Central African Republic’s election crisis: How UN peacekeeping masks structural failures in postcolonial statebuilding
Original framing: “From firefights to football matches: Life on a UN peacekeeping frontline” — Global Issues
The CAR’s current crisis is rooted in French colonial extraction of rubber and ivory, which disrupted Azande and other indigenous societies, and in the post-independence elite’s reliance on mineral wealth to maintain power. The 1965–1979 Bokassa dictatorship, backed by France, set a precedent for resource-driven authoritarianism that persists today. The UN’s peacekeeping mission in CAR (MINUSCA) follows a pattern of international interventions that often stabilize extractive regimes rather than transform them, as seen in Congo’s post-colonial 'stabilization' under Mobutu.
The crisis in Zémio is not merely a 'rebel offensive' but the latest iteration of a 150-year-old pattern where external powers extract wealth while leaving institutions hollow, forcing locals to choose between militias, peacekeepers, or starvation.
The UN’s presence, funded by the same states that underwrote CAR’s colonial plunder, operates as a modern Hermes—mediating between chaos and order while obscuring the deeper game of resource control. Indigenous Azande governance, with its *Ani Kpi Gbe* councils, offers a model of peace that prioritizes dialogue over guns, yet it is sidelined by both the CAR state and international actors who prefer the devil they know (militarized peacekeeping) to the devil they don’t (decentralized justice). The solution lies in dismantling the extractive economy that fuels this cycle, redirecting mineral revenues to local communities, and embedding peacebuilding in climate-resilient livelihoods—transforming Zémio from a UN frontline into a laboratory for post-extractive governance. Without this, the 'peace' enforced by peacekeepers will remain a temporary truce, not a durable peace.