Djotodia presides over chaos of own-making in C Africa

Men on a motorbike drive past African Union soldiers patrolling an area in Bangui yesterday.

AFP/Bangui

Swept to power as the previous Central African regime crumbled, the rebel-turned-President Michel Djotodia now stands accused less than a year later of letting his country slide into chaos and bloodshed. Djotodia was summoned to the Chadian capital yesterday for a summit of African leaders set to confront his failure to stem the sectarian violence tearing apart his resource-rich, impoverished nation.

The Central African leader was carried to power as the first Muslim leader of the overwhelmingly Christian country in a March 24 coup that unleashed the deadly unrest.

Leading a rebel coalition named Seleka into Bangui he seized the presidential palace from president Francois Bozize, who fled after 10 years in power, and proclaimed himself president.

A few weeks later Djotodia was voted in as president by a national transition council to provide a veneer of respectability. He appeared to take international concerns on board and pledged to hold free elections within 18 months.

He promised the government would be independent of religious influences and would respect the nation’s various ethnic groups and faiths.

“I hope that those who cheer me today will do so when I stand down—instead of throwing stones,” he said after taking office.

But things quickly started to sour—as early as his swearing in in August as it emerged he was wearing bogus army decorations, bought from crooks for nearly a million euros.

Djotodia officially disbanded his rebel movement, but proved unable to keep the fighters in check.

Instead the rebels went on killing, raping and pillaging, prompting Christians to form vigilante groups in response and sparking a deadly cycle of revenge attacks in a country where up until then, Muslims and Christians have managed to live peacefully.

More than 1,000 people have been killed in the past month alone and nearly a million have been displaced since the coup.

The descent into chaos cost him the confidence of the international community.

But Djotodia himself has confessed to having little taste for high office—in an astonishing admission to a group of political leaders in November.

“I want things to improve, and quickly, so that I can leave. I do not want to stay in power—I am going to leave.”

“You get to sleep—but we never sleep,” he said. “Why hold on to something that stops you from sleeping. Sometimes you can’t even think of your wife!”.

A Soviet-trained rebel  Michel Am-Nondroko Djotodia was born in 1949 in the northeastern Vakaga region, near the borders with Chad and Sudan, but his precise date of birth is unknown and details of his childhood are sketchy.

The enigmatic strongman lived abroad for many years, notably 14 years in the former Soviet Union, and worked as a Central African civil servant before passing into the rebel camp.

Djotodia served in the planning ministry before going to the foreign ministry, where he was named consul to neighbouring South Sudan, then an insurgent part of Sudan before independence.

In 2005, Djotodia joined the rebellion against Bozize, an army general who seized power in a 2003 coup. He was a founding member of the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) rebel grouping. A former rebel comrade describes him as “determined”, and true to his word.

“That quality can also be a flaw: he can be rigid, and does not take well to being contradicted when he has made his mind up,” he said.

Two years later, Djotodia went to Benin to join forces with another Central African rebel leader, Abakar Sabone of the Movement of Centrafrican Liberators for Justice (MLCJ).  Arrested by the Benin authorities at the behest of Bozize’s regime, he spent several weeks in jail.

While abroad, Djotodia lost control of the UFDR but upon his return in 2011 and 2012 he succeeded in rallying former supporters and helped found Seleka.

Less than a year on he was named president of the Central African Republic—only to preside over a new descent into violence in the chronically volatile country.

African leaders were to meet yesterday at a summit set to pile pressure on embattled President Michel Djotodia.

Djotodia and his Prime Minister Nicolas Tiengaye arrived late Wednesday in the Chadian capital NDjamena for the gathering of 10 countries making up the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS).

ECCAS has insisted “regime change” is not the goal of the meeting, called officially to address the the government’s failure to stem the deadly violence that has wracked the country for months.

But Allami Ahmat, ECCAS’ secretary general, said the country was in a “deplorable situation”, under “transitional authorities who have proven themselves incapable, powerless even, to solve the problem”.

France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said African leaders would be taking “decisions” on the future of Djotodia.

“There are certainly decisions to be made, with regard to the political transition and the fact the state is paralysed. We shall see what our African friends decide,” Fabius told France 2 television yesterday.

“It is not France’s place to dictate decisions. We are here to offer support,” added Fabius, whose country last month deployed 1,600 troops alongside an African peacekeeping force in its former colony.

The regional powerbroker and current ECCAS chair, Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno called the summit, officially to ensure the situation in CAR does not spiral out of control.

“It’s not about regime change, nor changing the transition. It’s about taking measures to restore peace and security in Central Africa,” said ECCAS’ Ahmat.

In Bangui, the Central African communications minister slapped down any talk of Djotodia’s departure, saying it would only worsen the crisis.

Delegations were to continue arriving in Ndjamena yesterday, with talks expected to take place through the night, Chadian sources said.

There are fears the unrest is spreading through the region with a UN official warning that both Seleka rebels and former CAR soldiers have crossed into volatile Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are sending people fleeing.

Abdallah Wafi, the UN’s deputy special envoy to DR Congo said: “There are infiltrations by armed elements” and by former CAR soldiers.

Many former CAR soldiers fled their home country when the Seleka rebels launched their coup. The rebels in turn were pushed out when French and African peacekeepers arrived in the CAR in December. Although mass slaughters have mostly ceased amid frequent patrols by the peacekeepers, sporadic killings carry on almost every night.

A humanitarian disaster is also looming with 100,000 people who fled their homes crammed into a tent city near Bangui airport, close to the peacekeepers’ bases.

While the international military operation in the CAR has somewhat halted the slide into deeper conflict, there is no sustainable political solution in sight.

Congolese President and African mediator in the crisis Denis Sassou Nguesso and Chad’s president now want to “reshuffle the cards because it doesn’t work and a plan B is required”, a Western diplomat said. Current political agreements in place ban all those in power during the transition from standing in future elections.

That in turn has stalled bids for a national unity transitional government as all the leaders of political parties have refused to participate in the process.

On Wednesday, Unicef said it was racing to vaccinate 210,000 children displaced by violence in Bangui, after at least seven cases of measles—a potentially deadly disease—were confirmed.  Souleymane Diabate, Unicef Representative in CAR said: “This is a deadly combination for children. Unless we act now, we could have a disaster on our hands.”