Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. This is a CVS on the World. I'm John Bachelor. Bill Rajo, Foundation for the

Defense of democracies, and we head to Central African Republic.

We welcome Caleb Weiss, a member of the team at Long War Journal, as well as the Bridgeway Foundation,

helping us to understand the very careful right now and dynamic

movements that are going on in francophone countries. Central African Republic, but not to leave out the coups or assertions of military force in Niger and Mali and Burkina Faso.

We begin with Central African Republic, however.

Caleb, a very good day to you. We begin with Central African Republic, however.

Caleb, a very good day to you.

My experience with the CAR over many years

is that it's a violent place, very, very keen on bringing in advisors from a variety of

places, origins, and that it has resources, big resources.

However, recently, it's fallen away from my understanding of where it is in this development

of these new governments, the assertion of military. Is its governance at risk more now than before?

Good evening to you, Caleb. Good evening, John. Thank you for having me.

I would say no, and some caveats to that. So Central African Republic as we know it is you

have the capital Benji and that is where the majority of the government's control is.

Outside of Benji, the capital control gets more tenuous.

Effectively, there are a series or a litany rather of rebel groups that control the vast majority of CAR's territory.

But in Bangee where the government does have effective control, it's relatively secure.

And as you alluded to, this is largely thanks to various quote unquote

advisors that Bengi has hired over the last decade or so,

starting with an African Union mission,

...