Many of Africa's armed conflicts constitute wicked problems. Across parts of the continent, organized violence is fusing political, criminal and extremist motives, explicitly targeting civilians and involving multiple armed groups. In many cases, regional players are involved — profiting from disorder even as they sue for peace. Complicating matters, national and subnational governments suffer from chronic weaknesses, with limited control over their borders and territories. Due to the many security dilemmas arising from competing groups and the corrosive effects of predatory violence, these conflicts are exceedingly difficult to resolve.
Central African Republic (CAR), one of the world's poorest and most fragile countries, has been convulsed by successive armed conflicts since independence in 1960. Waves of armed conflict have weakened the country and eviscerated the economy. The most recent violent insurrection between 2012 and 2014 pitted a coalition of heavily armed groups (the Séléka, which means “alliance” in Sanga, a local language) in the north and east against the government and local self-defense groups (the anti-Balaka, which some experts claim refers to so-called “anti-AK47 bullets”) in the south and west of the country. Despite a series of internationally brokered peace agreements in 2014, 2015 and 2017 and the deployment of over 14,700 peacekeepers, the country is divided. There is a real chance of a long-term military stalemate with devastating humanitarian consequences.[2]
In CAR, as in other war-ravaged countries, cities are often key sites of violent contestation and confrontation. As Africa urbanizes, these tendencies are increasing. Government forces and armed groups frequently compete over the control of urban centers — including their commercial networks but also for hearts and minds. Civilians also routinely seek protection and sanctuary in cities, disrupting agricultural production in surrounding areas. Cities — and their peripheries — are also critical entry-points for intervention to promote stability and security, a fact that many humanitarian and development organizations have been relatively slow to grasp. Given the traditional focus on rural areas, there is comparatively limited understanding of the dynamics of conflict affected cities, much less the effectiveness of strategies to prevent and reduce urban organized violence.
International efforts to stabilize CAR are squarely focused on protecting civilians, dismantling the country’s many organized armed groups and restoring state authority. Not without good reason — armed groups are aggressively franchising, evidence that their extortion and smuggling businesses offer decent returns. Notwithstanding its efforts to enforce a peace process and a clear mandate to disarm, demobilize and demobilize the ex-Séléka and anti-Balaka coalitions, UN-led efforts are incremental. Yet a series of locally-mediated peace deals and decentralized violence reduction programs have made progress. To better understand these efforts, this article describes the experience of UN-facilitated interventions in a single city — Bria. Given its history, location and role in the country, the case of Bria is especial emblematic.
Local peace agreements and community violence reduction (CVR) measures can potentially help contain and reduce violence in modern contemporary armed conflicts. They are not a substitute for an inclusive political agreement, but rather a stability measure to create and maintain momentum. Nor is CVR designed to replace longer-term development efforts. The reality is that more traditional peace agreements, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) and area-based development strategies, while critical, are often insufficiently nimble to adjust to fast-changing realities on the ground. Their failure can also lead to international and domestic reticence to engage. While one must be cautious to extrapolate generalizable lessons from a single case, there are nevertheless useful insights from Bria that can potentially inform peace support operations globally.
Organized Chaos
Bria, the capital of Haute Kotto district, is at the literal center of CAR’s complex and overlapping armed conflicts. The city, with a population of roughly 86,000[3] (compared to 35,000 when the last census was administered in 2003), has suffered from repeated waves of armed conflict. It was spared large-scale violence during the civil war of 2012-2014 since it was rapidly taken by the ex-Séléka factions. The most explosive occurred in November 2016[4] when fighting broke out between armed groups killing 92 people and displacing roughly 12,000 residents. Subsequent outbreaks of reprisal violence led by the anti-Balaka, including against Fulani residents and so-called Arabs, in February 2017, resulted in another 50 deaths and the displacement of another 75,000 people — many of them crowded next to the UN base. Today, roughly 1,100 UN peacekeepers and civilians in Bria are present, seeking to maintain stability.
Bria, like most cities, is a victim of its geography. For one, it is a key artery for commerce and sits at the intersection of several key trading routes for CAR as a whole. A wide range of goods and services are shipped through Bria since it serves a key transport corridor from Sudan and Chad to the north, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda to the south, and the Republic of the Congo (RoC) and Cameroon to the west. While near constant population churn has and does nurture vibrant commercial links, it can also translate into transactional exchanges that limit the formation of bridging and associative social capital. Given the heavy involvement of foreigners in the local economy, including Chadians, Mauritanians, Sudanese, Malians, Lebanese and others, there is relatively weak social cohesion across ethnic lines.
More fundamentally, Bria is one of the principle diamond and gold mining centers of CAR, rivaled only by Ndassima, Boda and Sam Ouandja. The city is dotted with dozens of trading houses advertising their wares, and smuggling is known to be routine. Small alluvial diamond pits are common across CAR and are often overseen by a combination of local commercial agents and armed groups. Muslim traders have long dominated the retail market, a source of some grievance among the majority Christian population. While these pits serve as employment generators for Christians and Muslims alike, they are also fundamentally linked to local and regional war economies reaching Antwerp, Delhi and Dubai and sustaining the ex-Séléka affiliates, in particular.
Predictably, there are multiple religious and ethnic fault-lines inflaming tensions in Bria, and across CAR more generally. The city is currently spatially divided between western and northern neighborhoods dominated by the so-called anti-Balaka self defense militias and the better organized ex-Séléka armed groups who control the center and east of the city. The anti-Balaka, all of them Christians and animists, are composed of two factions led by Bokassa and Thephile Ndoumba. Bokassa established his headquarters in the city’s IDP camp in front of the UN base.[5] Meanwhile, Theophile Ndoumba continues to reside in Bornou, a Muslim majority neighborhood in the eastern area of Bria.
The ex-Séléka factions in Bria include several armed groups, all of whom have a presence in other parts of the country. Among the most influential is the Front Populaire pour la Renaissance de la Centrafrique (FPRC) — itself divided between two factions — and the Mouvement Patriotique pour la Centrafrique (MPC) dissidents elements. Their membership is principally from Chad and Sudan, though also include Goula, Rounga, Sara and Youlou ethnic groups from CAR. Meanwhile, the Rassemblement Patriotique pour le Renouveau de Centrafrique (RPRC) and the Mouvement des Libérateurs Centrafricains pour la Justice (MLCJ), are also active. Another group operating in Bria is the Union pour la Paix en Centrafrique (UPC) in the east of the city which essentially represents the minority Fulani.[6] The sheer number of groups operating in the city ensures an unstable and violent disequilibrium.
Notwithstanding ethnic and religious fault-lines, political and economic factors are most frequently identified by the leadership of ex-Séléka armed groups as the drivers of conflict in Bria and other cities across the country.[7] While clearly benefiting from the diamond and gold smuggling and dominating the commercial sector, the predominantly Muslim populations in the north and east of CAR were largely excluded from Government service. Since independence key government and civil service posts have been reserved for the Christian majority, with power concentrated in the capital, Bangui. The insurrection in 2012-2014 which led to a temporary coalition of Sékéla fighters to take the capital and replace president Francois Bozizé was thus politically motivated. Meanwhile, geo-political factors — from the interventionist postures of Chadian and Sudanese authorities to intervention from France, the US and most recently the Russians – are alternately stabilizing and destabilizing. All of these dynamics are keenly appreciated by the leadership of the country’s 14 recognized armed groups.
A UN Approach to Stability
Almost a dozen peacekeeping missions were deployed to CAR since the 1990s, more than any other country on earth. For example, in 1998, the UN Security Council authorized MINURCA to keep the peace in the wake of a succession of coup attempts. The mission was replaced by a peace-building operation, BONUCA, in 2000. Seven years later, the UN established a regional mission — MINURCAT — to protect civilians in both CAR and Chad. Soon after, in 2010, yet another integrated peace-building office was established, BINUCA. When civil war restarted in 2012, two separate missions were launched by the African Union and France — FOMAC and MISCA. MINUSCA, set-up in 2014, subsumed BINUCA and MISCA. Since there is virtually no government infrastructure or services outside the capital, the latest mission has its work cut out for it.
The latest peacekeeping mission is by far the largest, involving the deployment of over 14,700 military, police and civilian personnel. MINUSCA has a robust mandate to protect civilians and dismantle armed groups, but it has been wary of resorting to military power precisely to avoid making a bad situation even worse. As in so many other modern wars, the UN is also a target: since MINUSCA was launched, 73 blue helmets have died trying to enforce peace. The country has earned a reputation as one of the most dangerous humanitarian operations in the world: more aid workers are targeted in CAR than Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia or Syria.
A patchwork of peace agreements have rarely held longer than a few years. A high point came in 2015, when a new deal was struck between the government and ten armed groups. Backed by international partners, the Bangui National Forum generated commitments to dispose of their arms, renounce fighting and free all child soldiers. It also recommended changes in the nationality code, the expansion of government presence in under-serviced areas, and security sector and judicial reforms. But that optimism quickly dissipated. Some armed groups were unwilling to make concessions, and there was no way to credibly enforce the deal among the rest of them. Yet another peace deal signed in 2017 with 13 rebel groups was met with understandable skepticism.
