Burdensome friends: C.Africa’s Wagner allies

As rebels advanced on the CAR capital Bangui ahead of presidential elections, Russia flew in hundreds of paramilitaries, helping Touadera to turn the tide.The entwinement has alienated the CAR's traditional supporter France, triggered allegations of atrocities and failed to defuse hostility to Touadera's rule, they say.The CAR is facing a swelling humanitarian crisis -- out of a population of around five million people, more than three million will need aid next year, according to the United Nations humanitarian aid coordinator, OCHA.Russia, the CAR's ally since 2018, officially only acknowledges the presence of unarmed "military instructors" to train its poorly equipped armed forces."Me, I haven't signed anything with any company called Wagner," Touadera said in September in an interview with the publication Jeune Afrique.The CAR in 2013 plunged into a civil war along sectarian lines, which was then quelled by French military intervention, opening the way to Touadera's first election in 2016.But rebel groups, many of them claiming to represent religious or ethnic groups, retained control over some two-thirds of the country. Russian help -- supported by troops sent by Rwanda under a bilateral arrangement -- thwarted the attempt on power and forced rebels out of major towns, enabling the government to claim it had recovered control over most of the country.The United Nations sounded the alarm about "major rights violations" by CAR forces and their Russian allies, including extrajudicial killings, torture and sexual violence.Yet a timetable for the much-trumpeted forum remains unannounced, and rebel attacks on local populations and the security forces have continued, especially in the country's northwest.Roland Marchal, an expert at France's Center for International Studies, said these attacks were likely to continue.- Minerals grab? -In a report in June, US investigative NGO The Sentry said "transnational criminal networks" had "captured state institutions and taken entire communities hostage".bdl-dyg/blb/ri/ah... Via news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site https://www.news.com.au