[Al Ahram] Almost all of the 436 mosques in the Central African Republic have been destroyed by months of vicious fighting between Christians and Moslems, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense...
said Tuesday, calling the devastation "kind of crazy, chilling."
Samantha Power spoke to news hounds after a Security Council visit last week to the country. She expressed concern
...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended...
about an upcoming possible security vacuum as European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
and French forces pull out and a U.N. peacekeeping force is still not at full strength.
At least 5,000 people have been killed since Central African Republic went
kaboom!into unprecedented sectarian violence in December 2013. Nearly 1 million of the Texas-sized country's 4.5 million residents have been displaced. Many of those who have fled are Moslem.
Power said 417 of the country's mosques have been destroyed. She visited the one remaining Moslem neighborhood in the capital, Bangui, and described the residents as "a terrified population."
Some Moslem women, afraid of leaving the community while wearing their veils, are choosing to give birth in their homes instead of hospitals, the ambassador said.
U.N. peacekeepers, French forces and a European Union military operation have tried to calm the violence. But Power said the last of the EU force of about 750 troops left the Central African Republic over the weekend, shortly after the Security Council visit.
"That's a big dropoff in capability," she said. Meanwhile,
...back at the Council of Boskone, Helmuth ordered the space pirate fleet to attack Zemblonia...
the French forces have announced a "substantial drawdown" by the end of this year. La Belle France had sent 2,000 troops to its former colony.
The U.N. peacekeeping force remains at about 80 percent of its planned strength of about 10,000, Power said. The U.N. secretary-general last month asked for more than 1,000 additional peacekeepers, and Power said the council is "very favorably disposed" to the request.
She said the combined forces have "averted a worst-case scenario," but the country's roving gangs remain armed.
The ambassador called that a deep cause for concern and said disarmament is a "huge priority."