Darfur rebels say Sudan engineered Chad unrest
April 13, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s Darfur rebels on Thursday accused Khartoum of engineering the coup attempt in neighbouring Chad to crush their three-year-old uprising, charges vehemently denied by the Sudanese government.
Fighting escalated Thursday in Chad, as rebels closed in on the capital in their bid to unseat President Idriss Deby.
“There is no question about it, the rebel offensive against Deby was engineered in Khartoum,” said Ahmed Hussein, a senior negotiator for one of the two main rebel movements in Darfur.
Darfur, a region in western Sudan roughly the size of France, shares a long border with Chad and has been the scene of fierce fighting and a dire humanitarian crisis since rebels there rose up against Khartoum in 2003.
The repression of their rebellion by the regime in Khartoum — which the United States has described as genocide and pushed some 200,000 refugees into Chad — has strained relations between the neighbouring governments.
Both sides have traded accusations of supporting the other’s rebels but Chad and Sudan had officially agreed to cease hostilities on the border after signing in February a deal sponsored by Libya and the African Union.
“Khartoum supports the Chadian rebels, financially, politically and militarily,” Hussein told AFP from Abuja, where his Justice and Equality Movement has been involved in fruitless talks with the Sudanese government.
For its part, Khartoum has repeatedly accused Chad of supporting the Darfur rebels, who are complaining of marginalisation and want a better share of the country’s resources.
Deby himself is from the Zaghawa tribe, which straddles the border and is a dominant force in the Darfur rebellion. The military commander of the Sudan Liberation Movement — Darfur’s other rebel group — is from the same tribe.
“The government of Sudan wants to change the regime in Chad in order to crush the (Darfur) rebellion. Khartoum has always considered Chad and Darfur as one single front,” Hussein said.
“But whether we have support or not in Chad… our cause is legitimate and we will continue our struggle,” Hussein added.
A military official in Chad said Thursday that dissident Chadian forces had managed to enter the capital but Deby himself said the situation was “completely under control.”
A Sudanese military official denied any involvement in the rebel push on N’Djamena.
“We do not support any Chadian party against another and we have nothing to do with what is going on in Chad,” an army official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The official denied Chadian claims that Khartoum was assisting Chadian rebels and said that Sudanese forces even expelled some of them from Sudan three days ago.
“A joint army-police unit three days ago evicted armed opposition Chadians out of west Sudan back into Chad,” he claimed.
Deby, a former armed forces chief, took power in a military coup after invading from Sudan in 1990, a year after Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir himself seized power in a coup.
Deby survived what he described as a mutiny in 2004 and recently sacked some 70 officers from his army, who sought refuge in Sudan’s Darfur and organised a rebel movement aimed at toppling him.
France — which currently has close to 1,400 troops in Chad — said it was not involved in any military activity and denied rebel claims that its fighter jets had bombed positions in the east of the country.
(ST/AFP)