France admits air raids on Darfur neighbours
By Alex Duval Smith
Published: 15 December 2006

France yesterday defended recent fighter jet raids on towns bordering Sudan's Darfur region by claiming the aggressive action was aimed at preventing regional chaos.

In the past two weeks, with minimal publicity, Mirage F1 jets have attacked and scattered a rebellion in north-eastern Central African Republic (CAR). But reports from the ground say the operation has had a devastating impact on civilians.

A French Defence Ministry spokesman said the action - which included regular Mirage sorties in neighbouring Chad where tens of thousands of refugees from Darfur are living - was in line with international calls to stabilise the region.

He claimed that without action there was a danger of a "Somalisation" of the region."We want to ensure that the Darfur crisis does not take on a further dimension. The region is crucial if we want to put a peace force in Darfur," he said.

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The French operations in CAR have been centred on repelling rebels which the government claims are - like the Darfur militias - backed by the Sudanese regime. Others say the rebels of the Union des Forces Démocratiques pour le Rassemblement (UFDR) are disgruntled allies of CAR President François Bozizé who helped him come to power in a 2003 coup and are dissatisfied with his ruling of the country along ethnic lines. Both the rebels and Sudan deny they have any links.

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President Bozizé asked for French help and Paris added 100 troops to the 200 already stationed in the country. These, including paratroopers, are on the ground with the CAR army and with Fomuc - soldiers brought in from regional allies Chad and Gabon.

According to the UFDR, the raids over several days at the start of December included an attack on Birao with six Mirage F1 fighters and four helicopter gunships. It claims the attack forced thousands of civilians to flee towards Darfur and southern Chad.

A French armed forces spokesman yesterday refused to give details of whether bombs, missiles or machinegun-fire had been used by the jets.

Humanitarian groups have not yet succeeded in reaching Birao but in phone calls to residents they have heard reports of executions and rapes by the CAR army.

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Wire Services

KAGA-BANDORO, Central African Republic (AP) - Scores of villages have been burned down in remote northwestern areas of Central African Republic during a government campaign to rout rebels, local officials and aid groups said.

An Associated Press reporter saw hundreds of burned huts in empty villages while accompanying a U.N. mission to the region this week, visiting dozens of damaged communities around the provincial capital of Kaga-Bandoro.

"Our village was burned down by the army, who accused people living here of collaborating with the rebels," Jonas Andjeligaza, the deputy chief of Zoumbeti, about 30 miles south of Kaga-Bandoro, said. He said two elderly men were burned to death in their homes last week.

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Government officials, who accused residents of sheltering rebels, have said some homes caught fire in crossfire between army and rebel fighters, but said they were not intentionally set ablaze.

"The rebels are living together with villagers who refuse to collaborate with the national army to restore order in the region," Col. Jean Christophe Bureau, Kaga-Bandoro's top official, said.

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Central African Republic, an impoverished nation of 3.6 million people in the heart of Africa, has suffered decades of army revolts, coups and rebellions since it gained independence from France in 1960.

In a few villages, people emerged slowly from surrounding forests after an AP reporter appeared along with a U.N. vehicle. Many said they were afraid to return to their homes and had remained nearby because they heard an aid group was scheduled to deliver food.

Some villagers said they were now homeless, with only trees to shelter them.

Others said they were rebels. Dressed in worn T-shirts and sandals, they carried single-shot hunting rifles and a few AK47s. One 14-year-old in boots and a red beret held a rifle ready at his side.

Many fear the increasing violence in Central African Republic is result of instability in neighboring Chad and Sudan's Darfur region.

The northwestern rebels call themselves the Popular Army for the Restoration of Democracy and the Republic. Officials say they have been active in the area since last year but little is known about them.

The group has said it is fighting because President Francois Bozize has misruled the country and demanded he step down. Rebels in the northeast have issued similar complaints.

CAR: Tens of thousands of villagers on the run
19 Dec 2006 13:55:25 GMT

KAGA BANDORO, 19 December (IRIN) - Around Dikba Elisi's oldest child's neck is a plastic whistle, so that if the family is forced to flee into maize fields and the children get lost, the adults have a better chance of finding them.

Elisi, her three young children and sister, are living under two pieces of tin they salvaged, sleeping on a single bed, hidden in swaying fields three kilometres behind their old village. Another attack, she said, was unlikely - there was nothing left to burn or steal since the family's straw-roofed shack was razed to the ground in mid-November and all the family's furniture, food and money were stolen.

"All you see here is what we saved - the rest was burned or stolen," Elisi said.

The family is among 220,000 people estimated by the United Nations in its 2007 funding appeal to have been displaced internally in the Central African Republic (CAR) and into Chad and Cameroon as a result of conflict. About 45,000 refugees are in southern Chad, living in four sites at Amboko, Yaroungou, Gondje and Dosseye run by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

On a trip through the north-central region of CAR last week, in village after village IRIN saw the charred ruins of houses and harvests. On the road north of the government-controlled town of Kaga Bandoro, 300 km north of Bangui, the capital, aid agencies counted 1,700 houses burned on one stretch less than 100 km long, with thousands more believed to have been targeted elsewhere.

There is no front-line in this war - just villages in areas held by non-government forces; those held by army loyalists; and the zones in between. The porous boundary between them has shifted steadily south and east since armed raids first started around the northern CAR towns of Paoua, Markounda and Boguila in June 2005.

By April this year the rebel movement had a name: l'Armée populaire pour la restauration de la république et la démocratie (APRD), headed by Lt Bedaya N'Djadder, a former gendarme who defected from the government's service.

In October, another front opened up in the remote northeast of the country, with a new movement, the Union des forces démocratiques pour le rassemblement (UFDR), which has said it is protesting against the 'exclusionist' policy of the CAR government, claiming it has an ethnic bias.

According to diplomats and analysts, the CAR is now split into two distinct geographical zones - the sparsely populated northeast, and the heavily populated north-central area, the focus of current fighting. A third dynamic is in the remote far west of CAR on the border with Cameroon. There, banditry and kidnappings have prompted 30,000 people to flee into Cameroon.

Since the beginning of November, the regular army has been burning villages around Kaga Bandoro, say local villagers. "About 2,000 houses were set on fire on the road between Kaga Bandoro and Ouandago," Albert Vambuel, the archbishop of Kaga Bandoro, told IRIN.

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