Ambassador Laurence D. Wohlers visited U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) headquarters in Stuttgart February 7, 2011, in order to learn more about the command and to explore other options for the command to work with the government and military forces of the Central African Republic (CAR).



This was Wohlers’ first visit to the command, but U.S. AFRICOM is no stranger to him; he previously met with AFRICOM's deputy to the commander for civil-military activities, Ambassador J. Anthony Holmes, when he paid a visit to the CAR in December 2010 in an ongoing effort to strengthen partnerships.



Holmes had the opportunity then to meet with the CAR President, the Minister of Defence and "a number of other ministers," according to Wohlers. He stated that the visit was particularly useful as they discussed Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army and what the U.S. government was doing to help with that problem.



Wohlers was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the Central African Republic in September 2010. He previously served in the CAR from 1985 to 1987 as the director of the Centre Martin Luther King. While fluent in French, the CAR's official language, he also has learned some Sango, the CAR's national language.



"My father was with the U.S. Information Agency in the 50s," said Wohlers when discussing some of his upbringing; he considers this to have influenced his own interest in diplomacy.



According to his U.S. Department of State biography, Wohlers' other assignments have included service in Belgium, Madagascar, Japan, Mauritania and Benin and his recent assignments included: Senior Advisor for International Programs at the Smithsonian Institution, Executive Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy, Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the European Union and Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.



The U.S. Embassy is located in the CAR capital of Bangui which is also home to nearly one fifth of the entire 4.5 million population of that country.



The CAR is centrally located on the continent and shares borders with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Chad, Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo. The size of the country is roughly 623,000 sq. km. or slightly smaller than the state of Texas in the United States. Its terrain is predominantly rolling plains with some scattered hills in the northeast and southwest according to DoS background notes.

Wohlers' visit to the command included an overview briefing of how the command operates to include its "whole of government" approach where partnerships are developed to help Africans create African solutions to African problems.



Wohlers believes a partnership with the CAR would be beneficial especially in dealing with the LRA and the potential issues with Sudan's referendum.



"The LRA has had a substantial impact in the southeast or really the eastern part of CAR over the last year to year and a half because of the pressure from the Ugandans in the Congo. To escape that pressure they moved up into the CAR and they attacked a number of villages, they abducted people, they created a lot of fear and panic that resulted in a lot of displaced people who were too fearful to stay in their villages and on their farms and so they came into the larger cities in that area."



According to Wohlers, "It created a fairly important humanitarian problem there with 25k displaced [persons] in that region." He went on to share that the U.S. government has just announced another $6 million in humanitarian assistance to that region through U.S. Agency for International Development's Food for Peace Program.



"Those people are simply too afraid to leave the major towns where you have a permanent presence of troops."



The goal of furthering this partnership with the local forces in the CAR, the DRC and the Ugandans would be to "contain and eliminate the [the LRA] threat. There is a common consensus that the LRA threat must be eliminated and that is where the military part comes in but in the short run those [displaced] people have to be helped and that is what we are doing with humanitarian aid."



Historically the Southeast CAR has not had any security challenges and that is a significant problem for the 5,000 troop CAR military which is spread thinly over this vast area according to Wohlers.



"Because of the LRA, they have had to deploy more of their troops into that region and they simply don't really have the numbers to be able to deploy in large numbers. It is a huge area; much of it is national parks so there aren't necessarily a lot of people out there so it's a very, very difficult area to even track and find these groups of LRA, much less attack them."



The issue of the Sudanese referendum is garnering the attention of the CAR government also although the potential negative outcomes of that referendum may not hurt the CAR as much as one might presume.



"The government is very concerned, for obvious reasons, about Sudan. The last time that you had serious fighting in Sudan it led to large numbers of refugees coming across the border into the Central African Republic.



"Fortunately, the situation along the border is calm and the successful conclusion of the recent referendum in Sudan augers well for the future of the region. However, there is an infrastructure in place capable of responding to a refugee situation should that occur," according to Wholers.



"The UNHCR [United Nations Refugee Agency] would be there for that and you would have the International Red Cross, World Food Programme. They would do the bulk of the feeding and [respond to] other such challenges but it does put some stress on the government as well. We have had refugees and displaced persons in the CAR for a while so there is some expertise in how to handle that, it's not something that's new to them."



Wohlers' overall perspective on the CAR is positive, although he notes that the country faces significant challenges. He highlighted that they just completed the first round of national presidential elections where it appears the president was reelected and they are now moving forward toward the second round of elections for a number of the national assembly seats.



Once elections are complete, presumably in March, "the country can finally move beyond this election focus and get back to the urgent need for a focus on economic development."



"Presumably there will be a new government and then we and the other international donors can sit down with them and look at the next steps in terms of poverty reduction and economic development. On the military side, obviously, both border security and internal security are key components. If you don't have that then you don't have economic development."