“Oh Jake," Brett said,
"We could have had such a damned good time together."
“Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
“Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
[update 18 December 2013] NPR just broadcast a wonderfully PC version of what-all is going on in Centrafrique. Michele Keleman reports that, according to Samantha Power,
"President Obama has just
authorized up to $100 million to support
the African Union forces on the ground."
The U.S. is also providing
equipment and training and considering military advisers to help the African troops restore order.
Have no fear, the Africans are here! -- No indication that African
“troops” have been there for some time, while the country swirled downwards
into slaughter and mayhem
1
, and that any actual
restoration of order, or effective combat, has been almost entirely the work of a handful of Frenchmen, and that within a very few days:
Lorsque les soldats français sont
arrivés à Bossangoa (Ndlr : nord-ouest du pays, le 9 décembre dernier), ils ont
immédiatement embarqué et désarmé les Séléka . … Les Séléka ont semé la terreur pendant longtemps dans cette partie
nord ouest du pays, assurément la plus dangereuse.
etc. etc., not even worth citing such things, you can read
all about it yourself in non-P.C. channels.
[Footnote : 1
“Since the beginning of the BINUCA mission, the traffic of firearms, the
violence and destruction of public or private assets never stopped, but
increased in a deadly spiral causing much more political turmoil, numerous
victims and destruction, as well as massive migrations of refugees within the
CAR itself as well as in neighbouring countries, where they are still
endangered by spreading violence and by lack of protection and assistance.” -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISCA]
I searched the NYTimes and WaPo etc. in vain for any word on
this notable $100 million move towards “Africanization” of the conflict (cf. the
equally euphemistic Nixonian “Vietnamization” of the Viet Nam war [i.e.,
surrender]); so you’ll have to
read about it here:
Incidentally -- What exactly are these “African Union forces”
(Here they come, to save the da-a-ay…
!). They are (or will be, or
might be) to give them their name:
la Misca (Mission
internationale de soutien à la Centrafrique sous conduite africaine). So far they exist primarily in the post-prandial
reveries of UN diplomats.
There is a long
history of such phantom forces.
(See below, re the Cédéao.)
[Coda] Recall
the sequence of events in Mali some months ago:
(1)
A handful of dedicated and fearless Islamist jihadis moved into Northern Mali,
and shooed away the tribesmen who had declared its independence under the name
of Azawad.
(2) At the first sign of trouble, the regular Mali army threw away their
weapons, doffed their uniforms, and evaporated into the bush.
(3)
Azawadi Christians, suddenly persecuted, fled for their lives.
(4) Finally, a handful of French fighters choppered
in and chased the jihadis into the surrounding mountains.
Remember that one?
No? Learn anything from
it? Of course not.
So, a trip down memory lane (cited in our post http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/which-paragraph-dya-read.html
)
[Update 10 April 2013]:
Mali : les troupes de la Cédéao « totalement incapables », juge le
Pentagone
Un haut responsable du Pentagone
estime que les troupes engagées au Mali par les Etats africains ne sont pas « à
la hauteur ». Et salue en revanche l'intervention française.
Note, btw: If I
cite so many things from French sources, it is not out of francophilia, or to
help you all brush up your French, but because such things are typically
whitewashed out of the P.C. anglophone press. You certainly won't hear about it on NPR.
 |
| Mission civilisatrice |
Further note:
This is by no means the first time that rainbow goodthink
has tried to prettify the scene in Africa. Thus, from our post of 28 April 2012 (http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/04/update-to-azawad.html
),
during the honeymoon period when thumbsuckers could still
dream the impossible dream, before AQMI surged in and burst their bubble:
A number of scholars have been
making soothing noises about the situation in Azawad; e.g.
where a former Ambassador and CFR
bigwig proclaims “the Tuareg rebels seem to have most of the cards”.
Even sillier is this line from a
well-bearded scholar:
“A secular Berber, pro-Western,
nation is born
in the middle of Sahara.”
in the middle of Sahara.”
Meanwhile, back in the real world,
the Touareg tribesmen have retreated from Timbuktu, their tails between their
legs, on orders fron AQIM:
Without a fight.
As for this blossoming "secular" society-- most of the Christians in Timbuktu have fled for their lives, so perhaps you could call that secularization of a sort. Anyhow, religious cleansing. For in case any of these infidels are so unwise as to hang around, Boko Haram has sent an armed contingent to do mop-up.
Nor does this desert blossom of a
secular society count as a Paradise for women and children:
And lest, lulled by the Small-Small
World happytalk from the likes of such scholars, you imagine that Azawad is a
post-racial paradise as well -- check this out:
All this spinning helps the right-thinking to feel good
about themselves; but the
unfortunate practical effect is that we are left with the illusion that by
continuing to shower millions upon billions of tax dollars upon African
intermediaries, we can then sit back and watch the garden grow. The result so far has been poverty combined with kleptocracy.
[Lord, this is all so depressing. Why am I even bothering to write about any of this? Nobody learns anything anyway, that
they don’t want to know. --
Here, read about Dickens instead:
For another instance from NPRistan, where a kernel of news
was immersed in a syrup of spin:
*
Si cela vous parle,
savourez la série
noire
en argot authentique
d’Amérique :
*
~ ~ {Original post from 10 Dec 2013:] } ~ ~
Though it’s shooting fish in a barrel, and we probably
shouldn’t bother, we devoted a post to exposing some of the sleights of hand
whereby the New York Times slants stories in the direction of the
politically correct: in
particular, as regards armed French intervention in Africa.
The P.C. narrative is:
Just lately there has been a spot of bother in one or two countries of
the continent, but the Africans themselves are going to sort it all out with
their noble peace-keeping forces -- aided, to be sure, from time to time, by
their furry friends the French (modestly shouting encouragement from the sidelines,
and making coffee for the African warriors, one supposes). These conflicts have lately taken
on an unfortunate inter-confessional dimension, in which blame is to be found
equally on all sides.
That narrative is being repeated in the case of the current
French intervention in RCA.
Thus, this morning’s New York Times refers to “shootouts
between the mostly Muslim rebel fighters who overthrew the government this year
and rival Christian militias”.
This isn’t false, per se,
just… massaged a bit. For, “mostly
Muslim” leaves open the possibility that the Séléka (to name it by its name;
that’s Sango for “alliance”) is indeed an alliance -- say, 55% Muslim to 45%
Christian; kumbaya around the
campfire to follow immediately upon our interfaith services. More realistically, Wikipedia reveals
that “Nearly all the members of Séléka are Muslim”. And this, in a country that is eighty percent Christian.
As for that “rebels versus militias” picture -- well, that’s
true enough in the present landscape;
but the causal lead-up thereto was asymmetric, with Muslims being the aggressors, and the Christian
militias a belated response in
defense. The English Wikipedia is
silent on the matter, but here is a summary of the timeline from the French:
Le 24 mars 2013, les rebelles de la
Seleka — avec à leur tête Michel Djotodia qui se proclame président de la
République — prennent Bangui, ce qui conduit le président François Bozizé à fuir
le pays pour le Cameroun.
Dans cette progression, de
nombreuses atteintes à la laïcité ont été constatées.
Le 22 août, suite aux refus de la
population civile du village de Bohong de subir les persécutions de la
Seleka16, le village subit de violentes représailles entraînant de dizaines de
morts, des viols et des pillages17, visant spécifiquement la population
chrétienne18. Un millier d'habitants quittent le village.
Dès sa prise du pouvoir en mars,
Michel Djotodia dissout la Seleka, mais les ex-rebelles se livrent par la suite
à de nombreuses exactions contre la population, notamment en octobre 2013
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9l%C3%A9ka
Reuters, too, is frank about the actual sequence of events:
The country has been gripped by
chaos since mainly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in March. Months of
looting, raping and killing since has brought reprisals by Christian militias
and allies of ousted President Francois Bozize.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/10/us-centralafrican-france-idUSBRE9B80O320131210
[ Update 18 Dec 2013: NPR is still peddling the
bonnet-blanc/blanc-bonnet version of the origin of interconfessional slaughter:
"Central African Republic is
not a place that has seen mass atrocities committed by one religious community
against another in the past," she said. "There have been some
interfaith tensions — but what we have seen in recent months since a military
takeover of the government are atrocities on religious grounds."
So: The bad
military vs. the good civilian government. Only -- Why should that unleash a frenzy of Muslim-on-Christian
killing?
Answer: Because
it wasn’t the “military” that overthrew the government, an expression that
naturally misleads the audience into thinking it was the regular national army,
as in Turkey or Egypt; it was a
Muslim rebel ragtag coalition, the Séléka, in no way representative of the
country as a whole, which is 80% Christian. As to its composition by nationality,
no-one is talking about it, thus leading everyone to assume that they were all
RCA. Perhaps they were; I have no idea. But in recent clashes between local Christian
militias and Séléka, the Muslims have been kicking butt when not
outnumbered; which leads one to
suspect that there might be some tough and seasonsed extra-RCA carpetbaggers
involved, as was the case in Iraq, in Azawad, and now in Syria. AQMI-connected?
It would be nice if someone looked into this.]
All right, so, a bad business; but fortunately the African Union has this well in hand, n’est-ce pas, fortified by gifts of brioche and ammunition from their
French buddies, who are there purely by African invitation. Thus again, the P.C. Times:
A resolution passed last week by
the Security Council tries to strike a balance. It strengthens an intervention
force of up to 6,000 African troops, to be aided by 1,600 French soldiers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/world/africa/stopping-bloodshed-in-the-central-african-republic-amid-ghosts-of-genocide.html?ref=international-home&_r=0&pagewanted=print
 |
| La France et l’Afrique announcent leur union indéfectible |
The reality has historically been otherwise, as we saw in
the case of Mali. Today’s Le Figaro has a more nuanced assessment; and as for this “support” role, their
readers are not fooled, as witness this reader’s comment:
Curieusement (!) personne en France
n'évoque qu'une dizaine ( de mémoire ) de soldats sud-Africains ont été tués en
RCA il y a quelques mois , ce qui a conduit les sud-Africains à retirer leurs
troupes en RCA - Alors parler aujourd'hui de forces armées "africaines
" pour "épauler" l'armée française .. relève, au mieux, d'un
dénis des réalités, et au pire
d'une désinformation délibérée de la part de leurs auteurs.
The Washington Post has rather a better article about
all this, containing this tidbit about some onomasiological pill-sweetening:
The French move into Central
African Republic is dubbed Operation
Sangaris, after a local butterfly. The 1979 intervention to depose
Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Central African Republic dictator and self-proclaimed
emperor accused of cannibalism, was called Operation Barracuda.
The Christian Science Monitor alertly notices a
different semantic connotation of the name that France wistfully chose for the
op:
Reality Check
A brief French intervention in the
Central African Republic? Maybe not.
When France announced deployment of
1,600 soldiers to a former colony last week, President François Hollande
promised the intervention would be quick and easy. The Central African
Republic, after all, has no terrorists, he said, unlike in Mali, where France
intervened in January.
In reality, however, CAR could turn
into a potential quagmire. Driving home that possibility is the fact that two
soldiers have already been killed, France confirmed this morning.
Sangari[s], the name chosen for the operation, refers to a red Central
African butterfly with a short lifespan.
 |
| Bonne chance, les gars ... |
And, another tidbit of Sango philology -- balaka. English Wikipedia actually has an entry for it (the French
version is so far behindhind in this):
Anti-balaka is the term used to
refer to the Christian militias formed in the Central African Republic after
the rise to power of Michel Djotodia. Anti-balaka means
"anti-machete" or "anti-sword" in the local Sango and
Mandja languages
The group name thus incidentally incorporates the actual
causal sequence of events: the two
armed camps did not spring up simultaneously, equally at fault.
~
Actually, a richer source of news about this turns out to be a blog:
~
For a selection of
individual detective stories,
available for your
Nook or Kindle,
visit this site:
~
~
A radio essay by the journalist Robert Buissiere begins by quoting the ludicrous remark
of Hollande’s likewise Socialist presidential predecessor, “"la France sera africaine ou ne sera pas". (One wonders whether, as with Shepherd’s
celebrated but bungled line, lors de la
lunaison, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, an article
was inadvertantly dropped, and the intended sentence was rather “ou ne le sera
pas”, in which case it would have been a tautology, and quite in keeping with
Mitterand’s yen for the fatuous platitude.)
Listen to it here:
http://www.medi1.com/player/player.php?i=5692501
[Update 19 Dec]
I spoke with some specialized operatives with downrange experience in
theatres of this sort, mentioned the proposed gift of $100 million (of which
they had not heard word) to forces of the African Union. They shook their heads. “If you have that kind of money to
throw around, better to use it on bribes.”
~
For more on the saga of Franco-American journalism, try this.
[Update 25 Dec 2013]
Reports concerning the behavior of the African Union troops in
Centrafrique, saviors of the situation according to Samantha Powers and NPR,
and trickling in, and are … concerning.
The Chadian forces, which blatantly favor the Muslim side,
have already antagonized the Christian majority in Bangui, further inflaming
tensions rather than calming them;
but more, they have engaged in gun battles with their brother Burundians
in MISCA. So they are
basically being sh*t-canned -- er, redeployed,
far away into to jungle where it is hoped they can do no harm. However, as the specialist interviewed
by Medi1 points out, they will then have a free hand in the still-unpacified Séléka
northern stronghold, so this actually doesn’t bode well either.
Bienvenus dans le
bourbier, les gars …
[Update, 25 Dec 2013] These, then, are the African Union forces which NPR
approvingly reported were about to be showered with $100 million from the
US. Note that we are not picking a
nit here -- the Chadian contingent is the main one in MISCA, both in terms of
manpower and field experience. And
it is not training or equipment that they lack:
Des pick-up de l'armée tchadienne,
qui forme la plus grosse part de la force africaine, filent sur le goudron. … Bien
formée et bien équipée, l'armée tchadienne était l'un des éléments clés sur
lequel Paris comptait pour soutenir sa mission en Centrafrique.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2013/12/25/01003-20131225ARTFIG00106--bangui-les-soldats-francais-entre-deux-feux.php
What they lack is something essential, and which no amount
of money can wish into existence.
A consulter aussi: Leçons de géometrie hexagonale.
A consulter aussi: Leçons de géometrie hexagonale.
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