France Urges UN Authorize Intervention in Central African Republic, Lest Religious Genocide Worsen There

Beginning of Reuters article on conflict in Central African Republic, which is south of Chad and north of the two Congos:

France said on Thursday that Central African Republic was "on the verge of genocide" and it expected the United Nations to give Paris and the African Union permission to intervene.

Central African Republic, a landlocked nation of 4.6 million people, has slid into chaos since mainly Muslim Seleka rebels, many of them from neighboring Chad and Sudan, ousted President Francois Bozize in March.

Seleka leader Michel Djotodia, installed as interim president, has lost control of his loose coalition of warlords. About 100 people died in fighting between Seleka and Christian militias in September, and thousands of villagers fled renewed clashes this week. Attacks on magistrates in the capital Bangui have fuelled concern about lawlessness.

"The country is on the verge of genocide," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told French television station France 2. "France, CAR's neighbors and the international community are worried. The United Nations will give permission to African forces, the African Union and France to intervene."

While U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday he may be prepared to deploy U.N. peacekeepers, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has made it plain Washington favors an African peacekeeping force.

Ban said further tensions between communities "might well lead to uncontrollable sectarian violence with untold consequences for the country, the sub-region and beyond".

According to the CIA World Factbook, Christians make up half the population and Muslims 15 percent.

A 2,500-strong regional peacekeeping force is due to be beefed up next month and come under African Union command but there are increasingly urgent appeals for broader international action as the violence escalates.

When fired food began to be considered tasty

Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham on the key role cooking played in human evolution.
In "Scientific American.
Evolving Bigger Brains through Cooking: A Q&A with Richard Wrangham
Our intelligence has enabled us to conquer the world. The secret for the big brains, says biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham, is cooking, which made digestion easier and liberated more calories.

A New York Times conversation:
A Conversation With Richard Wrangham
From Studying Chimps, a Theory on Cooking

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
Published: April 20, 2009

Richard Wrangham, a primatologist and anthropologist, has spent four decades observing wild chimpanzees in Africa to see what their behavior might tell us about prehistoric humans. Dr. Wrangham, 60, was born in Britain and since 1989 has been at Harvard, where he is a professor of biological anthropology. His book, “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human,” will be published in late May. He was interviewed over a vegetarian lunch at last winter’s American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago and again later by telephone. An edited version of the two conversations follows.
{Click the above hyperlink for the interview.}

Jinnah's tragic legacy

The bitter feeling from the saga of India and Pakistan of several years of the recent decades has cast a shadow over Muhammad Ali Jinnah's partition vision. He envisioned partition of India into a Muslim nation and India proper, motivated by concern for justice for Muslims. He feared that their concerns would be ignored by a Hindu-dominated India.

Instead, we have on-going military spats between the two nations;
and now the two rivals are nuclear-armed.

An idealist supporting partition at the time might argue: partition will spare the respective nations of communal violence. Hardly. It has been keen feature in India.

A PAKISTANI QUEST FOR UNION WITH INDIA?
One can just envision how things might progress, if the current Islamist destabilization continues. Imagine the following:
Talibanists further penetrate Pakistani society, not merely militarily, but inserting their presence in popular thought and allegiances; and they eventually control more of the country.
Pakistanis realize the danger and in a desperate move to stanch the Talibanist drive and ultimate takeover of Pakistan,
seek union of the remaining non-Taliban regions of the country with India.

Imagine the alternate gloom scenario:
Talibanists take over all of the country: not just rural regions, tribal regions and secure not just allegiances of a few corrupt security force members,
but also take over the commercial and governmental cores of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. Securing the military apparata, they also secure nuclear weapons.
Pakistani government statement, cited in "Pakistan Times."