Chad’s army fights cat-and-mouse war in desert east
Feb 4, 2007 (ADRE, Chad) — Some fighters cover themselves in lucky charms while others load rockets onto pick-up trucks in preparation for another clash with rebels in the desolate scrubland along Chad’s eastern border with Sudan.
Morale is high among the Chadian soldiers here in Adre, a border town on the main route into Sudan’s Darfur region, after they repulsed an attack by Chadian rebels three days ago which they say was launched from Sudanese territory.
The raid was the latest in a series along a more than 400-km (250-mile) long stretch of border launched by insurgents fighting to overthrow President Idriss Deby. The United Nations has said around a dozen civilians were killed in the fighting.
“It went well … We burnt several of their vehicles. They lost a lot of men,” said Delley Wardougou, a young Chadian soldier sat on the bonnet of an army pick-up truck in the courtyard of the local prefect’s offices.
“It wasn’t too difficult. It was good. In any case morale is high. We still have good morale, we’re lucky,” he said, as his colleagues cleaned their machine guns behind him. Chad’s border with Sudan, a desolate expanse of parched earth and dusty scrub, was already desperately poor and prone to banditry even before conflict in Darfur destabilised it further.
The region is home to 230,000 Sudanese refugees as well as 110,000 internally displaced Chadians and 46,000 refugees from Central African Republic to the south, according to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.
Civilians in border towns like Adre are exposed to random raids in a cat-and-mouse war in which the rebel strategy appears to be lightning surprise assaults and equally rapid retreats, aimed at throwing the Chadian army off guard.
“The fighting took place in the centre of town. The army was on one side and the rebels came in from the south,” said Bila, a resident aged around 20 who declined to give her family name.
“The population was there. People were afraid, they grouped together and then rockets started landing. There were a lot of dead, including women, children and old people,” she said.
WAITING GAME
Two tanks and BM-21s, Soviet-made heavy trucks mounted with multiple rocket launchers, stand on a small hill on the outskirts of Adre, ready to defend the town if the rebels launch another bid to capture it.
Deby’s government has repeatedly accused Sudan of backing the rebels, including by allowing them to strike from Sudanese territory, as part of a widening campaign of regional destabilisation. Khartoum denies the charge.
“For some time we’ve been faced with an aggression characterised by the regime in Khartoum looking to destabilise Chad using mercenaries from all over the place,” said Mines and Energy Minister Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour, an army general sent to Adre from the capital to oversee military operations.
“But we will fight to the very end,” he said.
A few children play by a small lake on the edge of town but the dusty, sun-blasted streets of low-rise buildings are largely quiet. The only vehicles are army four-wheel drives carrying munitions and fighters, some with machine-guns mounted on the back.
Soldiers lie in the shade outside the main hospital, where French aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres says more than 180 wounded were brought in the latest fighting.
Residents say the army was aided during the most recent rebel assault by a group known as the Tora Bora, Sudanese fighters long famed as arms smugglers operating along Sudan’s borders with Chad and Central African Republic.
Wearing lucky charms, or gris-gris — small leather pouches fastened with string around their necks, arms and waist — the Tora Bora are an imposing sight, some with their hair dreadlocked, others wearing military uniform.
Drinking tea, polishing their weapons, or loading rockets on to their trucks, all are playing a waiting game.
“In a region like this you always get real alarms and false alarms. We’ve received information that mercenaries are preparing more attacks with the Janjaweed,” said Abdallah Nassour, before adding with a dry chuckle: “But you never get the enemy’s battle plan.”
(Reuters)