As the fighting continues in the Central African Republic, many of those following the crisis are portraying it as primarily a clash between the country’s Muslim minority and Christian militiamen, which to date has resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 people since December and the displacement of nearly a quarter of the country’s population of 4.6 million. The population of the country is estimated as 81 percent Christian (52 percent Protestant and 29 percent Catholic), while Muslims roughly account for around 15 percent of the population.
The crisis has touched a deeply impoverished Central Africa since the mainly Muslim rebels of the Séléka alliance seized power from Francois Bozize in a March 2013 coup led by Michael Djotodia. Following the coup, some splinter groups of Séléka rebels embarked on a campaign of killing, raping and looting. Anti-Balaka militia groups, mainly Christian, then formed to protect civilians, and began counterattacks against Muslims. Some 5,000 troops in the African MISCA force along with 2,000 French soldiers under a UN mandate have been deployed for months to help restore order and security in the country. A small European Union force has also been operational since the end of April — it will number some 800 in June. More peacekeepers are on the way — the U.N. approved in April a force of up to 10,000 troops, 1,800 police and 20 corrections officers, known as MINUSCA. The U.N. operation will assume authority on September 15 from the African Union’s 5,600-strong MISCA force, which was deployed in December.
Amnesty International have recently described the fighting as “the ethnic cleansing of Muslim civilians in the western part of the Central African Republic” and harshly criticized the international community’s response to the crisis, noting that international peacekeeping troops have been reluctant to challenge the mainly Christian Anti-Balaka militias, and slow to protect the threatened Muslim minority.
The United Nations also commented, “This ethno-religious cleansing is changing the landscape of the Central African Republic,” in a widely distributed editorial by Secretary General of the United Nations Ban-Ki Moon, who visited the country on his way to Rwanda for the 20th anniversary of the genocide. Likewise, his colleague at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterre, recently referred to the situation in CAR as “a ‘cleansing’ of the majority of the Muslim population in western CAR.”
As can be gleaned from these comments, there exists a widespread conviction among the media and international community that the conflict in the Central African Republic is religious-based, and may even represent a “clash of civilizations” between the Muslim Séléka fighters and the Christian Anti-Balaka militias.
The “clash of civilizations” refers to a theory that the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world will stem from cultural and religious identities. The phrase appeared in a 1926 book regarding the Middle East by Basil Mathews called “Young Islam on Trek: A Study in the Clash of Civilizations,” and was later used by Bernard Lewis in an article in the September 1990 issue of The Atlantic Monthly titled “The Roots of Muslim Rage.” More recently, the phrase is often linked with the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, who developed the theory in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled “The Clash of Civilizations?” in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded on the theory in a 1996 book entitled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
In his 1993 Foreign Affairs article, Huntington summarizes:
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.
Is the crisis in the Central African Republic a “clash of civilizations”?
Correction: The photo earlier accompanying this article has been changed to be in line with our editorial standards.
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