Did the woman who e-mailed the Beeb today suggesting that Robin Cook be allowed the airwaves to announce a coup against the "great dictator", Blair, while he was out of the country know what happened in central Africa yesterday?
You won't find much about Bangui on the Net, not in English anyway. Once a French colonial jewel of a town, the capital of the Central African Republic is now just another of those places where people scrape a living and public sector salaries routinely go unpaid for months, if not years.
When gunfire broke out in the late afternoon in the north of Bangui, of course nobody knew what was going on. The first word from witnesses fleeing to the south and west spoke of "rebels" roaring in aboard 4x4s and taking up positions near the hospital and, apparently, the presidential palace. Which "rebels", though? There's a choice.
People in safer districts wisely preferred to stay home. Later, it emerged that a plane bringing President Ange-Félix Patassé, who has every reason to be paranoid but is potty as well, back from a summit in Niger got shot at as it was coming in to land. He hot-tailed it out to Cameroon.
Lucy Jones sent this 'e-mail' to the Guardian less than a month before the last time it all happened. The guys who appear this morning to be "in charge" in Bangui back General François Bozizé, a former armed forces chief sacked by the gaga greybeard in October 2001, after helping to put down previous trouble. He resisted arrest the following month and tried to topple Patassé a year later, but that bid was crushed with help from Libyan troops and rebels from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The latter never went home and made themselves unpopular by looting Bangui and far worse as soon as they had "liberated" the city. This was why, yesterday, it seemed at first possible that the shooting began when a band of these hired thugs decided to spend a Saturday night on the town.
The BBC reports today that Patassé has survived "at least seven coup attempts" since being elected in 1993, but it's never as simple as that. Some of these were mutinies. Tribal considerations abound. And though France has largely renounced the role it played in the CAR back in the days of the "Emperor Bokassa" and the diamonds scandal with President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Paris was none too pleased to see Patassé win that election.
Changes in French policy regarding its "back yard" were what opened the way for Libya's Colonel Moamer Kadhafi to muscle in. His troops were supposed to go home, making way for a regional peacekeeping force led by Gabon, but it would seem that such parts of the Gabonese-led contingent as the French have flown in never deployed much further than the airport.
In the next few days, we'll be hearing more about Chad as well. Bozizé went to neighbouring Chad after resisting arrest in November 2001. Only last week was the regime of Chad's President Idriss Deby declaring its friendship and regard for "brother Ange-Félix", amid off-the-record reports that Bozizé had slipped back into the region from France. This tale wouldn't be complete if oil didn't come into it somewhere. So it does. Chad lies to the north of the CAR and there's oil in border territory.
In Bangui, people know what's happening in Baghdad more quickly than they have the remotest idea what's going on up north in their own country. News from there can take a week to arrive.
None of this is likely to make front pages. Most of it is unlikely to be picked up at all, not because it goes untold. I'd hate things for people in Bangui to get even worse than they are. Today, it's reportedly their turn to do some free shopping and there are accounts of "singing and dancing". You can always rely on Africa to take your mind off Iraq.
1:16:08 PM link 
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