Police Back in Former C.Africa Rebel Stronghold

There are only 18 of them but the gendarmes in Bria, once the capital of the Seleka rebels, have become a living symbol of the Central African Republic state's efforts to rebuild.

The small paramilitary police unit has in recent days begun to patrol the streets of this key mining town of 75,000 people, northeast of Bangui.

The blue-uniformed gendarmes took over from Seleka, the mainly Muslim rebel coalition which used Bria as a base from which to launch an offensive that led to a March 2013 coup.

Colonel Jean-Bruno Despouys, who commands French troops in the region, said that when they rolled into Bria on April 7, he saw "armed men everywhere". 

And the former rebels still lay claim to control of the town, though their weapons have vanished except at checkpoints.

"We're in a phase of a gradual return to normal life, during which everybody has an eye on everyone else, in a zone strongly controlled by the ex-Seleka," French Colonel Despouys said.

Seleka forces seized Bria on December 18, 2012 and by the time their leader Michel Djotodia had to relinquish the presidency under regional pressure, the town had been under rebel rule for more than a year.

Djotodia had officially dissolved the Seleka in 2013 but he failed to stem spiralling violence pitting rogue ex-rebels against Christian militia.

In practice, Seleka fighters stood their ground in the CAR's diamond capital until the arrival this month of foreign peacekeeping troops in France's Operation Sangaris and a multinational African Union force known as MISCA.

Bria has no electricity and no tarred roads, like many other places in a nation that has known a succession of coups and mutinies, as well as strikes over unpaid wages.

The only reminder that the CAR, ranked by the United Nations as one of the world's least developed nations, has considerable potential wealth beneath its soil is the presence in Bria of so many diamond traders.

Traffic between the town and Bangui is greatly hindered by roadblocks manned both by former Seleka fighters and by their mainly Christian foes, the "anti-balaka" militias.

The 600-kilometre (370-mile) drive from the capital took two days on a potholed red clay road. An AFP reporter counted barely more than 20 non-military vehicles during the whole trip.

- 'Restoration of the state' -

"The work that Sangaris and MISCA are carrying out is the restoration of the state," said Robert Morgode, the district administrator of Haute-Kotto, a Muslim region where Bria is the chief town. "That takes place step by step."

With gendarmes back in town, aspects of the civilian administration are expected to follow. Some former Seleka rebels said they would cooperate. 

"We're not going to stay in power ourselves," their spokesman Hamad Hamadin said. "We're under a new regime. We are awaiting instructions from Bangui."

Civilians were wary of the fighters, in a country where many thousands have been slain and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes for fear of atrocities and pillaging.

One man, a Christian, held that former Seleka members were still looting the state coffers and denounced them for speaking with forked tongues. 

"When Sangaris troops came, they (the ex-Seleka) banned the population from going anywhere near them."

"They're afraid that we might complain, we might collaborate, we might betray them," another Christian resident, who also asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, said. 

"In the past few months, they must have killed more than 100 people. One day, we learned that two or three bodies had been found. Three days later, people discovered five or six of them."

Seleka denies any responsibility.

- Talk of partition -

Morgode said that future developments depend on the goodwill of the ex-Seleka, arguing that they had split into two groups: natives of the CAR and foreigners from neighbouring Sudan and Chad who had joined the insurgency.

"The sons of our nation" favour disarmament, he said, but the foreigners did not want to turn in their weapons to peacekeepers. 

"They have nothing to gain from disarmament (and) encourage the others to resist."

"Misfortune in the Central African Republic often comes from Sudan and Chad," Morgode added, explaining that recalcitrants among ex-rebels were putting forward the notion of partition, to obtain a Muslim north.

Muslims from Bangui and other places have fled northwards in large numbers to seek shelter among relatives of their own faith from massacres committed by the anti-balaka vigilantes.

Hamadin "rejected partition" on behalf of the Seleka, but the spokesman added that he understood the grounds for it.