Political and ethnic identity in violent conflict

The Central African Republic (CAR) does not get a lot of coverage in the global media. However, once the conflicts in the CAR were interpreted in terms of religious conflict, it has started to feature prominently. The dominant narrative presents it as a conflict fuelled by religion between Muslim militia, Christian defence units and civilians. This chapter focuses on this conflict and contextualises it within a trajectory of conflict. It argues that the conflict has other facets apart from a religious strife and includes ethnic and political factions and conflict as well. Through a case study method a narrative of events is provided, and processes, groups and identities are analysed. The data were retrieved from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) briefing notes and news series and cover the period from 2000 to 2014. The results show that apart from a long-standing conflict related to changes in political leadership, there are other paths of violence, which are representative of other ethnic and political identities.