French President Francois Hollande visited French troops deployed to the Central African Republic on Friday and met with the interim president of the troubled country, according news reports.
Hollande held talks with President Catherine Samba Panza, addressed some of the French soldiers keeping peace there and met with religious leaders during a brief stopover in the capital Bangui on his way back from Nigeria, where he attended a summit with African leaders, AFP reported.
It was the second time for Hollande to visit the CAR since December, when he visited the country just days after ordering 2,000 troops there as part of Operation Sangaris to contain sectarian violence that had broken out three months earlier.
Hollande spoke to French troops upon arriving in the country, commending their service, France 24 reported.
“Already, thousands of lives have been saved thanks to you,” he said, adding that he thought the security situation in Bangui had improved.
However, human rights groups have claimed Christian militias have been committing atrocities against Muslim populations, especially in the capital. Acknowledging some of the problems, he said, “the partition of the country should be avoided at all costs,” reported France 24.
Hollande’s trip comes after the French parliament voted on Feb. 24 to extend its mission inthe CAR beyond an April deadline, as French troops are struggling to stem the fighting between the country’s Christian and Muslim communities. Some French politicians are worried France is getting bogged down in a protracted military intervention in a country with a history of chronic instability.
Lawmakers approved a measure allowing Hollande to forge ahead with efforts to help stabilize the CAR, where French troops have been deployed since early December with a mandate to stem the fighting between the predominantly Muslim militants, known as the ex-Seleka, and bands of Christian vigilantes.
“If we pull out now, it would be a disaster, it would be a return to ethnic cleansing,” Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told the parliament, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. “Our efforts have started to pay off.”
Violence against Muslim residents of the country have left Ayrault “deeply concerned,” too, and he wants the U.N. Security Council to meet in early March to consider creating a peacekeeping force for the CAR.
Under the French constitution, the president can commit troops, but he must go before parliament for a vote if the mission lasts more than four months. Ayrault didn’t say what the operation was costing France, Bloomberg reported.
Meanwhile, the fighting has escalated in the CAR, raising fears that the crisis may turn into an ethnic cleansing.
“No need to come, Mr. Hollande, we’re already dead,” one Muslim woman in a Bangui street said when asked about the French president’s visit on Friday, France 24 reported.
The former French colony has been torn by inter-religious violence since Seleka, a coalition of mostly Muslim northern rebels, seized power in March last year and unleashed a wave of looting and killings.
Since then, Christian militias have carried out mass reprisal attacks, forcing thousands of Muslims to flee the capital and the country.
Three French and 19 African soldiers have died since the operation began.
Buoyed by a swift victory in last year’s war against Islamists in Mali, France’s military expected six months would be enough to quell sectarian conflict in the CAR, which began in March when Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in the majority Christian country.
The French thought a show of force would be enough to restore order, with no shots needed to be fired.
Now, with the country sliding toward what the top U.N. human rights official has termed ethnic-religious cleansing, France faces a long fight with scant support from Western allies to stop the nation of 4.5 million people from splitting in two, according to a Reuters story released last week.
The Operation Sangaris forces are deploying across the turbulent countryside. French troops have arrived within the last week in the southwestern town of Carnot, located 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the Cameroonian border, Associated Press reported.
France also had a risky intervention in Mali last year. While air power played a decisive role in Mali’s desert war, military observers have justified having more boots on the ground by citing the maze-like backstreets of Bangui and the thick bush of the countryside.
Responding to international outcry at a series of massacres, France deployed 400 more troops last week to boost its contingent, which is supporting a 6,000-strong African Union peacekeeping mission.