XPost: talk.politics.mideast, soc.culture.british, alt.activism   
   From: al92653@xyz.com   
      
   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   
      
   10/07/07 "The Independent" --- - 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.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)