Gunmen attack Chad army camps in apparent rebellion

Nov 14, 2005 (N’DJAMENA) — Security forces in Chad killed at least two gunmen and arrested 15 others who attacked two army bases in the capital N’Djamena on Monday in what appeared to be part of an attempted insurgency, the government said.

Security has been tight in the dusty city in recent weeks after scores of soldiers fled their barracks in late September before regrouping in the remote east as an anti-government force named “SCUD” and demanding President Idriss Deby step down.

Communications Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said the gunmen in Monday’s attacks were thought to have been recruited to launch an armed rebellion in the central African country. He told French radio the security forces strongly suspected one or two “well-known” army officers may have been behind the action.

“A network for recruiting soldiers in N’Djamena and in the south has been identified and has been watched for several weeks,” Doumgor said in a statement.

Around 20 armed men wearing civilian clothes attacked the Koundoul military training centre on the southern edge of the capital while a second group of around a dozen men broke into the Nomad Guard camp in the city centre early on Monday.

Two attackers were killed and another 15 arrested, while some fled taking a few weapons with them, Doumgor said. Residents in N’Djamena said they had heard gunfire overnight.

“The government wants to inform national and international opinion that this is a very limited, desperate act which has been contained. The situation is under control,” Doumgor said.

One security expert, who follows Chad closely and asked not to be named, told Reuters in Dakar: “This is yet another indication the government doesn’t have control over even the capital.”

“This is going to keep happening because there is no way of securing the city. Everyone in the army and everyone in Chad is fed up with this government. … People have the means to take this president out,” the security source said.

OLD FRIENDS

The spate of army desertions in late September raised new fears of instability in Chad, with “SCUD” — whose full name is the Platform for Change, National Unity and Democracy — saying it had the military and political means to topple Deby.

Yaya Dillo Djerou, the self-proclaimed head of the deserters, told Reuters in Dakar that Monday’s attacks had been carried out by its allies but declined to comment on whether “SCUD” had been directly involved.

“Some of these people are our old friends from the military, and we know that there are some old officials from the party in power involved,” he said by telephone, referring to Deby’s “Patriotic Movement of Salvation” ruling party.

Deby, a former army chief who seized power in 1990, dissolved his Republican Guard last month in a move analysts and diplomats said was aimed at shoring up loyalty in the military and ensuring the survival of his administration.

Djerou, who says there are around 800 men in his movement, compared to the government’s estimate of just 86, has said the deserters’ main objection was a change to the constitution which let Deby stand for a third term in polls next year.

Djerou says this is illegal and has accused Deby’s administration of widespread corruption, particularly over the management of the country’s new oil revenues.

The landlocked former French colony began pumping crude in 2003 through a pipeline, funded by the World Bank, to neighbouring Cameroon for export. Some of the revenues are supposed to be safeguarded for fighting long-term poverty but the government has said it wants immediate access to the money.

Chad ranked as the world’s most corrupt country in a recent Transparency International survey of 159 states.

(Reuters)