In May, from Zemio to Mboki, Obo, and Bambouti, the Central African Armed Forces (FACA) regained a foothold in the localities located on the red rock ribbon of the road bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as far as the borders of South Sudan, in the extreme south-east of the Central African Republic. For several years, the Haut-Mbomou region had been controlled by the Union Pour la Paix en Centrafrique (UPC, Union for Peace in the Central African Republic), one of the many armed movements left after the great rebellion of the early 2010s.
On May 22, 1,300 kilometers away, Central African soldiers marched through the streets of Sido (north), a gateway to Chad that had been closed for 10 years and had also been deserted by the army. In Bangui, the redeployment of national security forces has been welcomed, but Communications Minister Maxime Balalou pointed out that "without the intervention of our Russian allies, none of this would have been possible."
A European diplomat reluctantly stated, "There are still pockets of insecurity on the country's borders, but overall, the strong, brutal approach used by the Russian mercenaries of the Wagner group has borne fruit and enabled them to regain control of the towns." "Central African armed groups have left the prefectures and dispersed into rural areas," said Paul Crescent Beninga, spokesperson for the Civil Society Working Group (SCWG).
Some warlords have played along with the Khartoum peace agreement, which Moscow brought to the table in early 2019. Some have laid down their arms to join the government. Others, such as Ali Darassa, a long-standing rebel, move between Sudan and Chad. Above all, the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC) is moribund. A grouping of the country's most powerful militias, both Christian and Muslim, it promised to remove President Faustin-Archange Touadéra from power and drive the Russians out of the country. Its main instigator, former president François Bozizé (2003-2013), has been living in forced exile in Guinea-Bissau for the past 14 months, while under an international arrest warrant.
In 2021, the CPC's offensive at the gates of Bangui came up against an unprecedented line of defense independently made up of Russian mercenaries from the private military company Wagner and Rwandan special forces called to the rescue under a bilateral agreement. Pushed back to the borders or into deep forests, the rebels were unable to prevent the redeployment of FACA and their Russian allies.
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