Drive north from the capital, and you soon discover why
relief workers call the Central African Republic a post-apocalyptic country.
After a year of mass murder, the villages are abandoned and the roads eerily
empty and desolate.
The checkpoints are controlled by cold-eyed men from
largely Christian militias who brandish knives, machetes, swords and other
crude weapons. Occasionally, a decrepit taxi comes barreling down the road,
ludicrously overloaded with 15 or 20 refugees, some piled on the roof. At
times, a slow-moving convoy appears – busloads of terrified Muslims, with an
escort of heavily armed peacekeepers to protect them from slaughter……..This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Never again,” the world said after 800,000 died in Rwanda. Yet two decades
later – Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the 100-day
carnage – the killing continues. It continues in terrible wars such as the
conflict in Syria, but also much closer to the scene of the tragedy that
shocked the world in 1994.......To Read More.....
My Take - This article outlines the events clearly. However, this article also points a lot fingers a western powers - especially Canada, who has its own separatist problems - who haven't committed very much in the way of men, money or material. Why? There is one thing this article clearly omits - workable solutions! There's a lot of rhertoic, but ....workable solutions..... I didn't see one!
Someone could go in and forcibly disarm everyone I suppose, but the U.S. tried that in Somalia. We know how that worked out. And why not just let the surrounding African countries handle this?
Of course I would imagine these countries have many of the same problems, they don’t have the resources and they don't have competent military units to do the job properly. As horrible as this is, there is one overwhelming fact that western powers have finally concluded. We will never be able to reason with these people because they don’t want to be reasoned with. There is no way to convince them to stop the killing because they don’t want to stop the killing. There is no way there’s ever going to be peace in these countries because - and we really need to get this - these are still ancient tribal societies with modern weapons and trappings, just as it is in the Muslim world.
Make no mistake about this – the U.N. is a corrupt failure and no amount effort by them is going to embarrass western countries to invest much or anything in this mess. There are some things that fall under the scope of individual responsibility. This is their mess, and they must create their solutions. And if no one – I mean no one – sends either side money or supplies they will find some kind of solution right fast. Will it be an ideal solution? Not by western standards, but they don’t live in the west.
They’re on their own, and I believe this is a pattern that is going to play out more and more. Obama has been criticized for not getting strong on the Crimea. That is the one thing he’s been right on. He should have kept his mouth shut on Egypt, Tunis, Libya and finally he did on Syria. There is no fixing a problem unless people want it fixed - and these tribal societies are unfixable by outsiders.
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