive confiscation of power, characterized by nepotism, is closely related to this rentier character.
Thus, in a direction contrary to the wind that blew from North Africa in 2010-2011, sweeping away in 2014 the Blaise Compaoré regime in Burkina Faso, in 2016, the Congolese, Chadian and Gabonese peoples were forced to suffer, for another term of office, disgraced regimes. The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), confronted with the postponement of the elections, which extended the presidency of Kabila, have already seen dozens of people killed following the repression of popular demonstrations. So we could speak of a "spirit of sub-region". Without forgetting that in CÃ´te d'Ivoire Ouattara has had a constitution drafted that allows the president to appoint one third of the members of the Senate.

- Features / France, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Chad, Central African Republic