Chad launches offensive against rebels near Sudan border

Mar 21, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — Government troops in Chad have launched a military offensive against rebels in the east as President Idriss Deby seeks to reassert his control over the country ahead of a presidential election in May.

Government sources in N’Djamena said on Tuesday the army had since Monday attacked a command post held by the SCUD rebel group in the mountains of Hadjer Marfain, south of Adre, not far from the border with Sudan.

“We’ve gone on the offensive since yesterday morning and we’ve dislodged the rebels,” said one of the government sources, who asked not to be named.

The source gave no casualty report, but said the Chadian army had destroyed several rebel vehicles in the fighting in the dry savannah and desert of eastern Chad.

SCUD, a rebel group largely made up of deserters from Deby’s own army, confirmed there had been an attack on one of its bases but said its fighters repulsed it, inflicting heavy casualties.

“We are controlling our position,” SCUD rebel leader Yaya Dillo Djerou told Reuters by satellite phone.

Rebel sources said government forces were using armoured vehicles and artillery and the four-wheel-drive jeeps mounted with cannon which are often used for desert warfare in Chad.

Deby, who has faced increasing rebel attacks and incursions from the east, was directing the army offensive.

Denouncing a spillover into his own country of the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region, he has accused the Sudanese government of backing efforts to topple him, a charge denied by Khartoum.

The army push against the rebels came one week after Chad’s government announced it had foiled a coup plot against Deby. His 16-year rule has been weakened since last year by a wave of desertions by officers, taking men and equipment with them.

Chad’s government said on Monday it had arrested 100 officers and soldiers implicated in the latest plot.

EARLY STRIKE

Analysts said it appeared Deby wanted to hit the rebels with an early strike before they tried to disrupt preparations for a May 3 presidential election in which he will seek re-election.

Only one other candidate has announced he is running in the polls so far and Deby is widely expected to win.

“There is a reason for the rebels to make a move and for the government to try to prevent that,” Suliman Baldo, International Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director, told Reuters.

He said the government push against SCUD was not surprising, as its members included recent high-level military defectors who could persuade others in the armed forces to desert.

“The SCUD are insiders, some of their leadership are from the innermost circle of power. There is an element of personal rancour at play as well,” Baldo said.

Another rebel group, the RDL, which attacked Adre in east Chad in December and announced the formation of an anti-Deby alliance, said it was not involved in the latest fighting.

“This fight is a family problem between Deby and his family,” RDL spokesman Abdullahi Abdel Karim told Reuters.

Those deserting Deby have included members of his own Zaghawa ethnic group, some of whom accuse him of not doing enough to help fellow Zaghawa kinsmen in Darfur who have been attacked by Arab militias.

The rebels have given Deby an ultimatum to either start negotiations on democratic change or face overthrow.

Deby is a former army commander who seized power in a 1990 revolt he led from the east — the usual pattern of regime change in the country since its 1960 independence from France.

“These rebel groups are trying to replicate that model … launch rapid, surprise attacks towards N’Djamena, coupled with uprisings, takeovers of garrisons,” Baldo said.

(Reuters)