XPost: talk.politics.mideast, soc.culture.british, alt.activism   
   From: tim.howard@suddenlink.net   
      
   al92653 wrote:   
   > 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   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)