Meanwhile, in Ubangi Land...

Looks like Bozize is screwed. Even the French (who helped put him in power) have lost patience with him. He's not someone I can feel particularly sorry for. He doesn't have an army when he needs one because he's spent the last ten years dismantling it so nobody could use it to sieze power the way he did. He's got all these rebels seriously pissed off at him because he promised them back in 2006 that he'd give them all this money and loot if they laid down their arms, then tried to stiff them when his own people objected that they weren't getting anything. I believe he thought that the rebels, once disarmed, would be unable to get replacement weapons to do anything about his double-dealing, which makes him a doofus as well as a cheat, since the Central African Republic borders on the northeastern Congo, Land of Abundant Small Arms (the CAR is the former French Ubangi Land and Chari Land, which are fascinating places in their own right).

My hat's off to the French. There's something to be said for letting the opponents fight it out, and the victor write the rules. Certainly the standard UN approach of trying vainly to stop the fighting without settling the issues has produced nothing but decades of war in the region.