CAR: The Economist sinks the boot.

The Economist reports

( I will probably update this later it is worth a read.)

The Central African Republic

On the brink

One of Africa’s most miserable countries looks as unstable as ever

ARGUABLY the poorest country in Africa, the Central African Republic (CAR) is on the verge of being taken over by rebels. A month after starting a campaign in the north, they have captured a string of towns across the country, halting their advance in Damara, an hour’s drive from the capital, Bangui. The CAR’s embattled president, François Bozizé, has been pondering whether to engage the rebels in talks in Libreville, capital of nearby Gabon. The idea would be to create a transitional government of national unity pending an election. The rebels are demanding his resignation as a precondition for a deal. The African Union has been touting a compromise to give Mr Bozizé—and the CAR—a breathing-space. Few people outside Africa seem to give much of a damn.

Ouch.

The landlocked CAR, endlessly buffeted by coups and rebellions, has been misgoverned since it got independence from France in 1960. The rebels, a hotchpotch of factions known collectively as Seleka (“the alliance” in a local language, Sango), say Mr Bozizé breached the terms of peace deals in 2007 and 2008, whereby they would take part in government and integrate their forces into the national army.

They aren't pulling any punches   

Mr Bozizé came to power after a brief civil war in 2003, but, despite winning elections in 2005 and 2011, his grip has long been shaky. He has had to cope with mutinies, banditry and the spillover from conflicts in neighbouring Chad, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Uganda’s brutal Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, has created mayhem on the CAR’s south-eastern fringe.

Mr Bozizé has previously called on foreign forces from the Economic Community of Central African States, a ten-country regional club, to prop up his feeble army. Gabon and Cameroon are now offering extra troops, perhaps too late to save him.

In the past France used to keep an eye on its former territory, pulling strings behind the scenes and occasionally deploying its own troops to keep order. It has 500-odd soldiers in a base near Bangui, and 1,000 or so French civilians in the country. But it seems clear that this time President François Hollande is loth to get involved. A crisis in Mali, at the western end of the Sahara, where a group linked to al-Qaeda has grabbed half the country, is far more serious—and Mr Hollande is nervous enough about getting tied up there.

Most of the CAR’s 4.5m people are subsistence farmers. Political instability has prevented the country’s development, despite an abundance of timber, gold, uranium and diamonds. In its recently published quality-of-life survey of 221 of the world’s major cities, Mercer, an American consultancy, ranked Bangui 220th, a whisker ahead of Baghdad. The CAR looks set to rot away on its own.