French support for CAR operation fast eroding

Reuters/Paris

Only 41% of those questioned were in favour of the operation, down from 51% shortly after Paris deployed 1,600 troops in the country, according to an Ifop poll.

Paris sent troops to Central African Republic, a country the size of France, to disarm Christian militias and largely Muslim Seleka rebels who ousted ex-President Francois Bozize in March.

However, the deployment of the French troops and nearly 4,000 African Union peacekeepers has done little to contain the tit-for-tat violence between the religious communities, which has displaced nearly onemn people, according to the United Nation’s refugee agency.

 The Ifop poll also showed that a majority of French people still support France’s operation in Mali, launched in January last year to drive back militants threatening to seize Bamako.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian dismissed some commentators’ growing worries that France was getting bogged down in Central African Republic, saying such concerns early on in the Mali operation had proved unjustified.

 “I’m convinced that once again in the Central African Republic history will prove them wrong,” he said in the text of a speech to French troops stationed in Chad.

Central African Republic, rich in diamonds, timber, gold and oil, has been racked by five coups and numerous rebellions since independence from France in 1960.

European Union nations are due to decide on a joint mission later this month after France requested help with specific missions such as protecting the airport in the capital of Bangui, providing security as well as medical and humanitarian assistance.

 A previous opinion poll showed that support for France’s action in Central African Republic dropped to 44% a week following the deployment, after two French soldiers were killed in a firefight during a patrol.

Some 1,000 people were surveyed in the latest Ifop poll that was conducted between December. 27 and January. 2.

Chad’s President Idriss Déby Itno on Friday vowed that attacks on Chadian nationals in the restive Central African Republic would not go “unpunished”.

While visiting families repatriated to Ndjamena, Deby said that “attacking women and children, and targeting Chadians, assassinating, killing them is intolerable,” according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.

“Those who attack Chadians and continue to attack them, those who kill Chadians and continue to kill them, will not go unpunished, I assure you, whatever the means,” Deby told them without elaborating.

Deby also appealed for national solidarity to help the roughly 12,000 Chadians—mostly women and children—who have been repatriated from violence-wracked Central Africa and who are being received back home at four planned centres.

He noted that, since 1995, Chad has lost 23 soldiers in the neighbouring country and he said there was a further loss of an unknown number of Chadian nationals.

Chad’s role in the African peacekeeping force MISCA in the capital Bangui has come into question for allegedly failing to be neutral in the growing sectarian conflict.

Chadian soldiers have been accused by Christians of supporting the mostly Muslim ex-rebels of the Seleka movement, which carried out the March coup that installed their leader Michel Djotodia as Central African president.

In return, Christian vigilantes have attacked Muslims, and a cycle of deadly revenge attacks has displaced thousands and sent others fleeing the country.