Janjaweed militias export W. Sudan conflict to Chad: official

This paper is published by AFP French service and translated by Sudan Tribune

N’DJAMENA, June 16 (AFP) — Arab militias Janjaweed, fighting alongside Khartoum in the Sudanese conflict of Darfur, recruit in Chad and N’Djamena fears a possible spill over of this conflict on its territory, indicated on Wednesday to the AFP a Chadian high-ranking official.

“There is a hidden force which seeks to move the intra-Sudanese (of Darfur) conflict inside Chad”, declared to the AFP Allami Ahmat, the diplomatic adviser of Chadian president Idriss Deby and spokesman of the Chadian mediation.

” Chadian Arab tribes are involved in the adventure with the Janjaweeds, who devote themselves to exactions inside both Sudan and Chad, while seeking to move the war in neighbouring Chad “, he explained.

“We are really worried by this trend”, Allami Ahmat added.

“It is a kind of rebellion by these Arab tribes which is encouraged by obscure forces we do not know yet”, he further specified, estimating that “it is a thing which takes dangerously root on the ground”.

“It appears as an operation tending to make us believe in the existence of a Chadian armed opposition”, he continued.

“We require that the Sudanese government neutralize this armed militia which recruits within Chadian Arabic tribes”, he also indicated.

The conflict in Darfur, the most Western part of Sudan at the border of Chad, opposes since February 2003 Sudanese forces, supported by Janjaweeds, against two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Movement for Justice and Equality (MJE), who consider the area as marginalized.

On April 8 in N’Djamena, under the auspices of a Chadian mediation, the parties signed a cease-fire which they appear to have mutually violated since then.

Janjaweeds, described in a recent UN report as responsible “of atrocities” and “ethnic cleansing” against the non-Arabic populations of Darfur, made several incursions inside Chad, where skirmishes in particular opposed them to the Chadian army.