Posted on 02/14/2014 4:13:08 PM PST by Pan_Yan
(Reuters) - France said on Friday it plans to send another 400 troops to help combat a crisis in the Central African Republic as U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon pleaded for more swift, robust international help to stop sectarian violence that could turn into a genocide.
French President Francois Hollande's office urged other countries to show "increased solidarity" and called on the United Nations Security Council to approve the creation of a U.N. peacekeeping force in the landlocked former French colony.
Some 838,000 people have been displaced since the mostly Muslim Seleka rebel group seized power in March last year in the majority Christian country. At least 2,000 people have been killed since December in what a U.N. official described as a wave of "ethnic-religious cleansing.
"The dark clouds of mass atrocities and sectarian cleansing loom over the Central African Republic," Ban told a U.N. Security Council meeting on cooperation between the world body and the European Union.
"We cannot claim to care about mass atrocity crimes and then shrink from what it means to actually prevent them," he said. "Our commitment to protect civilians is only as meaningful as the political, military and financial muscle deployed to defend them."
The additional troops will bring France's Central African Republic deployment to 2,000.
France sent 1,600 troops in December to help an African Union force of 6,000 peacekeepers, while the European Union has agreed to send around 500 troops.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Can't be sure from the article, but presumably these are legionnaires. Since the FFL was established, France's leadership has always had the added flexibility of projecting force without risking a domestic outcry against the shedding of French blood.
I guess everyone who remembers what happened to France in Viet Nam is dead.
I haven’t found what unit they are sending this time but the 1600 already there are French regulars. I’m also looking to see where the other 500 EU troops are from.
Christians are massacring the Muslims and driving them out. This is a real “man bites dog” story.
Are you sure? I thought I'd read a while back it was a mix of regulars and FFL.
Is killing Islamists really genocide?
The FFL website lists their deployment in Mali but not CAR. I didn;t see any news articles of them in CAR.
So, the French will be defending the Muslims?
OK, thanks. I may have been thinking of a prior intervention.
The French troops are there to protect the French citizens and French businesses.
There are some strange and garbled stories being posted of the Muslims trying to flee the capital and the UN forces turning them back.
Talk about one of the major mistakes in military history. Establish your base miles from your supply lines, in enemy territory, in a valley, and try to resupply from the air. Almost like Stalingrad, only on a smaller scale, with jungle instead of snow.
I used to live in Africa and have been following this as closely as anyone could. Unfortunately, the media does a terrible job of reporting on the French military operations in Africa and I can’t confirm or deny that they’re using the Legion in CAR. If the photos I’m seeing are any indication, it appears they may be using a “mix” of Legion and Airborne. I was quite surprised to find they’re airlifting in with the Antonov 124-Condor which is a heavy airlift craft produced, I believe, in Ukraine. The use of that aircraft may well be something of the secret of their success at the moment because of the heavy lift resupply capacity.
To see what they’ve done in Mali, see: Operation Serval at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Serval where it is recited they did deploy FFL Airborne, being the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Foreign_Parachute_Regiment
I haven’t seen any reports yet from CAR that specifically identify the units deployed.
From my experience, they won’t anymore deploy the FFL individually.............they’re too difficult to control and they have something of a politically incorrect historical reputation in Africa.
They are fighting against a muslim militia but I’m assuming they are trying to protect civilians, reagrdless of religion.
Thanks for the clarifications.
Certainly. How’s the weather there? We have had so much snow and all I want to do is go surf fishing. Sadly, I have months to wait.
It’s raining today, but it’s been a dry, and mild winter.
I heard about the fruit bats dying in the trees due to the heat. Thanks.
I was going to add that we’re told that our warm, dry weather is due to the same thing as your wet, cold weather — global warming.
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