 So let me now turn to our fantastic panel. My name is Susan Stigant. I'm the director of the Africa program at USIP, and I'll be moderating the conversation today. As Nancy mentioned, we have Fiona Mangin, who has just returned as USIP's country representative in the Central African Republic, and Fiona brings tremendous experience in rule of law, reform generally, and has worked previously at the Stimson Center, and doing considerable analytical work on conflict dynamics, SSR, and DDR. We also have Igor Akko, who has been coordinating our programming and our research work in Central African Republic. Igor also comes with tremendous experience, and I think has been to every single corner of the Central African Republic, and I understand when he walks into a community land somewhere he drives in, people know him. So that's a tremendous asset, and we're really looking forward to hearing his perspectives. And finally, Paul Ronan, who leads and is working with the Resolve, the LRA Crisis Initiative, who will speak specifically on LRA violence. So let me pass it to our panelists to start the conversation for us. Thank you very much, Susan. Thank you all for coming for your interesting car. A huge thanks to Susan and Elizabeth for trusting Igor and I with this project. A huge thanks for me, to Igor, for coming on board, for sharing his wisdom and being the most amazing partner in research that a person could expect, and for trusting me enough to say, hey, do you want to come to DC and present this alongside me? And a huge thanks as well to Natalie Alzayoud, who I know is here today, from Community Zem Transition, who is one of our partners in implementing this project on the ground. I'm going to echo many of the things that both Nancy and the Ambassador said. There have been huge successes in car this year. Huge achievements in the last few years, since Nancy's last visit in 2014, and some really positive strides forward. Peaceful elections for really the first time in cars history. Something that Elizabeth Murray and I have a piece coming out on soon. We spend so much time looking at elections that have gone wrong, and we want to say, the conditions in car weren't perfect, but what went right, what conditions were put in place in order to allow these peaceful elections to move forward. There's been real positives in moving towards stabilizing the country, although we've seen some really concerning ripples of violence in the last couple of weeks. One, just as Nancy and Elizabeth flew out. At the same time, it hasn't spiraled in the same way that we've seen violence do so in the past. There is some ability of the government in Manuska to rein those in, and I think that is due to some of the gains that have been made over the last few years. Thirdly, President Tuadera, who we welcomed here at USAP a couple of weeks ago during his visit, and his stated desire and his energy that he's bringing to moving ahead, to real engagement and speaking with armed groups on the ground, to getting outside of Ban Ki. And finally, I think one of the clearest and most hopeful things about car at the moment is that when you talk to people there is a clear will of the people of car to move beyond these crises. We conducted dialogues in a number of locations around the country with Natalie's help. We conducted arts-based research in a number of locations. And one of the clearest messages that came out of this was that people are exhausted by this conflict, by these waves of conflict. They are ready and they want peace. But the other thing that was voiced and this is where I'm going to shift into my comments today, the other thing that was voiced was real frustration, real impatience to move forward with the DDR, real confusion at what these delays that are causing that are behind these failures to move ahead with disarmament. And real ongoing challenges, security challenges that affect people's daily lives. And so, as we kind of recognize these positives and try to build upon them, we need to make sure that we're not shifting our gaze away from Central African Republic at a really, really crucial moment. And the crisis point might have passed but there is a real risk of return to crisis and there is some very, very serious security dynamics that are developing on the ground at the moment that we need to address the government's honeymoon period is up and it has slipped past with a lot of good talk, a lot of commitment voiced, but not a lot of concrete action. And so it is good to see that this week there has been the first meeting of this DDR consultation committee and hopefully this can start to be translated into real action on the ground by the government and by Manuska. And again and I'm going to finish my remarks today with some elaboration on this point that the Ambassador raised but there are some very worrisome criticisms and very serious ultimatums being delivered to the UN mission Manuska on the ground at the moment. So first to talk about some of the shifting dynamics and moving relationships with the different armed groups in CAR. As you all know a series of armed groups came together in order to form the SELECA and to briefly bring Dutodia to power. And as those groups disintegrated themselves into what we now call the SELECA they have clashed and had fractious relationships between them, some real competition over resources and power. And that in itself in some ways in moving forward of peace has been something that has given the international community and the government some hope. This division within this SELECA factions has in fact created the ability to sort of pull them apart to reduce that ability to negotiate as a block and they have undermined their ability to to kind of hold the kind of power that they did in the past. However, we're now seeing some really concerning shifts on the ground and the potential for a reconciliation of these different factions of the SELECA. Nareldina Dam, the leader of the FPRC faction a significant dominant player particularly in the northeastern strip of car has been moving back in despite an arrest warrant against him has been moving pretty freely in the north and the east of the country preaching reconciliation to the different factions of the armed groups trying to bring them back together trying to to rally and the question is for what? There's been a lot of build up over the last few months a lot of rumors about a conference that would take place a reconciliation conference that would talk about the future of this alliance and right now it's going on we've heard a lot of threats of it but now it is moving forward in Bria and there's conversations on the ground right now about what that arrangement would be for the future and the question is for what? What would the new alliance be? Would it be simply a case of bringing the group back together in order to be a more powerful negotiating block in order to get the kind of political positions that they feel that they were hard done by in this government? Is it about simply renegotiating different arrangements within the DDR agreement or is it potentially something more serious? I don't think we're seeing any really concern that this would shift towards trying to overthrow the full country again but potentially yes, the declaration of a federal arrangement in the east, the controlling of significant resources in the east and the erecting of some sort of autonomous region, so that I think is a real concern. So far we're seeing that the alliance has not been successful. Narel Deena Dam has not been able to achieve bringing the UPC and the MPC factions of the Sileka to the table but how they're going to move against those two different factions is yet to be seen. There are shifting dynamics within the anti-Belaka too. Although things have quietened, although there has been some dismantling of some of the structures in the west, two key factions of the anti-Belaka remain very strong, the coordination structure under in Gaisona and the coordination structure under Mocom. We've seen recently communique coming out of what's known as the force Vive, a group that is composed of some concerning elements in civil society, anti-Belaka elements and some links to the FACA demanding pulling out of the DDR arrangements that they're currently engaged in and demanding the withdrawal of Manuska, delivering ultimatums to them and indicating serious new splits and real animosity between in Gaisona and Mocom's different coordination structures. Another dynamic we're seeing is new armed groups cropping up and we see this in a lot of countries where a DDR arrangement is about to swing into place suddenly you have these new armed groups sprouting up rather cynically ready to participate and to be part of the spoils that they expect. Particularly I think Vicious and Rampant in the country has been 3R headed by General Siddiqui carrying out some very, very serious attacks on villages particularly in the western area of the country, the belt that sort of covers the western Cameroonian border and spreading up to Chad. As I said, relatively cynical seems to be more about being able to participate as a new armed group. There are some links to the MPC structure and some participation in control of the cattle market and trying to monopolize control of that border area. Fourthly, the springing up of armed group companies, potential legitimization of armed groups in that way. We've seen over the spring this year an arrangement come to being between Chinese companies who are exploring potential oil in the Indelé-Birao area and need the protection of their assets in that area. The FPRC, who have long been involved in securing those assets for them, setting up a security company called FIT Security. And although in some ways this just looks like the further bedding down of protection economies, I think it really indicates some very concerning legitimization of those protection economies and it not just disincentivizes the participation in DDR and disarmament but in fact funds and incentivizes the rearming of these groups. And this behavior really tilts away from being able to encourage these armed groups to participate in the disarmament process and acts as a centrifugal force to any kind of security sector reform arrangements moving forward in the country. Maybe just to close out to say a couple of words about what's going on in the community Manuska relationship at the moment. I think Manuska finds itself at a moment that it is perhaps more challenge than ever. Very overstretched in terms of its force capacity on the ground and feeling that they have insufficient force and insufficient style of force in order to be able to carry out the kind of strategic arrests, carry out holding place weapons free zones in town centers and there's been a lot of slippage and that slippage in itself has led to huge criticisms by the community who are feeling the effect seeing armed actors being able to walk freely within town really reduces the confidence of civilians in what Manuska can provide and I think a number of incidents in the last few weeks have really raised this to fever pitch so we've seen one month ago the attack, a very vicious attack on the town of Indomete just outside of Cagabando Antibolaca trying to take over a checkpoint clearly engaging in an act of provocation in an area that is select a dominant and as a result an entire village being attacked in retaliation and some evidence to say that Manuska perhaps did not sufficiently block the movement of those select elements as they moved from Cagabandoro town out to this village and there's an investigation ongoing about that at the moment 48 hours ago an attack on an IDP camp at the Catholic Church site in Cagabandoro major death and also the looting of the Catholic Church something that really has been off bounds until now the Catholic Church in particular the IDPs that they have protected within their grounds have been relatively neutral and that's a real transgression that's a real push beyond what we've seen of these little brazen acts of rebellion against the weapons free zones in these areas and I think it's a real creeping concern and it's something that is very concerning to civilians in the area and then coming back to what I was referencing earlier this Bria conference at the moment in Bria there's an approximate 1,500 ex-Selica who have come together in the surrounds of the town to participate in this conference and while initially there was an indication that at least four strategic arrests had been authorized the decision has been made it appears to not proceed with those on the one hand extremely understandable menusca are very concerned that were they to proceed with affecting those kind of arrests that there may be enormous blowback from the population and indeed from this large gathering of ex-Selica in the area that they would not be capable of overwhelming with the force that they possess on the ground at the same time for community members to see the ability of ex-Selica to come together in the open under the noses of the menusca and they're not going to do anything this is a real undermining of the confidence and the mission and a real challenge with menusca really being caught I think between a rock and a hard place in this situation so I'm going to finish there and pass on to Igor I think just to say and to reiterate the government is really running out of time honeymoon is up, we need concrete action we need an actual DDR plan which is still not been articulated despite months and months of expectation and some real concerns about then matching that expectation around what this DDR is going to deliver to what the armed groups are expecting on the ground I'm going to talk about some issues we identified as some obstacles for the DDR process DDR stands for disarmament, demobilization re-incession and repatriation this process can contribute to reduce arms circulation to reduce the control by armed group on areas of the country and finally to a lasting peace we identified three major obstacles that are the economic drivers of the conflict the presence of mercenaries in car and lastly the regional the regional dynamic in the area for the economic drivers in CR conflict there are some the armed group leaders are generating tremendous income from ongoing conflict environment and from some specific market in car both Antibalaka and Cereca and ex-Cereca are involved in this business but mostly now it's ex-Cereca because they have control of most of the east part of the country and there are a number of markets in this research rich car that drive a lot of interest from from foreign fighters so there are expectations that the biggest business the biggest economic driver of this conflict would be diamonds but it is actually cattle due to the destruction of the cattle market in Bangui during the coup by the Cereca so the markets moved from the capital in a region that now fall under the control of most of the ex-Cereca groups and they are generating incomes from this business in different ways so they sometimes they sell cattle themselves or they sell cattle themselves and these cattle they loot from the elders or they they get it from the from Chajan cattle owners and most of the time these cattle owners from Chad are close to them or they also taxes the cattle sales in the markets actually they they take like $50 per per head of cattle and from the market from the two biggest market which are in Karabandoro and in Bangui it's like 50 to 100 head of cattle sold per day so it's a lot of money they also they also tax the cattle when passing by they take money from them and this issue of taxing the cattle I'll touch upon that further regarding control of the roads and the checkpoints and the group the ex-selector groups that are more involved are the MPC and the FPRC in Karabandoro MPC faction is the most dominant and in Bangui the market is almost exclusively controlled by the UPC faction and then the other business is now diamond and gold and CI is a member of the Kimberley process and when during the coup the Kimberley process put a ban on the diamond trade in the country and so now the ban is lifted from the west part on the west part of the country due to the national restoration of the state in that part of the country but in the east the problem remains because the ex-selector group are still controlling the mine sites and generating a lot of income from this trade so instead of this ban from both sides the west part and the east part stones are still are still solved and moving out from the country with the involvement of armed groups the armed groups they they protect the mine sites and in return they ask for taxes and sometimes they protect the smuggler and in return of some income so most of the in the east the ex-selector are involved the ex-selector faction that are most involved are the UPC, the FPRC and the RPRC the MPC is not involved too much because in the area under its control there are not a lot of mines and in the west the anti-balaka are also involved in similar activities and the other business is also coffee and sesame seeds so coffee and sesame seeds are both produced in CR they are produced in the area of Bamburi and the area south world and these products are very appreciated by people in Sudan in the neighboring Sudan or even beyond so each during the dry season most of the two Sudanese traders they come from Darfur from even from Khartoum to come and buy and sesame seed and by coming they also come with brand new AK-47 to give to the selector in exchange of having the right to trade coffee and sesame and this trade is mostly controlled by the UPC UPC is one of the ex-selector factions who control Bamburi and the area around and the other business the other business is the check wins and the control of key axes so it's something that is widespread in the country as it is in all the conflict countries almost all the armed group are involved they they take taxis or fines from passengers, from motorbikes from vehicles to move onward and most of the the check wins of the roadblocks in the west for anti-balacas have been dismantled but in the east the ex-selector are still operating the roadblocks and have control on key roads and now I'm going to shift to the other the second obstacle which is the presence of the mercenaries in car and it's a problem that is both between and within ex-selector factions because mercenaries were key in the selector move to power they that was the biggest support for the selector because they were not able to take power without the support of these mercenaries but after the downfall of the selector, some of these mercenaries they they grown in power and now they become a big issue and the process the process of disarmament in CR is called disarmament, demobilization, re-incession and repatriation for the foreign fighters so one of the key example is the leader of the UPC faction whose name is Ali Tarasa he is actually from Niger but he he found himself in CR because he used to fight for Charger a rebel group which is the FPR so he joined the selector in the early time and when the selector took power in 2013 he established himself in Bamburi which is a town in the center of the country and he managed to amass control and wealth in this area and now it's very difficult for people to chase him out and we are wondering how he is viewing the GGR process and lastly it's regional dynamic so it's about the neighboring country, first of all is the chat who that we know had a strong relationship with the ex-selector group he had clearly there are many evidence he provides support for the selector when they took power but now after the selector lost the power the dynamic in the group is now very complicated because the selector is now split in four factions and we still have evidence that chat is still supporting the FPRC but also Debi has some concern about these former Charjan fighters Charjan, the rebel Charjan fighters who is Ali Darasa so he is concerned about his growing in power in Bamburi and it makes the situation very complicated and also Chardi's experience climate change and the grazing land in these countries become rare now so most of the cattle in chat they need to come down to see how to find good grazing and so on so in this conflict environment and as most of the cattle owner are in the Charjan government their elders are armed to protect the cattle they are moving with so it's another issue so for Sudan I already talk about that in the coffee and sesame threads so most of the time it's that and the thread of weapons and also there are some poachers coming from Sudan there are some parks and elephants and wildlife in the north and in the south so for GRC for GRC the democratic that is the southern neighboring country of Siam it's not significant but there are some diamonds smuggling going on that way so for Cameroon it's also diamonds smuggling but there is also tension about refugees because in the west part of the country which is under control of the anti-Balakas they fled to Cameroon so it's difficult for them to come back and there are a lot of problems between the in the other borders so to finish I can say that caramelized amid a very complicated neighborhood even if all armed groups were ready to for the disarmament today arms of flows and significant wealth is still pouring over Siam borders and each day each day and generating interest in maintaining this country in the conflict status and I will give the room to Paul who will talk about this other most significant regional dynamic which is the Lord resistance army issue in the Central African Republic thank you very much Igor and thank you to my colleagues at USIP for putting this discussion together I really appreciate the chance to be here and I'm very glad that Igor had a chance to come as well I had a chance to travel with him to the east last year and I can attest that when Igor lands in a town no matter where you are you feel like you're with Bono everyone knows who he is so I'm very very glad that he has a chance to come here and share his expertise I am also very glad to be a part of this discussion because I have been traveling to to work on the LRA issue since 2010 and when I'm in the east, when I'm in communities that have been affected by the LRA, I'm always struck by how interwoven the LRA piece is with the other dynamics in this conflict and then often when I travel to Bangui or at times in DC or in New York I often encounter a sense that the LRA is a separate issue it doesn't really have anything to do with car and we don't need to have those two discussions at the same time so I'm very glad to have this chance just to trace a bit the arc of the LRA and its activity in eastern car first entered into the southeast in mid 2009 via DRC was followed a few months later by the Ugandan military which at the time was operating on a bilateral agreement with the Buzize government and was soon under an African Union authorization and in 2011 US special forces were deployed to the southeast as well to work with the Ugandans and in theory anyway with the FACA to pursue the LRA and both the Ugandans and the US troops are still there the good news is that the LRA is a fraction of the force it was in 2008 when we estimate that it had about 800 combatants or in 2010 when we estimate that it had about 400 right now our best guest puts the LRA combatant force at about 150 and 90 to 120 of which are Ugandan and the rest are are young men that have been abducted from DRC and eastern car the bad news is that from a protection perspective the impact of the LRA is still quite quite high and if you look at the levels of attacks and abductions by the LRA over the last 5 years there really hasn't been much reduction so even as the number of LRA combatants has dropped violence has really continued and in fact to date this year we have recorded over 400 abductions by the LRA in eastern car alone which is higher than any other year since I believe 2010 in eastern car and we're still in mid-October and we usually expect to see increase in LRA activity once the dry season hits in November-December so the LRA is still very very much a threat and part of that reason actually has to do with the success that the Ugandans and the U.S. have had in putting pressure on the group because one of the things that that has done is caused some splintering within the LRA and there's currently a group that broke away from Joseph Coney's command and control in late 2014 operating in southeastern car sense portraying themselves as a new LRA group and this group has been responsible for some of the more violent attacks in the east that we've seen this year including an incident in the town of Rafai in April in which the community was so upset that they actually shot and killed a Manuska peacekeeper and unfortunately that incident of violence against Manuska was isolated on the community's part but the frustration as Fiona said that communities feel towards the mission's failure to protect them from the LRA is evident as soon as you talk to people I was in Bria in February just after a surge of LRA attacks in that area and the community leaders and the survivors that I talked to were very angry at what they perceived to Manuska's complete lack of a response and unfortunately this is a pattern that we've seen in LRA affected areas of South Sudan with UNMIS and in DRC with Manuska so it's a lesson that to date the UN has not learned and this is where I think the LRA piece of the conflict begins to interweave with the other dynamics what we've been seeing since the major LRA surge in January and then February is Exileka groups are taking advantage of the opportunity that Manuska is giving them by not protecting people by claiming to the population that they will protect them from the LRA which is completely disingenuous a year or two ago there were Exileka groups that were trading diamonds with the LRA they treat the LRA as an opportunity to further their own interest so what they do now when an LRA group attacks when Manuska doesn't send patrol to their location to investigate until two or three days later what the Exileka groups will do is send one or two of their guys out on a motorcycle go to the site of the location sometimes fire gun in the air and come back to Bria or to one of the larger towns and say look at Manuska with all of their resources they take two or three days before they go on a patrol unless we are going out there with the few resources that we have trying to protect people and to a degree has been successful in boosting their credibility with the community and of course I think we can all agree that the last thing that we want is Exileka groups that gain legitimacy in a manner like this the LRA also is interwoven into these dynamics in the sense that for years communities have accused pastoralist groups of collaborating with the LRA there has been very little evidence of this and in all the research that I've done what's actually happening is LRA groups are targeting the pastoralist groups for their cattle for their wealth but the communities where there's already often tension between agricultural groups and pastoralists then use this accusation that the pastoralists are collaborating with the LRA as another reason to mobilize them and to further their their own interest at times so here we are 2016 the LRA is still a significant threat to people in the East and unfortunately the fragile coalition that has been countering the group for the last few years is beginning to crumble and this is happening in announcements by the Ugandan military that they will be withdrawing from Eastern Kar by the end of the year I think that there's a lot of work going on in diplomatic back channels to see if the Ugandans can be flexible on that I think that there's some hope that they'll stay at least through next May and the current African Union authorization for their presence will be up but I think that there's a real risk that if the Ugandans withdraw in a rapid manner that Mnuska forces will not be able to fill the security gap in the Southeast so that is certainly a concern for us so I see that we are creeping into our Q&A time so I'm just going to end it there and we can have a discussion with you great I want to thank all the panelists and maybe if I can just start off with a question as people are thinking about what they'd like to raise or comments I was particularly struck by how some of the language has been and perhaps owned by armed groups and so the sense that when people are talking about reconciliation it's talking about reconciliation among armed groups and that maybe our typical thought about DDRR we have a different sense of it so I think that's something worth digging into a bit but I wanted to pick up a question on this of the legitimacy of the armed groups and Paul you talked a little bit about how they're leveraging that in LRA affected areas but I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about as you were conducting dialogues visiting communities how did people respond to the armed groups what's their sense of those who have legitimate grievances or the ideas of some sort of federalism and partition how deeply are the economic benefits being distributed or how even strategically if not deeply are those being distributed just to get a sense of what kind of a currency and perhaps base some of those groups have yeah I think this is something that the government in Minniska could really stand to work on a lot more there's some very easy ways in a way that they could step in and delegitimize some of the claims and some of the connections and some of this we're there to defend you rhetoric that is going on because for example I mean you've got at this point things are becoming so cynical with the way that the excellent groups have operated the amount of wealth generation that is going on that in ways the international community and particularly I've seen you know some of the key international community members in Bungie saying you know they're so separate from these claims that they had originally espoused at the same time we need to recognize that there were some legitimate grievances that have been voiced as part of these revindications by different excellent groups that have not been dealt with so the northeast of the country remains horrendously underdeveloped very serious lack of citizen protection civilian protection any sign of government in areas like in in Delhi and Burrao and that's very real on the other hand the communities still have some affiliation some response to this you know rhetoric that they're there to protect them that they're the ones that are are facing up to the government are protecting them where the government won't and yet at the same time in all of the wealth generation that's going on are we seeing anything actually being directed up into those areas aside from one key warlord general who is building a hospital he's a real Robin Hood he's building a hospital in Samoanja aside from that I mean despite all of these claims we don't see this like doing anything to develop in Delhi or Burrao or any of the other areas in which they say that they are speaking on behalf of the population and so I think if the government was capable of sending anything of the signs of development you begin to be able to carve away at that argument that we're your defenders you're able to I think undermine that a little bit the other thing I think in terms of this sort of idea of a federal arrangement I think there is some real recognition at citizen level and some real anxiety actually about that potentially happening even we were up in Burrao talking to the Sultan and the Sultan was referencing Saith Sudan and what we've seen happen inside Sudan as a real concern saying yes I mean you know we have some support for FPRC and what they're doing here but we are a bit concerned about what would happen should this country separate will that really bring us more security will that bring us more development we've seen what's happened next door I just want to add that all this wealth generating in these economic activities they are not really sharing it even with their fighters most of the time they just provide food for them and they don't actually have salary or something like that this makes them a gap between the leaders the fighters but they try to add that most of the fighters are low level fighters they are ready to go for the GDR because what the incentive provided is waiting for them but they say that if our leader doesn't decide so we are not going for the GDR but we are ready for the GDR process so this is interesting it sounds like there are some opportunities there that could potentially be leveraged I'm going to turn to the audience and we'll take probably two or three questions at a time we have colleagues who are coming with mics I'd ask that you just wait until you get the mic so those who are joining us on the webcast are able to hear your questions so I have one in the front here and then we'll go back to Natalie for a second one and then a third in the front corner Doug Brooks international stability operations association this has been a very interesting talk I guess my question is to Paul Ronan about the Ugandans how much of the country in the east do they actually essentially control what is the reputation there are they involved at all with the resources or with the economy there I assume the Americans are co-located and I guess the folks the people in Central African living there are they comfortable having the Ugandans there great thanks go to them back to Natalie thank you Natalie with communities in transition thank you for this presentation you guys did an excellent job in tangling this complex dynamics my question was to Fiona or Igor I was wondering if you guys could expand a little bit about the consultative committee on DDR its origin and composition and was there any opportunities for convergence between your advisory committee and what they established thank you great and let's take one more I'm up the front corner here we'll take that as the first set of questions hi thanks you spoke a lot about wealth generation the big number that you came up with was $10,000 a day one market for cattle what is the budget of plan for the for the DDR in general and is that part of Manuska as a separate part of the budget what is Manuska's budget every single day because that's worth drawing out you keep talking about wealth generation wealth generation and the biggest figure that came out of that conversation was $10,000 in one day and how is that what are they promising through the DDR that is and are they over promising because if they're not they should be okay good first do you want to start off Paul on the LRA question so real real quick on the UPDF point it's a great question and I should be clear that the frustration that communities feel at the continued atrocities by the LRA is not just directed at Manuska it is also directed at the UPDF as well and the scope the geographic scope of the UPDF deployments in the east has ebbed and flowed at one point they were in effective control over probably a quarter of the country ranging from Samwanja in the northeast to Inzako further west to the base in Oboe what we've seen just in the past couple months is they have begun to withdraw from towns in the north and in the west and to my knowledge most of their deployments now are along the Oboe to Bangesu Road in the southeast and as far as their behavior and their relations with the local community there certainly been concerns on the resources issue and whether they've been involved in extraction of diamonds or timber you will hear a lot about that when you go to the east I have not been able to to pin anything down and I'm not aware of anyone else that has but it would not surprise me they've been deployed in these communities for five or six years so it's hard to say what the relationships they have there have been some allegations that are being investigated I believe by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights sexual abuse in some isolated cases by the UPDF so that's certainly very very concerning but again as we see the UPDF beginning to withdraw from a few of these communities in the east what we're seeing is Exileka groups beginning to fill in that gap so I think that from a community protection perspective things aren't going to get better necessarily if the UPDF leaves yeah so a real insider question from Natalie who's been in and out of car I don't know how many times this year both for us and for others yeah so first to sort of give a little bit of an overview what has been set up recently starting from I think June was a new national coordination structure within the presidency a national coordination structure for DDR SSR and national reconciliation and they have nominated within that structure three additional special ministers their special minister councillors they're calling them one for DDR one for SSR one for national reconciliation and one who sits above them all and what we saw this week was the first session of a really positive structure within that and an idea within that which was that they were going to have a consultative committee on DDR with arm group representation which I think was really important because as that structure got off the ground there were some very serious criticisms leveled by the arm groups saying you know this is a structure that you created without asking us about it we're your key audience if we're not buying in you know this isn't going to have any attractions this is a really positive way of doing this and then below that consultative committee and I think this is the real positive and this is the real departure from the old they're going to put in place or that's the plan local committees for DDR SSR and national reconciliation we've been in regular conversation with some of the individuals involved in the national coordination structure Natalie was asking we've been working at national level and also at local level doing consultation work and feeding that information upward into a senior consultation advisory committee that we were calling composed of senior civil servants and civil society many of whom were the DDR SSR focal point for their ministry and really positively we've now seen two of the key most talented individuals from that committee are actually have been fully seconded from their ministries to be positioned within this new national coordination structure so hopefully there'll be some there'll be some push over from the project that we've been doing and we've been talking to them because we had created this connecting of what was going on in terms of the national conversation on DDR SSR and the local and trying to feed that information upwards and downwards in this sort of a two-way communication we have been talking to them now as they begin to explore setting up these local committees which will be at prefecture, sub-prefecture and village level and we've been saying look you know there's a lot of different ways to strategize about how to use these committees and again that the ideal would be to use them as a two-way communication tool so that you can actually deliver some of the information give real answers about why there are delays start to feed that information in a community level and to to detract from some of the rumor things that tend to happen at community level in car but also to use them as you're going through that process as a sending board as a consultation tool as well to feed the information back upwards and see how the DDR process is being received and in time the SSR and national reconciliation as well on the wealth generation issue I don't have the numbers in front of me now when we can get those to you and send them on but I think the point that you're making about the wealth generation and what DDR can actually offer some of these fighters is very very important and as Igor was pointing out there's a real difference between the kind of wealth generation we're talking about at the top and in fact in many cases controlled by some of these very senior heads of the Exceleka many of whom are not Central African and that even within the armed groups is a point of tension we've heard we've done dialogues with lower elements of these groups saying what we really need the government to do is to deal with these individuals if they could repatriate them our problems would be solved and that's coming from the people under their command which I think if you could play that and continue to you could really pull some support away but the problem is that again like Igor was saying the mission for participation in the DDR is coming still there is a functioning command and control structure in a number of these Exceleka factions in particular and so they're going to be the ones that give the word so we need to create and then the international community and the government need to work on creating incentives in order to lift those key individuals away from control of these lucrative marketing allowing the groups under their under their control to move towards the DDR process the other piece in terms of that wealth generation piece is that there's a real mismatch in what this DDR is going to promise and what people are expecting there's a real expectation at local level that this is going to be classic old school first generation DDR cash for guns that's what it's been in the last two failed DDR processes in car and that's not going to happen it's going to be some sort of income generation activities that you receive in return for weapons and so I think there needs to be a beginning of a real communication strategy to start to get that message out because I think people are expecting something that is not going to not going to come and the other piece that I think is is really crucial for this this transition period in car as many of you know it's been one of the first places that they've done something called pre-DDR almost an invention in Central African Republic a sort of a tap dance to while we waited for the DDR to actually be ready to be implemented and there are a lot of individuals who've been involved in income generating activities and cash for work etc that were eligible for pre-DDR but in fact under the terms of DDR agreement will not be eligible for DDR and so how are we going to deal with that transitional moment particularly with the other elements I think of the antipalaka who were fighting without legitimate firearm that's going to be a real point of contention and how do you tell someone who's been participating in pre-DDR that okay gravy train is over now you're going to be moved into this thing we're calling CVR which again I think there's a lot of a lot of arguments all right let's let's go for another round of questions so we'll take one up the front here then a second one here and one in the Alexis thanks so much Aditi Goura with the Simpson Center I just wanted to ask Igor and Fiona for a bit more information about how the car government is seeing this movement of exelica around Bria is this something that they're really concerned about do they think this is just you know there have been rumors for a long time nothing's going to come of it do they want Minuska to be conducting arrests you know is there any chance that they want to send Faka out there to deal with it or are they seeing this as a priority we had a second one at the back okay well let's go to Alexis then we'll pick a second one on that thank you it's a great discussion Alexis area for the congressional research service I wonder if I could leverage your willingness to be frank as a panel and as you've all pointed to sort of what we can see as a turning point in car and potentially a positive or negative turning point with how the international community has dealt with the government of car if I could draw you out a little bit on what your current assessment is of the Tuadera government obviously they benefited from an enormous amount of goodwill there are legitimate reasons for the delays that we're seeing and it seems to me that there's a willingness on the part of the international community to date to excuse some of those delays that are sort of well-meaning but perhaps a reflection of poor capacity or sort of technical problems at this point the government has been in for more than six months can you start to make an assessment of whether there are other reasons for these delays or sort of what the deeper nature of this government is especially keeping in mind a similar place under the Samba Panza government I am Telama Mabé National Congress for Democracy I want to say thank you for hosting this conference my question to you is that do you think that the problem in the Central Africa Republic is it in the long run is it a problem based on lack of democracy if you said yes then don't you think that the whole sub-region of Africa has been more approach of solving all those issues because when you look at the southern part of the Central Africa Republic you have Congo Kinshasa the president has been there for 36 years you have Congo Kinshasa which is unstable against lack of democracy you have Kamrum the person has been there for 32 years if you have Chad the same thing that is happening in the whole sub-region of Central Africa do you think that we should have an approach in tackling the democracy issue in those regions that's the question I try to answer to Agiti's question it's about the reaction or the point of view of the government regarding this reconciliation conference by the Exocelica and we had this information three months ago and we tried to talk to Minuska and even to the government but all of them they didn't believe that this would happen but now it's happening so the government cannot doesn't have the army they cannot go to try to arrest these people but by talking to the Minuska in Bria they say they are ready to arrest at least four of their leaders if they come around but so far nothing happened yet so the government is just watching and they just expect that the leaders who are trying to bring the coalition back will be sidelined because most of the armed group are ready for GGR and they signed the GGR agreement so they are not doing anything they are just watching Alexis's point dealing with the car government I think there was a real period of real hope and a little bit of elation last spring and I think it's really unfortunate to see that period of time and the energy and the momentum towards peace really be squandered by this government and while I suppose probably hinted at this a little in my presentation we're hearing a lot of the right things we're not seeing a lot of action and Tudera has made really wonderful speeches about DDR and SSR being the key priority but we still don't have an articulated actual DDR plan there's a DDR agreement that was signed in May 2015 I mean we're now almost pushing on a year and a half later and there's still no action plan no plan of how to momentum there's a lot to do with I think Tudera himself has some real commitment there but the people that he's surrounded himself with and some of the individuals he's selected to put into his government are real detractors and we've seen this before in car as well we know that instability in car, the coups mostly come from inside your own cabinet and I think that there are some very real individuals who are pulling away from this piece within within the car government itself in terms of repeated delays and why we're not seeing this plan being articulated the key thing that I think still holds as the blockage point and we were talking about this in June when we last met is the integration issue how we're going to the key sticking point for the PRC in particular about almost all of the excellent car and groups is that they want integration into the security sector which is a valid in many ways a very valid claim there is a real problem in terms of the balance and the makeup of the FACA in terms of the balance and the makeup of the police the gendarmerie but also even in our experience of working with senior civil service in car was that we pulled together this senior group of focal points in the BDR and SSR the senior civil service level there was zero Muslims in that group that's just the reality there are no Muslims and very very few individuals from the northeast of the country who are represented at even that level and that is replicated across the security sector across politics and I don't think that many of the individuals who are in this government are interested in changing the dynamic and how to deal with the integration into the FACA particularly of some of the key individuals who went to become the senior echelons of the Sileqa who in fact actually are former FACA and whether even discarding the ability to integrate large amounts of individuals who are under their command which is the demand real sticking point about reintegrating some of those individuals who have been key to this crisis so yeah, that's I think what the deeper cause of the delay at the moment is I'm looking here yours Do you want to add on at all? Yes, we have another question We'll take it out Yeah, one more question One more comment Yes, in the Central African region the situation the sea is very different from the others as in Cameroon or in Chad or in Congo where the presidents are there since like 30 years and so on but in sea it's very different because since 1966 it has been like a sequence of 10 10 years every 10 years there is a coup there is a rebellion and there is a coup it's also yeah, it's also due to problem of governance because especially local governments because since the 1970s the mayors and the local authorities were not elected since then they are appointed by the government and when they are appointed they think that they they serve the president who is there and not they don't serve the population and that's this encourage the corruption and so on it's very different and the presidents they change like after 10 years in average Yeah, and the other thing to add on that point is that those changes in governments have often been helped by some of the regional actors and some other international actors involved in car as well who have put their weight behind movements which have unseated them so I think this goes back to what Igor was talking about as well that in order for this piece to proceed in car dealing with the regional dynamics and dealing with the fact that you know we have individuals in almost all of the neighboring countries who have held to power for long periods of time who in many of those countries are also respected as having really brought stability to their countries are very popular in having been there for long periods of time really I think has the ability to undermine respect for the democratic process that has happened in car so balancing against those forces being a play again in the future Great, we'll take two more questions so why don't we take one right here to start Zeko Wosh from the United Nations Department of Diskeeping Operations I'm leading the MINUSCA team in the DDR section and I'm of course very happy to see that a lot of the discussion today is on DDR even though it's a very challenging issue but it's not often that we are in the center of attention especially in Central African Republic where it's a very popular program unfortunately and I will explain also what I mean by that but let me first maybe update you on something positive that happened on Wednesday at this famous consultation we did distribute as the main action point of the agenda a draft national DDR strategy to all the participants so all the members of the committee meaning the government and the armed groups this draft national strategy had been prepared over a long period of time by the government with the support of our MINUSCA DDR colleagues and also the World Bank this is important because the World Bank is our designated main partner in the DDR program however there are a number of challenges of course in having the strategy adopted because what we need is the full buy-in of the armed groups and you have mentioned that throughout your presentations now why is this so challenging first of all it is challenging because of indeed some of the more operational issues such as providing interesting incentives to the members of the armed groups but it is mainly challenging because we have a really hard time in getting an agreement between the different actors of the conflict so DDR normally in an environment where you don't have a peace agreement in place that is signed by all the actors of the conflict I'm specifically not saying armed groups because as Fiona also mentioned several times there are challenges also on the government side and we have encountered that maybe that much in the FACA basically the FACA we considered also as the anti-balaka or are considered as the anti-balaka by the other armed groups and over the last days you've seen it very clearly that the FACA basically acting as anti-balaka so just to say that the issue with the political process is that both agreements that were signed is the Brazzaville Agreement and the Bungie Forum Agreement in 2014 and 15 and not as Fiona mentioned address the main grievances of the armed groups now obviously it's more than about grievances it's about what's generated illegal wealth generation and so on but there are two layers of motivations and some of them are legitimate and that is actually a great opportunity for us as the international community because in many countries that are in a similar situation there are no legitimate by the armed groups which makes it very difficult for us to negotiate with them however in this context we do have all these claims about all the grievances about the marginalization of the northeast so unfortunately these were not really discussed at both peace conferences so however the main condition to do DDR is to have this buy in from the armed groups because it's basically a voluntary exercise okay you give up your weapon and okay in exchange you get something but that something is not sufficient okay because it's if it's not about giving up your weapon it's really about creating a mid-term if not long-term opportunity for these members of armed groups so that they do not return to armed conflict and this is what is very challenging in CAR because there are no opportunities okay I mean ambassador Hawkins said it very clearly the country is empty it takes a long time to build infrastructure and to create employment opportunities and meanwhile pressure, political pressure is very high from all sides to to support the government in implementing this DDR process and as Fiona also mentioned in the past those DDR process were used as well generation individual well generation for not only the armed group members but also the previous government why because they were all getting paid for being on the DDR steering committee so we really are spending a lot of time trying to learn these lessons from the past and to adopt a program that's different and a lot of it will be income generating and labor intensive work that is not something new but since there are no other employment opportunities we barely have a choice I'm still interested to hear from you if there are any other programmatic ideas that you have in terms of creating incentives that are not traditional DDR but that maybe look at what do we do with this illegal mining the FPRC acting as security providers for the Chinese oil company or for example all these different illegal activities that Axelika is engaged in if you have any idea about how that can be transformed into a programmatic incentive and then also maybe if you would like to comment on this conflict resolution approach because very often in peacekeeping that's left out because we are focusing on stabilization but since you as Ambassador Hawkins mentioned okay it's great we have the elections but it doesn't mean that the conflict is over so how would you see that sequencing of elections conflict resolutions DDR not even talking about SSR since we are not really ready for that anyway I would be very interested to hear your views on that thank you so much great thank you so much for that update and the question and we'll take one more question I think there's one in the back thank you Miss Susan I just have an observation and I'm going to end up with a question and I think one of the issues that we analyze and we learn about this conflict is that the local government and the international community doesn't engage CR people in this process and for fact as we speak right now we get they start the DDR process but there is a fight in Kakabandoro and because the rebel troop on the ground they don't believe too much on their leaders because in this process the leaders going to get all funds or financial or anything but the troop won't get anything and they still have weapons and that's how it works over there so my question to be really brief my question is how do you think this DDR process will be successful in this commission thank you great thanks and let me add a final question for you to weave into your comments here and Ambassador Hawkins mentioned that the Brussels meeting is coming up next month and I just wonder if you could give any advice to the Central African Government to Manusca the UN going into it to international partners based on what you've heard in community dialogues based on the conflict analysis, based on your research what do you think is if you can pick one thing, what's the most important thing that they should think about going into those meetings well I think Silk approves that you can't leave car for even we've been what 40 hours and there's a new deal I mean this is huge development I'm looking forward to talking to you in terms of in terms of incentives I think one of the one of the key ones wouldn't be so much of an incentive but whether Manusca could shift some of its energies away from time centers in order to put some of these activities beyond play so I can very much understand an overstretched mission which has protection of civilians at its center that what the mission's focus has been to be present and to be able to provide safe environments within time centers as a minimum because securing the whole of car which is large and largely empty is a really difficult task but one of the criticisms that we've heard over and over again is you can be in the time centers but Manusca can't be more than 5 or 10 you know 20 kilometers outside of the town and that there's still real instability on these axes and I think what's crucial to that is that actually a lot of these economic predatory activities are happening on those axes and so if we're talking about this being a crisis focused protection of civilians mission, yes you do need to be centers around town centers and you need to be doing a really good job of providing robust protection of civilians within those centers but the reality is what you're doing by providing that is also tipping a lot of the populations that used to live along those axes points into the town centers and that is creating all kinds of economic and social problems in itself but if you could actually and I know this is this is a real challenge when peacekeeping missions are stretched but if you could actually start to push some of the resources that the Manusca mission has outward from those town centers in order to start putting beyond beyond the reach of these armed groups some of the key wealth-generating activities so find a way to restore control of the cattle markets in Cagabando and in Bambari those are huge money those are big focus points of these armed groups and I don't think it'll be easy to put those beyond play but I think that needs to happen in order to move this forward and to order to lift some of these key individuals away from the activities that continue this dynamic the other is the diamond sights and being able to control key axis roads there are many diamond sights in car and I know that it would be difficult to control all of them but there are some really crucial axes and crucial axes upon which major civilian atrocities are occurring for example the one between Bria and Yalinga where Muhammad Saleh has been carrying out serious atrocities against community members against villagers and against anyone moving out to the mines in that area to be able to again to start moving these armed actors away from the activities that sustain this conflict that would be one and then to answer Susan's question which is a tricky one one of the things that I've been really concerned about and started to really hit me through the nine months of being there was that as the international community I think we are replicating some of the failures of the car government over the years in the way that we're providing assistance what do I mean by that if we want to talk about dealing with the fallout of the previous crisis and some of the real damage to the social fabric and to the sectarian divides that have crept and been really solidified between muslim and christian communities we need to focus our energy on the west that's where the key damage was done by anti-balaka xalaka, exactions against each other in these cycles of violence but if we want to actually solve some of the root causes of this conflict it's the northeast we're still not there we're still up to Birau and there are four NGOs operating none of whom have international staff on the ground in order for Igor and I to go up there and do qualitative research we had to stay on the menusca base which took months of persuading because there's simply no guest house in town it's not a question if there's no secure guest house in town there is no guest house in town there's nothing to stay at and so even for international NGOs or local NGOs I wanted to get a foothold about which would start to pull the xalaka away from having that community support up there in order to give communities something that says our government actually cares about us we're willing to be bought into this state there's not even a foothold for you to start those activities and so I think that would be the one piece of advice going into Brussels I think that yes we need to continue to invest in making sure that those relationships are repaired in the west but if we want to actually tackle these cycles of violence and the root causes of the conflict we need to actually start working in the northeast I want to add something on what Fiona just said what menusca can do also for the GDR for the organization especially in the east of the country can be how to reorganize the diamond trade because one of the reasons for one of the reasons of this conflict was about diamonds in 2008-2010 the former president Bozizi who was overthrown by the Syriac he used to close all the buying offices and I need to say that also the diamond in Central Africa is just artisanal and mining so people on the riverbed or they just dig less than 10 meters and to have the gravel and to look for diamonds so it's just out the diamond is almost on the ground so Bozizi managed to close all the buying offices and to get control of the diamond trades and preventing the population especially in the Bria area to to deal with that to go on trading diamonds and in these areas diamond is like 80% of the economic activities in that town so with the Kimberley ban the diamond is now mostly the art group are taking the most benefit from the diamond because the price is low when coming from the population they are the ones who take a lot of benefit from that and when the Syriac was created before the Syriac it was a small armada group a ribbon group that managed to form the Syriac so at the beginning when these armada group were created people didn't join but when Bozizi stopped the diamond trade most of the diamond traders they joined the Syriac and they became fighters so now I think one of the solution is to negotiate with the Kimberley process and the armada group to find the solution to bring back these fighters who used to be diamond dealers or miners back to this trade and to make it legal to achieve this yeah just as a closing thought on what the folks will be attending the donors conference next month can be thinking about I think I would absolutely agree with Fiona on the importance of not neglecting the east this is where this began and I think often in the conversations that I had in Bungie there's just not a lot of thinking about how do we address the dynamics in the east where the Syriac groups or the groups that forms like it came from the other point that I would add is that in the last six years as I've been traveling in the east I have been on every trip amazed by what local communities are doing organically to address these conflict dynamics whether it's early warning networks community FM radios local peace committees that address the sectarian tensions I mean just really incredible work being done by people who often are not being paid who are doing this despite the fact that they have no resources so I think it's going to be important for the donors to find a way to support local initiatives like that without overwhelming them and finding a way for that for the dialogue between these groups and the government as it seeks to extend its authority to the east not to do so in a way that undermines what these initiatives have been which is I think the reason why the project that you were working on improving that dialogue between communities and between the government that's very important because that's the conversation that needs to happen in order for these initiatives to grow but not be subsumed great well thank you so much I have to say I'm always heartened by the ability to fill a room to talk about Central African Republic and I think that just speaks to the incredible commitment of individuals and organizations even in a week where there were two events on Central African Republic in DC so that's to me that's really tremendous I would like to give a word of thanks to all of the people in the room from NGOs, from the State Department for partners across the USG who really helped provide advice and have been partners and will continue to be partners to us as USIP is working in the country and I think often when there's countries that have fewer resources, fewer organizations that there tends to be a greater spirit of coordination and collaboration and I think that means that we have an opportunity to do better work and I'd like to extend that thank you of course to Ambassador Hawkins and his team we're really glad that he was able to join us today and to USAID in particular as a project partner in this project and I think just as a final note I was really struck by this this theme of frustration impatience and confusion and I think those are three things that I certainly take with me but on the positive note Ambassador Hawkins conviction that resolving these challenges and restoring peace in the country is possible so let me thank our panelists for your individual commitments to that work and for the really insightful comments today so thank you to you and thanks everybody for joining us