Labrocca
10-09-2007, 12:18 AM
Seems France has it's own little invasion going on behind the scenes and has been for quite some time. The French are such bastard hypocrits.
Inside France's secret war
For 40 years, the French government has been fighting a secret war in Africa, hidden not only from its people, but from the world. It has led the French to slaughter democrats, install dictator after dictator – and to fund and fuel the most vicious genocide since the Nazis. Today, this war is so violent that thousands are fleeing across the border from the Central African Republic into Darfur – seeking sanctuary in the world's most notorious killing fields
By Johann Hari in Birao, Central African Republic
Published: 05 October 2007
I first heard whispers of this war in March, when newspapers reported in passing that the French military was bombing the remote city of Birao, in the far north-east of the CAR. Why were French soldiers fighting there, thousands of miles from home? Why had they been intervening in Central Africa this way for so many decades? I could find no answers here – so I decided to travel there, into the belly of France's forgotten war.
On the battlefield - Birao
I am standing now on its latest battlefield, looking out over abandoned mud streets streaked with ash. The city of Birao is empty and echoing, for the first time in 200 years. All around are miles of burned and abandoned homes, with the odd starved child scampering through the wreckage. What were all these buildings? On one faded green sign it says Ministry of Justice, on a structure reduced to a charcoal husk. In the market square, the people who have returned are selling a few scarce supplies – rice and manioc, the local yeasty staple food – and talking quietly. At the edges of the town, there are African soldiers armed and trained by the French, lolling behind sandbags, with machine guns jutting nervously at passers-by. They are singing weary nationalist anthems and dreaming of home.
To get here, you have to travel for eight hours on a weekly UN flight that carries eight passengers at most, and then ride on the back of a rusting flat-top truck for an hour along ravaged and broken roads. It is hard to know when you have arrived, because you are greeted only by emptiness and silence. What has happened here? Sitting amid the mud and dust and sorrow, I find Mahmoud, one of the 10 per cent of Birao's residents who have returned to the rubble.
He is a thin-faced 45-year-old farmer, and explains, in a low, slow voice, how his home town came to this. "I woke up for morning prayers on 4 March and there was gunfire everywhere. We were very frightened so we stayed in the house and hoped it would stop. But then in the early afternoon my brother's children came running to our house, screaming and crying. They told us the Forcés Armées Centrafricanes [Faca – the army trained and equipped by the French, on behalf of their friendly neighbourhood strongman, President François Bozize] had gone into their house. They wouldn't calm down and explain. So I ran there, and I saw my brother on the floor outside, dead. His wife explained they had forced their way in and rounded him up, along with three men who lived nearby. They took them out on to the street and shot them one by one in the head."
Mahmoud's friend, Idris, lived nearby, and feared he, too, would be shot. He says now: "We could see the villages burning and the children were screaming and really scared, so we ran two kilometres out into the jungle. From there we could see our whole city on fire. We fled along the river and stayed out there. We ate fish, but there weren't many. Some days we couldn't catch anything and we starved. The children were so terrified. Still, when they hear a loud noise, they think there are guns coming and they start shaking." Idris looks off into the distance and continues: "On the fourth day, we saw the French planes come. They each had six rockets that they fired. The explosions were loud. We don't know what they were targeting, or why. Then the French soldiers arrived." A military truck filled with French soldiers rumbles by not long after, its tanned troops wearing designer sunglasses and a "why am I here?" anxiety.
As Mahmoud and Idris talk it gets dark, and a suffocating blackness and silence falls on the city. There is no electricity and no moonlight. They explain in this blackness that the French-backed troops began firing and the French military began bombing in March for one reason: the desperate locals had begun to rise up against President Bozize, because he had done nothing for them. People here were tired of the fact that "there are no schools, no hospitals, and no roads". "We are completely isolated," they explain. "When it rains, we are cut off from the world because the roads turn to mud. We have nothing. All the rebels were asking was for government help." As I stumble around Birao, I hear this every time: the rebels were simply begging for government help for the hungry, abandoned people. Even the bemused French soldiers and the Bozize lackeys sent to the area admit this privately. Yet the French response was with bombs against the rebels' pick-up points. Why? What is there here that they want?
I look out towards the jungle and realise many of Birao's residents are still hiding out there, risking the wild beasts. In the similarly burned-out areas in the north-west, I drive out into the jungle with Unicef and find these clusters of starving families scattered everywhere. In one cleared patch, I find a group of four men with their wives and mothers, clearing an area of ground with their bare hands where they will try to plant peanuts. They are living in handmade huts and set traps to catch mice to eat. Ariette Nulguhom is cradling her eight-month-old grandson with his distended little belly and praying he will survive another night. She tells me: "He's been sick for a long time. We tried to get him to a nurse but there aren't any. We think it is malaria but there is no medicine here. We don't know what will happen... We are all weak and feverish. We're exhausted because we work all day, every day. I have not eaten for days now." When they left behind their houses, they left behind access to clean water, electricity, and medicine. When the Faca burned those homes, they burned away the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries for these families, too.
This is a forgotten corner of a forgotten country. Birao lies and dies in the far north-east of the Central African Republic. CAR itself has a population of just 3.8 million, spread across a territory bigger than Britain's, landlocked at the exact geographical heart of Africa. It is the least-reported country on earth. Even the fact that 212,000 people have been driven out of their homes in this war doesn't register on the global radar. In Birao, I realise I am too close to the immediate horror to find the deeper explanations for this war. I only begin to uncover the origins of this story when I stumble across a very rare find in the CAR – an old man....
Read more here:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article3030349.ece
Inside France's secret war
For 40 years, the French government has been fighting a secret war in Africa, hidden not only from its people, but from the world. It has led the French to slaughter democrats, install dictator after dictator – and to fund and fuel the most vicious genocide since the Nazis. Today, this war is so violent that thousands are fleeing across the border from the Central African Republic into Darfur – seeking sanctuary in the world's most notorious killing fields
By Johann Hari in Birao, Central African Republic
Published: 05 October 2007
I first heard whispers of this war in March, when newspapers reported in passing that the French military was bombing the remote city of Birao, in the far north-east of the CAR. Why were French soldiers fighting there, thousands of miles from home? Why had they been intervening in Central Africa this way for so many decades? I could find no answers here – so I decided to travel there, into the belly of France's forgotten war.
On the battlefield - Birao
I am standing now on its latest battlefield, looking out over abandoned mud streets streaked with ash. The city of Birao is empty and echoing, for the first time in 200 years. All around are miles of burned and abandoned homes, with the odd starved child scampering through the wreckage. What were all these buildings? On one faded green sign it says Ministry of Justice, on a structure reduced to a charcoal husk. In the market square, the people who have returned are selling a few scarce supplies – rice and manioc, the local yeasty staple food – and talking quietly. At the edges of the town, there are African soldiers armed and trained by the French, lolling behind sandbags, with machine guns jutting nervously at passers-by. They are singing weary nationalist anthems and dreaming of home.
To get here, you have to travel for eight hours on a weekly UN flight that carries eight passengers at most, and then ride on the back of a rusting flat-top truck for an hour along ravaged and broken roads. It is hard to know when you have arrived, because you are greeted only by emptiness and silence. What has happened here? Sitting amid the mud and dust and sorrow, I find Mahmoud, one of the 10 per cent of Birao's residents who have returned to the rubble.
He is a thin-faced 45-year-old farmer, and explains, in a low, slow voice, how his home town came to this. "I woke up for morning prayers on 4 March and there was gunfire everywhere. We were very frightened so we stayed in the house and hoped it would stop. But then in the early afternoon my brother's children came running to our house, screaming and crying. They told us the Forcés Armées Centrafricanes [Faca – the army trained and equipped by the French, on behalf of their friendly neighbourhood strongman, President François Bozize] had gone into their house. They wouldn't calm down and explain. So I ran there, and I saw my brother on the floor outside, dead. His wife explained they had forced their way in and rounded him up, along with three men who lived nearby. They took them out on to the street and shot them one by one in the head."
Mahmoud's friend, Idris, lived nearby, and feared he, too, would be shot. He says now: "We could see the villages burning and the children were screaming and really scared, so we ran two kilometres out into the jungle. From there we could see our whole city on fire. We fled along the river and stayed out there. We ate fish, but there weren't many. Some days we couldn't catch anything and we starved. The children were so terrified. Still, when they hear a loud noise, they think there are guns coming and they start shaking." Idris looks off into the distance and continues: "On the fourth day, we saw the French planes come. They each had six rockets that they fired. The explosions were loud. We don't know what they were targeting, or why. Then the French soldiers arrived." A military truck filled with French soldiers rumbles by not long after, its tanned troops wearing designer sunglasses and a "why am I here?" anxiety.
As Mahmoud and Idris talk it gets dark, and a suffocating blackness and silence falls on the city. There is no electricity and no moonlight. They explain in this blackness that the French-backed troops began firing and the French military began bombing in March for one reason: the desperate locals had begun to rise up against President Bozize, because he had done nothing for them. People here were tired of the fact that "there are no schools, no hospitals, and no roads". "We are completely isolated," they explain. "When it rains, we are cut off from the world because the roads turn to mud. We have nothing. All the rebels were asking was for government help." As I stumble around Birao, I hear this every time: the rebels were simply begging for government help for the hungry, abandoned people. Even the bemused French soldiers and the Bozize lackeys sent to the area admit this privately. Yet the French response was with bombs against the rebels' pick-up points. Why? What is there here that they want?
I look out towards the jungle and realise many of Birao's residents are still hiding out there, risking the wild beasts. In the similarly burned-out areas in the north-west, I drive out into the jungle with Unicef and find these clusters of starving families scattered everywhere. In one cleared patch, I find a group of four men with their wives and mothers, clearing an area of ground with their bare hands where they will try to plant peanuts. They are living in handmade huts and set traps to catch mice to eat. Ariette Nulguhom is cradling her eight-month-old grandson with his distended little belly and praying he will survive another night. She tells me: "He's been sick for a long time. We tried to get him to a nurse but there aren't any. We think it is malaria but there is no medicine here. We don't know what will happen... We are all weak and feverish. We're exhausted because we work all day, every day. I have not eaten for days now." When they left behind their houses, they left behind access to clean water, electricity, and medicine. When the Faca burned those homes, they burned away the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries for these families, too.
This is a forgotten corner of a forgotten country. Birao lies and dies in the far north-east of the Central African Republic. CAR itself has a population of just 3.8 million, spread across a territory bigger than Britain's, landlocked at the exact geographical heart of Africa. It is the least-reported country on earth. Even the fact that 212,000 people have been driven out of their homes in this war doesn't register on the global radar. In Birao, I realise I am too close to the immediate horror to find the deeper explanations for this war. I only begin to uncover the origins of this story when I stumble across a very rare find in the CAR – an old man....
Read more here:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article3030349.ece