Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the crisis in the Central African Republic through the lens of responses to local violence. It argues that the imagined fault line of religion is reinforced through international response while others are largely ignored.

Paper long abstract:

Similar to the crisis in the Sahel, conflict in the Central African Republic has been on a sharp increase since six years. In addition, similar to the crisis in Mali, the international response has been unprecedented compared to earlier crises. With the UN Peacekeeping mission now active for more than four years, one would hope that the crisis would decrease, the opposite, however, is the reality. This paper will explore why this is the case and argues that rather than subduing fractures in society, the international response risk to reinforce certain fault lines while ignoring others. Religion was considered the master-cleavage, while in reality, also other sources of tensions contributed to local outbursts of violence. This produced two results. First, religion effectively increasingly has become a source of violent conflict. Second, other fractures and causes of competition in society remain unaddressed. Both dynamics contribute to the seeming intractability of pathways to solutions.