Darfur’s violence spilling across Chadian border
Nov 8, 2006 (NDJAMENA) — Chad’s government says ethnic violence in Sudan’s Darfur is spilling across the border, sparking an upsurge of deadly Arab-African fighting among Chadians.
In a statement late Tuesday, Minister of Communications Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said the latest fighting broke out Saturday in Sila, an eastern Chad region, and left “numerous victims” on both sides.
“Heavy weapons were, unfortunately, used to spread death and desolation in a region already subjected to attacks from mercenaries coming from Sudan,” Doumgor, who also is the government’s spokesman, added. Chad officials routinely use “mercenaries” to refer to Chadian rebels who have rear bases in Sudan.
Earlier Tuesday, members of a Cabinet delegation who had gone to another eastern region to investigate reports of ethnic violence said a small clash between ethnic Arabs and ethnic Africans escalated into a large-scale attack in which Arabs killed 128 Africans. The extent of the Oct. 31 violence had not been clear until the delegation reached the remote region Monday.
Arab-African clashes across the border in Sudan’s Darfur have undermined stability in a region that includes eastern Chad and the northern Central African Republic. Tensions have been further heightened because Chad accuses Sudan of supporting Chadian rebels and Sudan makes a similar accusation against Chad.
“The government has already called the international community’s attention to Sudan’s exportation of its crisis to Chad,” Doumgor said. “It’s a genocide with a tendency toward spilling over Sudan’s Darfur border. The international community must respond by sending a U.N. peace force before it’s too late.”
The U.N. has authorized 20,000 troops to replace an under-equipped force of 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur. But Sudan has refused to allow the U.N. peacekeepers in.
Chadian state radio reported Wednesday that President Idriss Deby and his foreign, defense and infrastructure ministers went to Libya Tuesday for consultations about regional tensions with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who has tried to mediate between Chad and Sudan.
The radio quoted Deby as telling Gadhafi that Sudan “continued to arm, train, feed and send mercenaries to destabilize Chad and by extension the entire region.”
“Sudan also is stirring up ethnic and tribal hatred in Chad’s east,” Deby was quoted as saying.
Sudan and Chad severed diplomatic ties in April, but resumed relations in August after a diplomatic initiative led by Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade and Libya’s Gadhafi.
Ethnic African tribes in Sudan’s Darfur who accused their central government of neglect launched a rebellion following years of low-level tribal clashes there. The Sudanese government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal militias who have been linked to atrocities.
More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced since fighting began in Darfur in early 2003.
Arabs, among them slave traders, arrived in sub-Saharan Africa generations ago. Intermarriage and the embrace of Islam by many Africans have blurred identities, but an Arab-African divide persists. It is exacerbated by a lack of resources in the region, pitting communities against each other in a competition for water and land.
(AP)