Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham is quoted by TakePart.com’s Internationalist column on religious violence in Africa:
Meanwhile, the crisis in Darfur sits on CAR’s northeast edge, where borders are virtually nonexistent, and tribes, smugglers, militias, and other assorted armed groups cross easily and with impunity. To the west is Chad, which over the last few months has been either sending or receiving fighters or refugees, further destabilizing a country that saw its own civil unrest two years ago. Even relatively peaceful Cameroon, to the west, has seen its share of troubles as Janjaweed fighters from Sudan cross over to slaughter elephants.
“If it becomes more of a vacuum, it will suck in bad forces from all the neighbors,” says J. Peter Pham, who directs the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, a bipartisan Washington, D.C., think tank. “There’s not a single country that borders CAR that is stable.”