CAR: " To this orphan of heartbreak, disillusioned and scarred A refugee "

New Vision Uganda reports

Hiding in the bush after C.Africa rebel attack

                     

               There is an overall sense of desperation among many people who have been affected by the crisis. 

BANGUI - When a heavily-armed convoy of former Seleka rebels zeroed in on his Central African town, Albert took his children and his livestock and fled into the bush.

This is the first report on situation outside of Bangui that I have seen published and it sounds as though the Seleka killers ( lets stop with the pretence they are rebels ) are retreating in the bloodiest way possible.

Like the majority of the residents of Sibut, a strategic town linking the capital Bangui, 180 kilometres (110 miles) away, with the north of the country, Albert was not going to stick around for the terror the rebels have wrought across the strife-torn nation.

"As I speak to you, I am hiding in the bush, about 10km from Sibut. Ninety-nine percent of the inhabitants are in the bush, there is no one left in town," he told AFP by telephone.

I suspect that there is not only nobody left in town but there is probably very little of the town left. Before Christmas I blogged about an Amnesty International report that include some satellite shots of the war crimes inflicted on the villages, there is no reason to expect that the Seleka criminals will behave any differently this time.
"We fled with our livestock, our goats, but they followed us to steal our chickens," Albert explained. "We have settled in under a big tree... we sleep on the ground with our children like animals."

Amongst all the killing that has occurred in the CAR it is hard to get a balanced perspective on losing some chickens and having to sleep under a tree. The truth is that Albert has had to flee with his family the alternative being death at the hands of Seleka, his house and possessions he couldn't carry have in all probability been stolen or destroyed and those chickens while seeming insignificant might well yet come to be the difference between life or death for Albert and his family. The CAR is now facing famine. 

The ominous convoy rode into Sibut on Wednesday night, the fighters speaking only Arab, and began committing atrocities against civilians, a paramilitary police source said.

Killers " speaking only Arab(ic)" is starting to become a very unwelcome pattern in the Central African region. The ADF Ugandan rebels ( also Muslim ) operating in the neighbouring DR Congo seem to have some Arabic speakers as well. 

Again from the UN Experts report:

The Group determined that during 2013, foreign, Arabic-speaking men have conducted military training courses and operations with ADF; however, the Group was not able to firmly establish the nationalities of these foreigners or their organizational affiliation(s).

I have seen other reports describing them as bearded Arabs. It isn't all that hard to connect the jihadi dots, or rather disconnect them in a final and terminal way.

 
At their head was Mamadou Rakis, who has been deputy police chief under former rebel-turned-president Michel Djotodia who was brought to power in a coup by his mostly Muslim Seleka rebel group in March last year.

One hopes that the ICC has issued indictments against Mamadou Rakis.

Djotodia then disbanded the Seleka group, but the fighters went rogue, spreading terror and violence across the nation and prompting Christian communities to form militia to defend themselves.

The resulting cycle of often horrific tit-for-tat violence has brought the country to its knees.

Djotodia's resignation on January 10, and the installment of a new interim government, have failed to stem the violence which has spread from the capital into the interior.

I suspect the violence will end when the Muslim community has either been wiped out or gone into exile. Djotodia it would seem had very little idea what he was unleashing. 

" The boot is now clearly on the Christian foot it may well be that the surviving Muslim community will be exiled if they are not killed. This was always going to be the outcome and to some degree it is understandable. The Muslim community allowed the Seleka rebels to massacre the Christians now the situation has been reversed the most that the peacekeepers can hope to do is provide safe zones while a solution is arrived at." 

Seleka "have flocked to all corners of the countryside, from Bangassou, Bambari, Grimari, Bria to Ndele," said Albert, naming a string of Central African towns.

"They have committed destruction, robberies in broad daylight, they break down doors, they loot, they clean out suburbs. Bad luck for you if they find you!" he added.

"They take money, cellphones. They rule the roost."

That will change as we have seen in Bangui, Seleka may have wanted to create a Muslim state in the CAR but with 85% of the population being Christian that was never going to happen. Sectarian violence that will destroy their co-religionists will be the lasting Seleka achievement.

The Red Cross based in Bangui confirmed Friday that Seleka had stormed Sibut and that residents "are holed up in the bush."

None of the 1,600 French troops in the country were present in the town of some 20,000 people when the former rebels arrived.

A Gabonese contingent from the African Union force MISCA was surrounded and then fled, according to several sources.

When the European Union forces arrive their airpower will be the game changer. It seems to be taking an awfully long time for them to arrive though.

The fighters "have moved into two bases in the town, one is at the mayor's office. They are armed to the teeth," said Albert, who said about 20 people had been killed.

"The only vehicles circulating belong to Seleka or the Red Cross. We are cut off from everything."

The attack seemed to take both the French and African troops by surprise, with spokesmen from both sides initially saying they were unaware of what was happening in the town.

However hope appeared Friday night as the French force launched an operation in the town, according to an army spokesman.

This was confirmed by a defence official in Paris who said French aircraft had been flying over the town since the afternoon.

The reconnaissance aircraft will probably move the Seleka forces on. I doubt they will want to tangle with the French troops.

A Looming Crisis

A mother is measured to see if she is malnourished at a nutritional center near Lodwar in Turkana, Kenya, on July 15, 2011.(Reuters/Kate Holt/UNICEF) 

From Al Jazeera

"After decreasing somewhat in recent months, international food prices have again risen dramatically, according to figures published on Thursday by the World Bank. Statistics for July indicate a 10 per cent rise over just the previous month, and a six percent increase over already high prices from the same time frame a year ago.

“Food prices rose again sharply, threatening the health and well-being of millions of people,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement on Thursday from the bank’s Washington headquarters. “Africa and the Middle East are particularly vulnerable, but so are people in other countries where the prices of grains have gone up abruptly.”

This problem has been on the horizon for some time now President Obama has put in place some measures to try and mitigate the problem for Africa. 

Mihag Gedi Farah, a malnourished seven-month-old child weighing only 7.5 pound (3.4kg), is held by his mother in a field hospital of the International Rescue Committee, IRC, in the town of Dadaab, Kenya, on July 26, 2011. The U.N. will airlift emergency rations this week to parts of drought-ravaged Somalia that militants banned it from more than two years ago, in a crisis intervention to keep hungry refugees from dying along what an official calls the "roads of death." Tens of thousands already have trekked to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, hoping to get aid in refugee camps. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)

That list includes countries around the world. According to the World Bank’s new Food Price Watch, between June and July prices for both maize and wheat increased by 25 per cent, while soybeans went up by 17 per cent. That leaves prices one per cent higher than the previous price peak in February 2011.

Kim noted that the World Bank has already brought its agriculture support to its highest level in the past two decades.

“We cannot allow these historic price hikes to turn into a lifetime of perils as families take their children out of school and eat less nutritious food to compensate for the high prices,” he said. “Countries must strengthen their targeted programmes to ease the pressure on the most vulnerable population.”

Something that is very difficult achieve in the best of times but almost impossible when civil wars and rebellions are also happening.

An aerial view of the Dadaab Refugee camp in eastern Kenya, where the influx of Somali's displaced by a ravaging famine remains high, on July 23, 2011. The European Union Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva has vowed to do all that is possible to help 12 million people struggling from extreme drought across the Horn of Africa, boosting aid by 27.8 million euros ($40 million). The funds come on top of almost 70 million euros ($100 million) the bloc has already contributed as assistance in the worst regional drought in decades, affecting parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and Uganda. (Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)

'Devastating volatility'

" In recent months, watchdog groups around the world have expressed frustration with a perceived lack of both urgency and creativity on the part of national and multilateral policymakers in dealing with the return of food prices to near-crisis levels.

“Today’s World Bank report is yet another alarm bell for governments that action on food price volatility is urgently required, but it’s still not clear whether they are listening,” Colin Roche, a spokesperson with the aid agency Oxfam, said on Thursday."

America is currently having the worst drought in the last 50 years that will make matters far worse soon.

Newly arrived Somalian refugees settle on the edge of the Ifo refugee camp which makes up part of the giant Dadaab refugee settlement on July 22, 2011 in Dadaab, Kenya. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images )

Roche said that Oxfam has already started to see “the devastating impact of food price volatility in developing countries that rely on food imports”.

On Monday, the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jose Graziano Da Silva, called on the Group of 20 (G20), a multilateral grouping, to engage in “coordinated action” on spiking food prices. But that same day, the G20 decided that it would wait for September’s US crop report before deciding how to proceed, a move decried by Oxfam.

“The G20 must act now before prices spiral out of control and push more people into hunger,” Roche warned. “This ‘wait and see’ attitude is unacceptable, especially when the World Bank report has warned that prices are expected to remain high and volatile.”

The truth is that they don't care scarcity means high prices for farmers and farmers insure against drought.

Somali men carry a severely malnourished child, under the instruction of a African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) peacekeeper, from a camp for internally displaced people to the peacekeeping operations headquarters where the child was admitted for emergency medical treatment, in Mogadishu, on July 15, 2011. (Reuters/Stuart Price/AU-UN IST PHOTO)

"Remembering sustainability

Much of the concern today is over the ongoing drought in the United States and in parts of Europe. The situation in the US alone could have a devastating effect on food stocks and prices internationally, as the country is the world’s primary supplier of both maize and soybeans.

As of mid-August, the United States government had classified nearly 1,800 counties throughout the country as disaster areas, mostly due to a grinding drought that, even if it were to end soon, has already gutted this year’s harvest for many grain crops.

By late July, nearly three-quarters of the US maize crop was officially rated very poor to fair. That’s a stark turnaround from forecasts made earlier this year of a record maize harvest in the US, which many were hoping could help shore up depleted foodstores in other countries.

Although more extreme than what has been seen in recent months, the new World Bank numbers extended a trend of volatility that has held over the past year as well as a trend of high food prices that dates back to 2008, when a confluence of issues created a sudden crisis in foodstores and prices that strained local communities globally and took many policymakers by surprise.

The 2008 experience helped to reverse a two-decade international decline in investment in agriculture.
“What we saw in 2008 – those high prices never really went away, especially for the developing world,” Danielle Nierenberg, director of the Nourishing the Planet programme at the Worldwatch Institute, an environment-focused think tank based, said.

“While the renewed investment in agriculture since 2008 has been much needed, it has been mostly focused on long-term, technology-focused research. We need a 180-degree turn in thinking in how we approach agriculture.”

Feeding the world is critical, countries like New Zealand can do a lot  to supply food but very little effect the price and high prices are in our national interest. But the cost of high food prices is measured in deaths by starvation in Africa. That is in nobodies interest

Somalis from southern Somalia receive food at a feeding center in Mogadishu, on July 26, 2011. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

Overlooked in today’s renewed agriculture policy, Nierenberg said, are “those things we already know work”, such as a spectrum of sustainable practices, rainwater harvesting and the use of natural fertilisers. She also highlights a need to return to national policies of storing grains and other foodstuffs, a practise that has faded in recent years.

“The silver lining of the current drought is that the West can perhaps take a new look at the sustainable practices that have been helping many African farmers combat drought,” she said. “This is an opportunity for the Western world to look to the developing world – they have a lot to teach us.”

That is crap there is no silver lining on this cloud just death due to western indifference 

Two-year-old, Aden Salaad, looks up toward his mother, unseen, as she bathes him in a tub at a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital, where Aden is receiving treatment for malnutrition, in Dagahaley Camp, on July 11, 2011. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

" A changing agriculture

Nierenberg suggested it will be at least a year or more before the full ramifications of the current situation are fully understood. Others suggest that the situation today is probably the new normal.
“My sense is that we are in a transition from an age of abundance to one of scarcity,” Lester Brown, a longtime sustainability advocate with the Earth Policy Institute said.

In this, Brown notes not only a fast-growing global population but, more importantly, the inevitable effects of rising affluence. Over the past decade alone, he said, world grain demand has doubled, from 21m tonnes per year to 41m.

While the impact of demand for biofuels has also been widely felt on grain stocks in recent years, particularly leading to the economic collapse in 2008, Brown suggested that this demand is already starting to decline."

Remember that the Greens around the world demand we use bio-fuel and this is one of the consequences.

Suldana Mohamed, 28, carries a child in Barmil on July 21, 2011. Suldana has six children and finds it harder and harder to provide them with water and food. Three of her children are not yet in school, where they would receive one meal a day.


“Once we’ve set aside the issue of ethanol” – a common biofuel – “the big thing now is the fact that three billion people in the world are trying to move up the food chain and are clamouring to consume more meat, especially in China,” he explained.

Meanwhile, for years it has been apparent that arable land is becoming increasingly scarce. Now the same can also be said of irrigation water, including in the world’s three most important grain producers, China, India and the United States.

“We need to recognise that agriculture as we know it evolved over 11,000 years of remarkable climate stability – the system is designed to maximise production within that system,” Brown said.

“But that is now changing; today, we have constant flux. And with each passing year, the systems of climate and agriculture are becoming a bit more out of sync with one another.”

There is enough for everyone and that makes the inevitable deaths that will occur our fault as global citizens.

A Somali woman weeps for her dead child at Banadir hospital in Mogadishu, on July 21, 2011. (Reuters/Feisal Omar)

To stop this we need to act now.