French soldiers do what they can – but it is never enough

It is horrible. And the horror is in its actuality. And the horror is in its inevitability.

And the French are in the middle doing what they can. What they can do though, can never be enough.

Not now. Not here.

Let me take you into this by day and by night. To the dual worlds of the Central African Republic (CAR) in which one European country has appointed itself as some kind of peacemaker and been anointed so by the UN.

By day they are now out on the streets in force. Christians. They are in the majority here by far, yet terrorised since the March coup by the alliance of Muslim militias – Seleka – who shot and macheted their way to power and to sometime success.

By day, emboldened by 1,600 French soldiers with their jets, helicopters, armoured personnel carriers (APCs), special forces and obvious vehicle checkpoints, the revenge mobs are out.

Because the French are on the streets to disarm the Seleka militia, the armed protectors of Muslim shops and businesses are gone during daylight.

The shops are likely owned by Muslims. Their protectors gone, the mobs are out. Looting yes, but the knives, daggers are out too.

Hungry, emboldened and red-mist angry that they have seen brothers and sisters, sons and daughter, mothers and fathers chopped and shot to death, the Christian mobs want kills and they get them.

Men, women, children – it doesn’t matter. And they are very likely oblivious to any western onlookers as they hunt for loot or blood.

By night, the Seleka still stalks

The French soldiers can and do step in when and if they can. They’ve dragged men slashed with knife wounds from their killers just in time and will do so again.

But the French cannot be everywhere and realistically can hardly be anywhere in this oscillation of communal rage.

By night the terror of the Seleka still stalks. By day they’ve been all over town gathering intelligence. No arms, no uniforms. They know the quartiers, the districts way better than the French ever will.

By day they stalk, by night they kill. Still going house-to-house, machetes ready, guns produced from their barracks or private houses. Writing this in the middle of the night, three shots ring out in the darkness close to our hotel.

That is why they cannot go back – the 35,000 at the airport, the 17,000 at the Catholic monastery. Living in filth is better by far than the 3am bang on the door from the machetes and guns of Seleka, so carefully stashed away by day.

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