Wednesday 19 October 2011

Two weeks from now


Now it is less than two weeks left here in Bangui. Time goes by so fast, it is unbelievable. It feels like I just arrived but at the same time as if I have been here forever. Exactly two weeks from now I’ll be in Nairobi waiting for my flight to Amsterdam where I’ll get on the plane that will take me to a freezing cold, rainy Stockholm. 

I’ve tried to get an overview of the material I have so far to be able to identify who I should meet up with to fill the gaps during those last weeks. I must admit that I am not as motivated as in the beginning. I feel a bit tired now after weeks of intensive research, meeting so many different people, so many impressions. On my list there are about six people I would like to meet, this far I have met with about thirty, some of them both formally and informally. I also got quite a few documents that are interesting for my research to support some of the findings from the interviews, meetings and observations. 

I have to try to schedule the meetings for next week as I will be busy Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I have been given the occasion to participate as an observer at a seminar arranged by the Ministry of Public Security and the police with the support from BINUCA. The aim is to train and inform high ranking police officers on SSR matters. It will be three very interesting days and hopefully I’ll get to talk to some people there as well apart from observing the seminar as such. I am very grateful to the person who arranged this and for everything else he has done. Without him I would never have been able to conduct this study and meet with all those people. If you read this THANK YOU!

I have very ambiguous feelings about leaving Bangui, I really would love to stay longer. I adore this town Bangui la coquette, its people and everything about it. It is so natural. There is an atmosphere here that makes me feel free and relaxed in a fantastic way. At the same time Sweden is calling, with the winter coming, the exciting internship, friends and family awaiting me. I will definitely come back to Bangui however, there is no doubt about that.  

Tuesday 11 October 2011

1000 elite soldiers...


Yesterday I got an email forwarded to me from a person working at my university department. A girl on undergraduate level had some questions concerning the ongoing conflict(s) here. She is going to do an analysis of the conflict between CPJC and the government. The only problem with that is that the CPJC does not in fact fight the government but is trying to get control of the diamonds which has resulted in clashes between the afore mentioned and another rebel group, UFDR. For updated info have a look at Le Confident  and Jeune Afrique

This made me think about how easy it is to get things wrong. Rebels and armed groups often evoke the image of Che Guevara and other revolutionaries but here it is difficult to say that the armed groups have a political agenda. More often than not the objective of the rebellion is simply about personal interests. As soon as the leaders get what they want, be it a position in the administration, a car, a house or the possibility to be ambassador abroad they sign the peace agreement. This is ridiculous. I mean seriously, how do you negotiate with that? I think we should call these armed movements its right name, bandits that breed on the population and have no interest whatsoever to change anything. The political opposition suffers as there is no room to negotiate if you are not armed. For more information have a look at this article.


I talked to a person who said, “with 1000 elite soldiers we could wipe them out”. Probably yes. Then again, there is no interest in doing so. Instead the LRA, Chadian rebels, the Central African armed groups and bandits are free to do as they please as the government does not control more than 30% of the country. The people have to play the game, at the same time trying to please the illegal armed groups and the state security forces. As the French say, “c’est pas evident”. Often the people find themselves caught in the cross-fire, accused from both sides of being loyal to the enemy. 

On top of the political-military groups, bandits and foreign armed groups there are ethnic conflicts in the communities, clashes between pastoralists and farmers, self-defence forces... You name it. Try to do a conflict analysis of that...

Friday 7 October 2011

Central African Winter


In the last posts I have been given a rather dark picture of the situation here. Despite all the problems in this country its people are really something special. I just love the Central African sense of humour, how they mock me, each other and everything they can.

As I am convinced that to be able to do good research you have to understand the context I have been trying to meet as many people as possible, from as different backgrounds as possible. As for the international community here it is quite easy in the sense that we are not that many and it is easy to get to know people. When it comes to finding Central African friends I also have been quite successful, mainly thanks to my rather unconventional way of going out, get lost and then saved by people.

One night I went out with the guy who drove me home when the Medicins Sans Frontières abandoned me which I wrote about earlier. We went to a concert which was just crazy fun where this great band consisting of five men and two dancers (not sure whether or not to include the dancers in the band) performed. Performed is the right word. One of the singers was a man in his fifties dressed in a linen suit and a hat, one guy had some kind of weird tights and a top and a third one was seriously wearing a fur (!) doing the US gangsta thing. Love it. The crowd consisting of me and some sixty Central Africans was dancing like crazy as well. Normally I love to dance and consider myself being quite good at it but here I feel stiff like a dead man trying to do Michael Jackson moves. So I only dance when I am drunk here, very Swedish indeed.

After that we continued to sing karaoke. I don’t know if you have heard about “Norwegian karaoke” but it is done in the following way: you listen to music, preferably in your headphones and then you sing out loud. Hopefully you know the lyrics but if not, just do it anyway. The Central African way to sing karaoke is as follows: bring a band to a bar, preferably quite bad with untuned instruments, allow anyone who still can stand to get up on stage and sing along with whatever song the band plays, with whatever lyrics that person might deem suitable. I must admit that both the Norwegian and the Central African ways are much more amusing than conventional karaoke. 

After karaoke it was time to do the nightclubs so the guy and I went to the one where they mainly play Congolese music. Suddenly he was gone, had disappeared. As I am married and have no interest in anything else than going out and have a good time I assume he found someone who did and left. So 4 am I find myself abandoned once again, yet for another reason. No luck here. However, thanks to that I found a good friend. A Central African girl saw me and invited me to join her company. We ended up in “les quartiers”, the hoods so to say, having chicken and local beer. What a cliché, but a nice one. She is really fantastic. Saturday I joined her and her family (70 people) at her mom’s house. We ate, drank and laughed. So life here isn’t all bad.

What I do feel however is that the Central African people deserve so much better, I mean seriously, there is not even one proper road in the capital, power cuts are getting worse every day, no water, no health care, the security forces harassing the population arbitrarily. Apparently the government turned down offers from both the Chinese and the French to build a new power plant. The government wanted the money to do it themselves. One can ask why.  The Chinese and the French said no. 

The people here are abandoned by its own government and we don’t do a damn thing about it, we are accomplice. You can really feel the frustration in the air. One day the people will have had enough. The rainy season is almost over now, the temperature falling, they say it is the winter that is coming. Let it come a Central African spring...

Tuesday 4 October 2011

Un trou noir du cul du monde


Haven’t been writing for quite a long time. I have been sick, busy and culturally exhausted. Bangui is a very odd place. I still like it a lot but it exhausts me now and then. 

As for work I do progress, I try to focus on different aspects that have affected the SSR process here with the intention to illuminate how come there has been so little progress. Although I haven’t done any proper analysis my first impression is that there are so many problems I don’t really know where to start. The cooperation between the donors is bad, there are several ongoing projects that do enter in the SSR sphere but yet they are not a part of the formal process, secondly there is no political will whatsoever. During the last weeks some of the donors together with national actors have tried to re-launch the process but it is blocked on highest political level. Thirdly, the question of local ownership is quite interesting in a context where there is such low capacity. Who to work with? One thing is sure though, the local actors (apart from the elite in Bangui) have been completely left out. Civil society has only been included to legitimize the process etc.
Furthermore, the amount of money that “disappears” is chocking. As some people from the international community have put it: “not a single project here works”. Well....

Another aspect that I think can explain the lack of effects from the SSR process is the almost complete lack of interest from the international actors here. In other places at least there is a genuine engagement, here you hear comments like, “we just try to keep the country from falling into complete anarchy and somalisation”. I love that engagement, to just keep the people from drowning, supporting leaders that don’t give a damn about the population and actually feed the corrupt system. If only the taxpayers in Europe would know. Millions of Euros have disappeared and when Brussels or the capitals are informed no one listens and there is no change. We just continue. I seriously think that the international presence here only makes things worse. It is not always the national actors that make disappear the money but equally some of the well known institutions of the international community. 

I might have chosen one of the most extreme places when it comes to corruption and lack of progress. People here say that during the last two years the security has diminished, development has stalled and violation of human rights is on the increase. 

I think the donors need to sit down and ask themselves what the objective of the engagement are, they need to evaluate what their engagement has generated and do so with critical self-reflection. It is easy to say that the Central Africans are corrupt but what about us? We feed the corruption and many of the international organisations here are equally corrupt. Tragic. 

It is not all dark but it is a dark hole. Never ever land, never been land or just the dark side of the earth. The Central African Republic is “un trou noir du cul du monde”, forgotten lawless land and the people are suffering. It is a damn shame.