SECURITY has been top of the agenda at the Europe-Africa summit held in Brussels on April 2-3 amid warnings from the United Nations that 19,000 Muslims “face slaughter” in the Central African Republic (CAR).

The European Union has promised to send up to 1,000 troops to the country. But given the EU’s current focus on Russia and Ukraine, the planned mission has been postponed until late-April.

The delay is tragic for CAR where ethnic conflict has already claimed thousands of lives and EU troops are desperately needed to help African Union and French forces struggling to prevent a full-fledged civil war.

It is also undeniably unfortunate for the EU’s much-publicised hopes of establishing its credentials as an international security actor. France has justifiably accused its EU partners of not living up to their word and shirking responsibility for global security. General Philippe Ponties, head of the planned EU military operation in the CAR (EUFOR), says its EU’s preoccupation with the political crisis in Ukraine which is distracting EU governments.

Although France, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Portugal and Spain have agreed to contribute to the mission, Ponties has warned that the launch still needs logistical support of about 100 soldiers, ranging from medical to transport needs. The EU plan agreed in January — following a United Nations Security Council resolution in December 2013 — calls for the dispatch of 800 to 1,000 soldiers to join 6,000 African and 2,000 French troops who are struggling to stop the fighting.

The EU force would focus on providing security in the capital Bangui and at Bangui airport, where around 70,000 people who have fled the violence are living in dire conditions.

It’s not just the crisis in Ukraine, however. For Europe, the ghosts of the last 10 years are haunting its response to the crisis in CAR. Since 1991, European nations have undertaken multiple interventions into the world’s trouble spots, with varying degrees of success. The last 10 years in Afghanistan and especially Iraq, however, have been a humbling and deeply disturbing experience, producing a reluctance to ever again send large, expeditionary forces overseas. As a result, in the streets of Bangui, the ghosts of Rwanda are coming face to face with those of Afghanistan.

The overthrow in March 2013 of President François Bozizé by majority Muslim Séléka militias was the catalyst for the recent wave of bloodshed in CAR. With the state increasingly fragilised and a cycle of violence developing, people’s identities increasingly came to be defined by ethnic and religious differences.

By December, terms such as genocide were making an appearance as Christian ‘anti-balaka’ militias; eager for payback following Bozizé’s ouster, ethnically cleansed the Muslim neighbourhoods in the capital of Bangui and the wider countryside.

The French-African Union intervention faltered not long after arriving. The limited force levels soon proved problematic, with foreign forces disarming militias where possible but unable to move into the countryside, where the greatest numbers of atrocities were occurring. The number of foreign troops involved in Operation Sangaris is not enough to stabilise Bangui and the surrounding areas.

Even before the intervention force arrived, 100,000 Muslim refugees had taken shelter in the French base at Bangui international airport, one million more were on the move internally and starvation threatened over half of CAR’s 4m population.

Thus almost 20 years after the international community’s failure in Rwanda and the Great Lakes, a small number of international peacekeepers, protecting limited safe areas, are surrounded by escalating violence they cannot control, in a society at war with itself.

In fact, EU battle groups, which have been on standby since 2007, were created to deploy under a legal, UN mandate to protect civilians and avert another humanitarian tragedy in the heart of Africa. The battle groups, however, are not being sent or even considered. Smaller, more targeted interventions, are likely to be the trend of future Western operations, as few in Europe or North America wish a repeat of the last decade, with thousands of troops on the ground, engaging a foe that does not wear uniforms.

What is clear is how different the current climate is when compared to the 1990s, when arguments for humanitarian intervention were at their strongest and large Western-led multinational forces, resuscitated failed states. The moral certainty the West displayed in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and Sierra Leone has been replaced by a hard learned realism and a hesitancy to place boots on the ground. In CAR, an increased EU security role beyond logistical support is unlikely and a major ground deployment, largely unthinkable.

The West will continue to intervene after Iraq and Afghanistan, but with an increased preference for lighter footprints and limited casualties. All the while an EU defence strategy designed to fight the wars of the 1990s will continue to stutter even as Central Africa’s Muslims pay the price for European excesses in faraway lands.

—The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.