Chad accuses Sudan of forming new anti-Deby rebel alliance
May 16, 2006 (N’DJAMENA ) — Chad accused neighbouring Sudan on Tuesday of organising a new alliance of Chadian rebels to try to oust President Idriss Deby and it appealed to the international community to intervene.
Information Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said the Khartoum-backed alliance brought together a Chadian rebel commander whose forces attacked the capital N’Djamena last month and two high-level defectors from Deby’s administration.
There was no immediate reaction from Sudan, which routinely denies accusations by Chad that it backs anti-Deby rebels.
The Chadian president, who was re-elected in a one-sided vote two weeks ago that was boycotted by opponents, has faced a growing military rebellion from the east against his nearly 16-year rule in the central African oil producing nation.
He says his country is a victim of violence spilling over from Sudan’s Darfur region and says the rebels opposing him are recruited, trained and armed by Khartoum.
“This new group formed in Khartoum has received arms and military equipment before being transferred on Sunday to El Geneina (near the Chad border),” Doumgor said in a statement published by Chadian media on Tuesday.
He said Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s government had linked up Mahamat Nour, commander of the rebel United Front for Democratic Change (FUC), with Mahamat Nouri, a former defence minister who recently defected, and Abakar Tollimi, another defector who leads a separate anti-Deby group.
Chad has displayed rebel prisoners, including some Sudanese, and Chinese-made weapons it says show Sudan was behind the April 13 rebel raid on N’Djamena, which was repulsed by government forces in fighting that killed several hundred people.
GOVERNMENT APPEAL
“Despite the failure of previous attacks like the one on April 13, al-Bashir does not want to understand and is pursuing his subversive manoeuvres against Chad,” Doumgor said.
“(Chad’s) government appeals to the African Union, the United Nations and the entire international community to react before it is too late,” he added.
In Geneva, the U.N refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday its appeals for an end to the recruitment of Sudanese refugees from camps in eastern Chad to fight in rebel armies had failed to halt the practice.
Spokesmen for the FUC and other Chadian rebel groups were not immediately available for comment.
But they have said they are coordinating military plans to launch fresh attacks, including on the capital N’Djamena.
Deby broke diplomatic ties with Sudan following the April attack on the capital and wants the United Nations to deploy a strong peacekeeping force in Darfur to stop the conflict there and secure the long, porous border with his country.
Doumgor said Sudan was recruiting members for the new anti-Deby alliance in Darfur, where tens of thousands have been killed since 2003 in fighting that pits Sudanese government-backed Arab militias against non-Arab groups seeking greater autonomy for the western Sudanese region.
He said $250 was being offered to each “mercenary” recruited.
Sudan’s government recently signed a peace deal for Darfur with the main rebel group there, but the Chadian rebels say this will not halt their campaign to oust Deby.
Deby, a French-trained pilot, has ruled Chad since he seized power in a revolt from the east in 1990. He was re-elected in 1996 and 2001 but his rule has since been weakened by high-level desertions, including members of his own Zaghawa ethnic clan.
(Reuters)