Sixty-Three Men Lay Down Their Arms, and Bangui Hands Its Security to Foreigners

Sixty-three men have set their rifles down in northwestern Central African Republic. Three of them are women. These are images we want to see: weapons falling silent and families finally able to go home. But let us ask the question no one in the Bangui palace wants to hear: how many Central Africans had to take up arms before being invited to give them up, and how much longer will this country live inside this loop of war, promise and disarmament?

The governor of the Yadé region, Barthélemy Wilikon, hailed the gesture as a step forward for peace. He congratulated these former fighters for answering the call of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra and urged those still holding out in the bush to join the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process, the DDR. The operation is to continue until 8 November. Fine. But a DDR process that amounts to a list of names, a speech and an official photograph has never disarmed a country. It disarms individuals for a while, then lets them fall back into violence for lack of wages, land, training and justice.

Look at the rest of the picture, because it is revealing. Between January and June 2026, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic, MINUSCA, closed 21 operating bases: seven permanent and fourteen temporary. The mission cites falling tensions in several regions, the gradual redeployment of the Central African Armed Forces, the FACA, and budget constraints weighing on peacekeeping operations. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Valentine Rugwabiza, has said that "passing the torch does not mean leaving" and that "reconfiguration does not mean absence." She is right about the vocabulary. She will be judged on the facts.

And the facts are these. MINUSCA still conducts more than 550 ground and air patrols a week. It promises greater responsiveness. Yet every closed base is a road no longer watched, a village with no UN presence within hours on foot, a family wondering whether the next armed group will arrive before the rescuers do. Closing bases while armed groups, militias and opaque security contracts multiply means shifting the risk onto the poorest civilians in the country.

We must also name what lies behind this security vacuum. The Central African Republic has become the playground of the new scramble for Africa, with Russia at the head of the military actors. Russian instructors and auxiliaries, having moved from Wagner to other structures, protect the regime, secure gold, diamond and uranium mines, and impose a law of the strongest that has nothing to do with sovereignty. A state that entrusts the guarding of its power to foreign mercenaries no longer possesses the sovereignty it proclaims. It rents out its army by the day. And when a head of state changes the Constitution to stay in power, as happened with the 2023 revision that lifted term limits, he is not defending the people. He is defending his chair.

Why does this matter beyond Bangui? Because the Central African Republic is a mirror. It shows what happens when a state is built on violence rather than on a social contract. The country has known the Séléka rebellions, the anti-balaka militias, coups d'état and peace accords signed and then betrayed. Each cycle has left armed men without a future, young people without schools and elected officials without legitimacy. Those who finance and arm these cycles never live in the villages they lay waste. The people who pay the price are the mothers burying their children and the farmers who can no longer work their fields.

So what is to be done? The answer is not in speeches. It is in institutions. The DDR must be funded predictably, with real wages and training for demobilised fighters, land titles for those who return to the soil, and a justice system that separates ordinary former combatants from war criminals. Disarmament without reintegration is nothing but a pause before the next war. Rwanda rebuilt after the horror of 1994 through a disciplined administration and a long-term reintegration strategy, even though its external conduct today is condemnable. Botswana built its prosperity on solid institutions, independent courts and clear rules for investors. Senegal, in 2024, showed that a peaceful alternation of power is possible when institutions hold firm against those in power. The Central African Republic can learn from these successes.

The Central African government must publish the security contracts it has signed with foreign actors, submit these agreements to Parliament, and end any private military presence that escapes national control. ECCAS and the African Union must demand verifiable timelines for disarmament, with public indicators and independent monitoring. The UN Security Council must not accept a reduction of MINUSCA without a clearly funded civilian protection plan. And partners who claim to be committed to democracy must stop turning a blind eye to tailor-made constitutional revisions and elections decided in advance.

But change will not come from the capitals alone. It will come from citizens who refuse to be sold paper peace. Every Central African must demand three things: that former fighters be paid, trained and reintegrated, not merely photographed; that contracts affecting national security be made public; and that elected officials be held accountable for their mandates and their Constitution. Those who laid down their arms this month made a courageous choice. The country must give them a reason never to take them up again.

Sixty-three rifles have been handed in. How many young Central Africans are still waiting for a reason not to pick one up? That is the question that must haunt Bangui, Moscow, Paris and New York. We no longer want disarmaments that never end. We want a state that protects its citizens without making them dependent on foreigners, and that wins its peace through justice.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL