Sudan accused of exporting Darfur violence to Chad
By Jim Lobe
Feb 20, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — The three-year-old scorched-earth counterinsurgency campaign conducted by the Sudanese government and Arab militias in Darfur has moved across the border into Chad, where tens of thousands of civilians have already been forced to flee their homes, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The report, based on on-site research in January and February, charges that many of the same tactics that have displaced some two million people and resulted in the deaths of between 200,000 and 400,000 members of African tribes in Darfur since 2003 have been used in cross-border raids, particularly by the Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, in Chad, particularly since mid-December.
“The government of Sudan is actively exporting the Darfur crisis to its neighbour by providing material support to Janjaweed militias and by failing to disarm or control them,” said Peter Takirambudde, HRW’s Africa director in New York.
“The Janjaweed are doing in Chad what they have done in Darfur since 2003; killing civilians, burning villages and looting cattle in attacks that show signs of ethnic bias,” he noted.
The report, “Darfur Bleeds: Recent Cross-Border Violence in Chad”, also said the cross-border violence added urgency to growing calls for the United Nations to take over and enlarge a poorly equipped 7,000-strong African Union (AU) observer force already in Darfur and to give it a much stronger mandate to protect the civilian population and disarm the Janjaweed and rebel Chadian forces allied with them.
The report comes amid renewed international attention to Darfur, particularly due to the protracted impasse in peace negotiations in Abuja, Nigeria, between Khartoum and several rebel groups from Darfur and a deterioration in the security situation there since late last summer, as well as the reported spread of the conflict into eastern Chad.
Led by the U.S. and British delegations, the U.N. Security Council agreed earlier this month to expedite planning for the U.N. to take over and enlarge the AU monitoring force in Darfur in order to better protect civilians there, as has been urged for months by numerous human rights and humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international agencies, including U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special envoy, Jan Pronk.
But most analysts believe it will take as much as a year for the U.N. to actually deploy the number of troops — estimated at 20,000 — needed to patrol the France-sized region. As a result, policymakers have been discussing the possibility of deploying a “bridging force” led by NATO, as well as the AU, that could carry out the same mission pending the arrival of U.N. peacekeepers.
That possibility moved at least rhetorically closer to reality Friday when U.S. President George W. Bush, who met with Annan earlier in the week and has been under growing pressure from Congress to take stronger action against what he himself labeled “genocide” more than year ago, publicly endorsed the idea.
“I talked to Kofi Annan about this very subject this week,” he told an audience in Florida. “But it’s going to require, I think, a NATO stewardship, planning, facilitating, organising, probably double the number of peacekeepers that are there now, in order to start bringing some sense of security.”
He did not address whether NATO would provide more than logistical support, as it has done until now, or whether it might take a more direct role in keeping the peace. State Department officials later ruled out any role for U.S. troops beyond logistical support.
Nearly two million people — virtually all members of several large African tribes — are currently displaced within Darfur, many living in camps of varying degrees of security and unable to pursue their livelihoods. Some 220,000 more escaped across the border into eastern Chad, where all but 20,000 have also been living in camps.
The new report charges that Khartoum is supporting both the Janjaweed militias that are spearheading raids into Chad and Darfur-based Chadian rebel groups whose ranks have swollen in recent months due to disaffection with Pres. Idriss Deby and his plans to run for a third term in elections in May.
According to the report, Janjaweed raids on both refugee camps and ethnic African Chadians appear to have been coordinated with rebel attacks. In addition, the report cites eyewitness accounts regarding alleged Janjaweed attacks that have been carried out with the support of Sudanese army troops and helicopter gunships.
At least two Janjaweed commanders implicated in the violence in Darfur have reportedly led attacks in eastern Chad as well.
Sudan’s intervention in Chad’s internal affairs is not new; indeed, Deby was himself based in Darfur when he launched the insurrection that ultimately ousted his predecessor, Hissene Habre in 1990. Similarly, Chad has occasionally supported Sudanese rebels. The same ethnic groups — both African and Arab — are found on both sides of their common border.
HRW estimates that more than 30,000 Chadian civilians have been internally displaced by the violence, most of them members of African ethnic groups that have also been systematically targeted by Janjaweed raids in western Darfur. As in Darfur, the displaced have come under renewed attack when they tried to return home.
Chadian Arabs, on the other hand, have not come under attack by either Chadian rebels or the Janjaweed, although the report notes that that some Chadian Arabs have crossed the border into Sudan, apparently in fear of local reprisals from some African communities that have organised militias of their own.
Since mid-December, the attacks have intensified, killing dozens of people and displacing tens of thousands more.
The Deby government has strongly protested the raids, even declaring a “state of belligerence” with Sudan in late December when the two countries began massing troops on the border. High-level talks hosted by Libya resulted in an announcement that each side would stop supporting the other’s rebel groups, but, as noted by HRW, similar accords in the past have not held.
The situation, according to the report, spells serious trouble for Deby’s government, which is already under fire from the World Bank and other donors for diverting tens of millions of dollars from its burgeoning oil industry from a trust dedicating to reducing poverty to its military and security forces.
Spreading violence in Chad could also have disastrous humanitarian consequences. Despite an outstanding harvest in much of the eastern part of the country, the displaced have generally been unable to return home to harvest crops or gain access to food stores, while water in some areas has become dangerously scarce.
In some parts of the region, international relief organisations suspended operations in mid-December, and a major military engagement between Chad’s army and rebel forces could result in “a potentially massive disruption to the flow of aid to hundreds of thousands of refugees and Chadian civilians in the region”.
(IPS)