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Politics of the Central African Republic
- Thread starter Rhea
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Heh, I was mostly just kidding, but I'll play.
The only academic book I've been able to find on CAR was published in the 60s or 70s and only really covered it's rise to independence. After that it pretty much just turned into a chaotic mess that the world ignored because it had no relevance to them. Crawford Young did a lot of work on African nationalism, and the strength and attributes of Sub-Saharan States. He'd probably call the Central African Republic a failed state, with no recognizable government. Which in effect means that it's not even really a country, just a territory of land with no real economy, education system, health system, etc. It's one of the most dangerous places in the world to have kids.
Lessons? If you're an 11th century African hunter-gatherer or pastoralist, build a massive military and fend off the Europeans before they show up with machine guns in hand.
Influence? Absolutely none, except more chaos for the countries at it's borders.
The only academic book I've been able to find on CAR was published in the 60s or 70s and only really covered it's rise to independence. After that it pretty much just turned into a chaotic mess that the world ignored because it had no relevance to them. Crawford Young did a lot of work on African nationalism, and the strength and attributes of Sub-Saharan States. He'd probably call the Central African Republic a failed state, with no recognizable government. Which in effect means that it's not even really a country, just a territory of land with no real economy, education system, health system, etc. It's one of the most dangerous places in the world to have kids.
Lessons? If you're an 11th century African hunter-gatherer or pastoralist, build a massive military and fend off the Europeans before they show up with machine guns in hand.
Influence? Absolutely none, except more chaos for the countries at it's borders.
Here's a link with some interesting information. I didn't know the CIA had a web page like this. Interesting!
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ct.html
Okay people - scavenger hunt! What's the most interesting thing you find on the CIA webpage about CAR?
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ct.html
Okay people - scavenger hunt! What's the most interesting thing you find on the CIA webpage about CAR?
That's a good question, I don't as much about CAR as I may have implied. My reading on Africa as a whole has mostly focused on broader patterns, rather than minutiae within specific states. But the sense I've gotten from the reading I have done on CAR (which isn't much), is that it doesn't have much of an economy. I'd be quite assured that it's economic partners have the upper hand in any dealings they do with them, but as far as exploitation goes it's a double edge sword. The issue in many African states isn't just neo-colonialism, but also that their governments are predatory. IOW, the governments make huge profits, but those profits only benefit a very small minority of the population.
As far as CAR is concerned it's hard to know minutiae because that information isn't really out there.
As far as CAR is concerned it's hard to know minutiae because that information isn't really out there.
Sounds like there is a very recent effort to build some stability
This is the kind of thing I think a combined world effort is really good for. Getting a country over this huge hump of transition to have a chance to begin.
This is the kind of thing I think a combined world effort is really good for. Getting a country over this huge hump of transition to have a chance to begin.
There is an effort to build stability, in the same way you would build stability between six different packs of wolves fighting each other for territory in a thousand acre forest.
The problem isn't the instability so to speak, the problem is the deep history of colonialism and unnatural history of the country. IOW, it's not a real country to begin with, has no business being one, and if you went back a couple hundred years most of the people living in the region would have no interest in being a country at all.
This is the precarious position that most of Africa finds itself in now. It's trying to build a world with no foundation, in the style of Western Europe, with the culture of Ancient Africa.
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Welcome to post-colonial Sub-Saharan African politics. Crawford Young spent nearly sixty years studying this question, wrote multiple award winning books, and found no easy answers. To me the problem is that there is no answer.
Modern history is primarily marked by the rise of Europe, and the rise of Europe is marked by the destabilization and exploitation of many other regions of the world. At this point those still suffering are primarily South America, Central Asia, and Africa. You can't really 'fix' what's been broken, and jammed into a global system with bigger players who have all of the advantages. If they can find stability, it may be centuries, maybe many centuries before that happens.
CAR Civil War
It doesn't seem like anyone's even capable of "winning" this war, because no faction, including the government, has the means to administer and police the country. It would be a difficult place to govern even without the problems of inter-religious violence, 80 different languages, negligible infrastructure, landlocked borders, foreign-aided rebels, and armed "entrepreneurs".
The CAR is not so much a country as someone else's frontier.
It doesn't seem like anyone's even capable of "winning" this war, because no faction, including the government, has the means to administer and police the country. It would be a difficult place to govern even without the problems of inter-religious violence, 80 different languages, negligible infrastructure, landlocked borders, foreign-aided rebels, and armed "entrepreneurs".
The CAR is not so much a country as someone else's frontier.
SimpleDon
Veteran Member
It would seem to have an idyllic libertarian economy. Little functioning central government to interfere in the economy. A commodity-based economy so supply and demand set prices. No functioning restrictions to free trade or to capital flow. The government doesn't provide schooling or health care, both are left up to the free market and the profit motive. Very limited government-provided transportation infrastructure leaving transportation open to the free market and the profit motive.
sd - [/tongue firmly in cheek]
sd - [/tongue firmly in cheek]
Exactly, I believe I came across that Wikipedia page at some point. I'd add that there isn't really a 'government' so to speak.
SimpleDon
Veteran Member
I don't think that you can solve the problems created by tribalism by resorting to tribalism. You would turn a civil war into many international wars.
At some point, people have to accept living together with people who think differently from one another, who have different backgrounds, who came from different places, different religions, etc.
If they do this, then they can tell the US how to do it.
Take 'tribalism', then add 10 more layers of complexity, and that's about where we're at with modern Africa.
Although even that's simplistic because some African States are doing ok, while others not so much.
Yup, that CIA world factbook is a very useful source for information on a country.
Yup. The Muslims tried to take the country by force of arms. They lost, now they are upset because some individuals have retaliated against them. While the retaliation isn't a good thing there's no way the central government could hope to put a stop to all of it.
I was there in 1982, it was not a good place and we didn't venture outside our camp much. It was the only place we had to mount a 24 hour watch against human threats. (We had to mount a 24 hour watch in Ngorongoro crater but that was against thieving monkeys.)
Why do you assume everything wrong in Africa is because of colonialism??
The modern problems there are not due to colonials, but from a failed attempt at an Islamist takeover.
Colonialism is the root of modern Sub-Saharan Africa, so it's current state can usually be traced back to it's European past. There would still be problems if colonialism hadn't occurred, and there are current problems that aren't directly related to colonialism, but at this point they all now have a distinctly colonialist tinge.
A good analogy would be human society post the last ice age. It's a distinct era, but wholly cultivated and caused by the change of climate. Similarly, the geo-political map of modern Africa was entirely dictated by colonialism. Distinct things are happening now, but colonialism set the framework.
At most I think you can say that if colonialism hadn't occurred African people would at least be in control of their own destiny.