Mamadou Diouf, director of Columbia University’s Institute for African Studies, speaks to The Boganda Journal about the changing interpretations of African conflicts, the Sahel-Savannah nexus, and France’s longstanding role in its former African colonies.
TBJ: How is the academic and scholarly world interpreting the conflict in the Central African Republic?
MD: “With Central African Republic, it’s really a kind of turning point in which conflicts are debated, discussed in Africa – within Africa by policymakers, outside of Africa by people who are in human rights or by journalists. Usually it was kind of simple picture.
Along the Sahara and the eastern part of Africa is where you have religious conflicts: the Horn, East Africa, and Sahara-Sahel. Everything else is “ethnic.”
What is actually happening with this kind of interpretation is that with the crisis in the Ivory Coast, we began looking at a geography in which the north is Muslim and the south is Christian or “pagan.”
For the Ivory Coast, you could still think about such a geography from the Sahel to the Savannah.
But the Central African Republic is quite different. And if you look at the accounts of what is happening there – from the first post-colonial crisis to the creation of the “empire” by Bokassa, and many of the civil wars which were going on – no mention of Islam.
You had people discover that you had Muslims in Central Africa with the conflict. Before they didn’t know.
The discussion was framed in a way that was saying, ‘The Muslims are coming from Chad.’ Again the Sahel-Savannah transition becomes a very important element in interpreting what is happening there.
But if you look carefully, of course you have people from Chad there, you have people from the Sahel coming and settling there – Senegalese, Malian, etc. – for the simple reason that this is part of a continuity of a French Empire.
This is a space in which West Africa and equatorial Africa were within the empire; these were spaces where people were moving.
And in many cases, many of these people were moving, and many of the people who converted to Islam in the Central African Republic, as well as people coming from Chad, were usually traders, and were usually settling in cities and creating their own communities, usually around a market or around a Mosque.
In many cases, they were not involved in the political process; they were not social and political actors. So in moments of crisis you see exactly a situation in which identifications are shifting – from social or cultural to religious.
In cases in where the state was the main provider of resources – resources people were accessing as political actors, as I was saying Muslim communities were usually marginal in the political process, but very powerful in some cases in the economic system.
When the state collapsed, they are in many cases the people who are able to maintain a kind of prosperity. They can keep accumulating resources – not a lot – but being able to survive in a system which collapsed, which of course creates tensions with other communities, a tension which forces Muslims to enter the political system to try to defend themselves.
As a result, they move from a position of a victim to a position of people who are able to defend themselves. In some cases, they are able to launch attacks – and it has happened [in the Central African Republic], where the Séléka was able to organize and take over.”
TBJ: There have been retaliatory attacks by both the Séléka and the anti-Balaka. Have those two entities, since the state has collapsed, taken on religious identities?
MD: “Absolutely. You know in a situation where you no longer have rules, you no longer have protection, the only way you can protect not only yourself, but your wife, your family, your community, you have to find elements of identification. In this case, what has happened is religion.
Amongst Christians, you can have competition amongst ethnic lines, but this is put aside. But for the Muslims – and this is the complication of conversion – the kind of process of converting to Islam in Africa is a process in which you shed your ethnic identity and you redefine yourself as a Muslim.
It’s why a lot of Central Africans are being qualified as North Africans, not Central Africans, they are coming from somewhere else. And I was saying, in many cases, it’s not true, but you cannot prove it.
When you convert, you pick up a new history, you pick up a new name. Your old genealogy is interrupted. This is the problem communities are facing when they are trying to push them out by saying ‘They are from somewhere else.'”
TBJ: What has France’s redefined role been in Africa, and in the conflict in the Central African Republic, after its intervention in Mali?
MD: “This is a completely new context. If you look at how France has been trying to redefine its relation with Africa since the ‘60’s, you have at least three cycles.
The first cycle was where independence was nominal. The French still kept a firm grip on these African countries, and have been trying to always put in power people serving their own interest. The French have always been to support whoever they wanted or put in power whoever they wanted.
The second cycle, which began in the late ‘80’s, with structural adjustment programs and the process of globalization. But France was more and more investing in European integration, and adopting a kind of foreign policy – political and economic – which was trying to diversify its assets outside of its former colonial empire.
The French began a kind of process of disengagement. Not total, but a process in which the political factor was no longer playing a big role, in particular after the crisis in the Congo and Gabon with [oil giant] ELF.
And they basically opened space for French firms to conduct their own foreign policy. It’s why ELF Total was able to finance the civil war of [President] Denis Sassou-Nguesso in the [Republic of] Congo.
The attempt to disengage failed because of the intertwinedness between the French elite and the African elite.
France is coming back in the new context as a peaceful force, but at the same these conflicts are providing France opportunities to defend economic interests because they are losing it in particular to the Chinese.
The question for France is do they have not only the military, but the financial resources to support what is going on in Mali and in Bangui.”
TBJ: Unlike in Mali, the French seemed unwelcome in the Central African Republic, with some media sources showing anti-French graffiti on the walls across Bangui.
MD: “For one reason: when they stepped in, they were coming to defend the Christians.
They found out, after two weeks, that, actually, the anti-Séléka forces, the so-called “Christian forces,” were the aggressors and they were basically beginning a kind of genocide.”
(Featured photo credit: AP/Jerome Delay)
THE BOGANDA JOURNAL | Observations on Central Africa 