Are Deby’s days numbered?
Feb 10, 2006 (NDJAMENA) — In the past, when Chadian President Idriss Deby moved around town everybody knew about it. Roads were closed, parked cars were towed away. Now paranoia has replaced the protocol and his convoy flies past unannounced in a cloud of dust.
“They go that fast now so there’s no chance of being hit,” muttered one resident in the capital, N’djamena. “Before, police used to come along an hour before and clear the roads but you knew exactly when the president was coming so that’s stopped now.”
Deby is a man with fires to fight on many fronts.
A wave of army defections and a rebel attack on a strategic border town in the east have given him security headaches at home.
Violence across the border in Darfur, western Sudan, has spilled over into Chad and shows no sign of abating, and Deby has declared a ‘state of belligerence’ with neighbouring Sudan.
And in a row over the use of oil revenues the president has now locked horns with international donors, who by the finance minister’s estimation supply about 40 percent of the government’s budget.
Everyone agrees that Deby is an increasingly isolated leader, but predictions about his imminent demise may be premature.
Diplomats say there is no momentum to be generated by a population still reeling from the bloody conflicts of the past, no clear political alternative, and a strong risk of protracted ethnic power struggles in the world’s fifth poorest country if someone were to topple him by force.
“There’s no doubt he’s on his way out, but you need someone to huff and puff and blow the house down,” was how one international observer summed it up. “And people are so busy trying to survive day by day.”
Threat of election boycott
Presidential elections are set for the first half of this year, but with Deby having changed the constitution to run for a third term, much of the political opposition has already warned it will boycott the poll.
“On the electoral front, it’s all blocked up,” said Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh, one of Chad’s main opposition leaders, and head of the boycotting coalition. “What we want is a national forum to discuss Chad’s future.”
Saleh doesn’t think Deby will ever accept the idea, but he reckons that by demanding the forum, opposition groups and civil society are sending a message to any rebels or potential putschists that seizing power will not guarantee a long-term tenure.
“You’re seeing the number of armed groups multiplying. But we don’t want a coup d’etat, the politico-military solution is a false dawn, there’s no guarantee that history won’t repeat itself,” the opposition politician said.
In 1990, Deby was being feted as the bringer of a new era after he seized power in a coup without even stepping foot in the capital. With a force of about 1,000 men and backing from Khartoum he took control of Abeche, the main town in the east, popular support rallied behind him and then-leader Hissene Habre read the writing on the wall and headed into exile.
Fifteen years later, Deby fears he may be seeing the same script played out, but with him in the role of usurped not usurper, and Sudan working against him not for him.
Vehicles are being hijacked along dirt roads, humanitarian workers and government officials have been abducted from their offices, and in December there was a bloody clash with government forces in the border town of Adre.
Eight groups say they have formed a military alliance to “free Chad of the dictatorship of Idriss Deby.” These include the Platform for Change, National Unity and Democracy (SCUD) formed by Chadian army deserters and led by Yaya Dillo Djerou, and the Rally for Democracy and Liberty (RDL) that claimed the Adre assault and is led by Mahamat Nour.
In interviews they give to the media via satellite phones, rebel leaders boast of thousands of men in strategic positions, but independent information about their location, arms caches or personnel strength is hard to come by.
Rebels without a cause?
Diplomats in N’djamena and humanitarian workers in the border region are quick to point out that beyond the rhetoric of the communiques from both the government and its opponents, there is no evidence to suggest the rebellion is a cohesive entity executing a carefully-orchestrated plan of action.
“It’s completely lacking structure. A lot of the attacks are just about publicity about embarrassing the government, showing it up as weak,” one western diplomat said.
Last month’s attack on the town of Guereda is an example. Armed attackers – whose identity is still unknown – took control of the military police station and held the town for a few hours on 20 January while they kidnapped five government officials. No ransom demand was made, the town returned to normal, and a few days later the officials were quietly released.
This week gunmen briefly abducted two staffers with the UN refugee agency UNHCR from their compound in Guereda and began driving them towards Sudan, but were forced to abandon the effort when the vehicle got a puncture.
“Today is very different from 1990,” said one long-term resident of Abeche, who witnessed Deby’s takeover. “There’s no strategy behind it. It’s simple banditry which is very bad for the country. Even if the rebels got stronger, there would not be popular support. People have already been put off by the banditry; they don’t believe they are serious.”
With scant details about the looters and the kidnappers, it is difficult to say with any certainty that rebels are behind the wave of attacks.
One humanitarian worker pointed out that aid agency vehicles were not even particularly desirable loot for the rebels: “The RDL rebel group does not like NGO vehicles that much because they are diesel vehicles and they prefer gasoline.”
What could be collated as growing evidence of a rebellion could equally be a case of opportunistic delinquents simply trying to exploit a general climate of insecurity and administrative chaos.
Regional authority crumbles
The top government official of the town of Iriba, for example, vanished at the end of last year, taking a fleet of police cars with him and his replacement has yet to arrive. And elsewhere aid workers have noticed other local officials changing in pretty regular succession.
“There’s been a lot of shuffling of local government officials,” said Claire Bourgeois, who heads UNHCR operations in eastern Chad, where some 200,000 refugees from Darfur are sheltering in camps. “With a vacuum of authority come an atmosphere of banditry and a sense of impunity.”
Even the main border town of Adre has not been immune from administrative changes. The current local head of government, Touka Ramadan Kore, was moved out in September, only to be brought back in January. Asked whether his replacement was sent packing because of the December rebel attack, Kore simply shrugs his shoulders.
Adre is one of the few places where there is a tangible sense of how Deby perceives the threat to his reign. Eighteen months ago it was a sleepy, dusty outpost; now it is definitely a military town. Armed soldiers idle by water points, pick-up trucks with roof-mounted machine guns pick their way among the donkeys and horse-drawn carts, and military patrols can be seen meandering down every other street.
But there is little urgency to their work. Residents in the town betray fatigue not panic when talking about life in Adre. Meanwhile, the newly-returned prefect is all smiles and confidence.
“I can’t tell you the precise numbers of reinforcements there are, but they are allowing us to protect the whole border,” Kore told IRIN. “The ministers for defence, public security and territorial administration did a trip along the frontier the other week, and that proves it’s secure.”
Pushed to account for a spate of incidents in which humanitarian agency cars have been stolen and officials abducted, he concedes that the odd vulnerable stretch of border does exist.
If the tales told by the stream of new refugees into Chad are anything to go by, those stretches are more numerous than officials want to admit.
Janjawid cross-border raids continue
Around 1,000 people turned up at Gaga camp in the first four weeks of 2006, citing fresh attacks by the Arab militia known as the Janjawid, up and down the border, not only in Sudan but also in Chad.
Ismail Ibrahim Ahmat, a father of four, told IRIN that after fleeing Darfur he had initially holed up in the Chadian village of Katarfa, about 50 kilometres south of Adre.
Refugees from Darfur arrive at the Gaga camp, having fled Janjawid attacks
But in January his new home was attacked by Janjawid militiamen on camels and horses, who torched houses and stole cattle, forcing him to seek refuge at Gaga, the newest of eastern Chad’s 12 camps.
Researchers from U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch, who recently travelled along the border from Adre to Modoyna, found evidence of almost daily raids on Chadian villages.
“The attack on Adre prompted the Chadian government to redeploy its forces away from border villages, leaving large areas at the mercy of uniformed militiamen riding horses and camels who have attacked and looted dozens of villages in the past six weeks,” the group said in a report published on Sunday.
In some cases, Human Rights Watch said, the Sudanese and Chadian militiamen staging the raids from Darfur had apparent backing from Khartoum in the form of helicopter gunships or government troops.
Officials with the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) say thousands of Chadians have been displaced in the region to the south of Adre.
For now they are living with extended family or friends, in some cases less than 10 kilometres from their own homes, and have access to food and water. But the longer they stay away, the more precarious their living conditions and those of their hosts could become.
“They would immediately return to their villages if adequate security were provided,” said Walter Stocker, the head of the ICRC in Chad.
Farther south, aid workers from Italian aid agency Coopi say that Janjawid attacks are getting progressively closer to Goz Beida refugee camp – previously they were in villages 80 kilometres away, now it’s half the distance.
A military unit dispatched to deal with the incursions in the area in January returned with at least four soldiers with gunshot wounds needing care at Goz Beida hospital, according to one Coopi official.
Chad, ranked 173 of 177 countries in the UN Human Development Index, says it needs more resources to protect citizens and refugees living along the long porous border.
In fact, boosting security spending was one of the reasons President Deby gave for tampering with an oil revenue law in December to access a bigger share of petrodollars. Deby’s move angered the World Bank – a key backer of Chad’s oil project – on the grounds that it undermined the law touted as a model for more equal distribution of oil wealth.
Aid efforts jeopardised
Whether it is disgruntled army majors and government officials, rebel groups, Janjawid militias or simply bandits behind recent events, the fact remains that the security situation in the vast eastern plains has deteriorated, and that is having an impact on the humanitarian operation.
“We are spending more and more of our time on security management,” said Amy Glass, the acting head of Oxfam GB in Abeche.
“Most organisations are trying to see how they can provide the level of services required with the minimum exposure of people and equipment.”
The UN and other aid agencies in Guereda and Iriba pulled about a fifth of their humanitarian staff out of the two towns following the January abduction of government officials. They have yet to return.
Farther south around Adre, humanitarian agents’ movement is restricted. Convoys are required to travel certain routes and border areas are out of bounds for UNHCR officials, making it difficult for the agency to see if there are people needing assistance along the frontier.
Medical groups like MSF-France are hunkered down in Adre hospital, having had to suspend their mobile clinic that travelled south along the border, treating people in hard-to-reach villages.
Another logistical headache brought on by a deterioration in security is in the far north, where two camps – Am Nabak and Oure Cassoni – are less than 50 kilometres from the frontier with Sudan, the minimum distance recommended for security reasons.
“We anticipate having to move those that are close to the border and which therefore may become more of a target,” said Kingsley Amaning, the UN Resident Representative in Chad. “Rains come in July and we believe we have to do it before then.”
This means finding a new shelter for some 46,000 refugees and the UN is talking to the Chadian government about building a new camp north of the town of Biltine.
Rising rhetoric
UN officials remain worried that the war of words between Khartoum and N’djamena might stoke more cross-border violence, which could further complicate the Darfur peace process and the humanitarian effort.
“With mutual accusations and the increased concentration of troops on both sides of the border, the potential for an open confrontation between the two countries cannot be minimised,” UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in his latest report on Darfur.
Some diplomats saw Chad’s hosting of a press conference late last year where the two main Darfur rebel groups pledged a united front as a warning shot fired by Deby with two audiences in mind.
Firstly to his own clan, as proof that he is sticking up for his Zaghawa kinsmen on the other side of the border who are allegedly being massacred by Arab militias. And secondly to Sudan and the wider international community that he can pollute the Darfur peace talks if he wants to.
The leaders of Chad and Sudan met in Libya on Wednesday to try to defuse rising tensions. Libyan officials said after the meeting the two sides had agreed to a series of measures to restore peace, among them stopping insurgents from setting up bases in each other’s country.
Now it remains to be seen, not only if the pact will hold once Deby and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir are back home, but also if it will translate into an improvement in the border region, which lies hundreds of kilometres from both capitals.
For Annan, maintaining peace between the two countries is imperative. “It is vitally important that the situation in the border areas of Chad and the conflicts in the Sudan do not combine to propel the two countries and the whole region towards confrontation and conflict.”
(IRIN)