Free Republic

Bangui (Central African Republic) (AFP) - The Central African Republic named its first Muslim prime minister on Sunday as part of an effort to create a more inclusive government and end more than a year of sectarian violence. Together with Samba-Panza, a Christian, Kamoun faces the difficult task of revitalising a delicate political transition aimed at ending deadly sectarian violence and disarming militias in one of Africa's poorest countries. The latest unrest in the CAR began in March 2013 when the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel coalition toppled the ruling regime and put Michel Djotodia -- the country's first Muslim president...

When rebel forces, led by Arab-speaking Muslims, seized control of the Central African Republic this March, it deepened fears that a co-ordinated Islamist insurgency could now be spreading through swathes of the continent. Four months on, the landlocked country is living through a reign of terror, largely directed against its Christian minority.“Churches have been routinely robbed and pillaged here, while Muslim mosques have been left untouched,” Mgr Cyriaque Gbate Doumalo, secretary-general of the Central African Republic’s Catholic bishops’ conference, told me in an interview. “Our public institutions aren’t functioning and our hospitals have been ransacked, leaving the sick and destitute...