SUMMARY
MPC (Mouvement patriotique pour la Centrafrique, Patriotic Movement for the Central African Republic) was a rebel group in the Central African Republic (CAR), formed in July 2015 as a breakaway from the FPRC. Its founding assembly was held in Kaga-Bandoro, where the movement was presented in early August 2015. It was a predominantly Muslim group, led and dominated by Chadian Arabs but also including a large contingent of Fulani herders and fighters from the Chad border region. It was founded by Mahamat Bahar, who had been head of military intelligence under President Michel Djotodia, after a falling-out within the FPRC leadership, though Bahar was sidelined within months and the movement's dominant figure became its military commander, Mahamat Al-Khatim, a Chadian Arab of the Salamat group who had himself been a senior FPRC commander.
MPC presented itself as a protector of Muslim pastoralist communities and of Central Africans of Chadian origin, but it had little distinct ideology of its own. As a breakaway from the FPRC, it inherited its parent group's territorial incompatibility. It operated in the north-central and northern prefectures. The group financed itself by taxing markets and the cattle trade, providing paid protection to herders, and running roadblocks, and it later drew revenue from mining.
In UCDP data, MPC was active as a distinct actor mainly between 2015 and 2020, on a smaller scale than the larger ex-Séléka groups. Most of its recorded fighting was against the anti-Balaka and other armed groups, and it killed several dozen civilians in one-sided violence.
The movement was prone to internal division. In January 2017 it split between a political wing and Al-Khatim's military faction. On 25 September 2017 Mahamat Bahar was ousted and went on to found the MNLC (Mouvement national pour la libération de la Centrafrique), though reportedly rejoined the MPC in 2018.
MPC was a signatory to the Political Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation, known as the Khartoum Accord, signed on 6 February 2019, under which Al-Khatim was named a special military adviser to the prime minister's office before resigning later that year. In December 2020, MPC joined the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC), a new alliance formed to disrupt that month's elections and overthrow President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, and Al-Khatim ordered his fighters to take part in the failed January 2021 advance on Bangui, after which he fled to N'Djamena.
On 3 November 2023, Al-Khatim announced the MPC's withdrawal from the CPC and his intention to return to dialogue under the Khartoum process, though some of his commanders rejected the move and the group was by then much depleted by desertions. On 19 November 2025, the MPC signed a new Chad-mediated peace agreement with the government in N'Djamena, agreeing to a ceasefire, to end its activities in three prefectures, to withdraw its fighters, and to enter a disarmament process, weeks before the December 2025 elections.
