Chad declares emergency over ethnic clashes
October 17, 2008 (N’DJAMENA) — Chad on Tuesday declared a state of emergency along its eastern border with Sudan’s Darfur region and in its remote desert north to tackle a fresh flare-up of ethnic violence that killed at least 20 people.
President Idriss Deby’s government said the 12-day emergency period applied to the eastern Ouaddai and Wadi Fira regions and the northern part of Chad known as the BET.
The move gave local governors 24-hour search and arrest powers and the authority to restrict movement of people and vehicles, meetings and media coverage. The media controls would apply across the whole national territory, officials said.
The measures came a day after European Union foreign ministers gave final approval for the upcoming deployment of up to 3,000 European peacekeeping troops in eastern Chad, which has been racked by recurring violence for the last two years.
Much of the violence has spilled over the border from the wider three-year-old conflict in Darfur.
“In addition to the situation of war on the frontier with Sudan which has still not found a definitive solution, we are seeing more and more murderous inter-community conflicts that bring bloodshed to certain regions of the country,” Communication Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said.
“The administrative and military authorities of the relevant regions must tackle this intolerable situation with all appropriate means,” he added in an official statement.
Deby’s government announced the move after at least 20 people were killed in recent ethnic clashes in the Wadi Fira region following the desertion of a group of former rebels loyal to the defence minister.
The violence between the Tama and the Zaghawa communities broke out after an armed group of Tama fighters, who had served under Defence Minister Mahamat Nour, abandoned the eastern town of Guereda last week and moved close to the Sudanese border.
This is the second time in nearly a year that Chad has declared an emergency to halt ethnic violence in its volatile east, which has been the target of attacks by anti-Deby rebels and by Arab militias raiding over the border from Darfur.
“DEVILS ON HORSEBACK”
Last November, the government declared an emergency in large swathes of Chad after hundreds of people were killed in fighting between Arab and non-Arab communities and in attacks by Arabic-speaking armed raiders on horseback, known as Janjaweed. This term loosely translates in Arabic as “devils on horseback”.
Defence Minister Nour met Deby in the Wadi Fira regional capital of Biltine late on Monday to discuss the recent killings, which he blamed on ethnic enemies of his Tama people. Several Tama-Zaghawa clashes have occurred in recent months.
“No human being in this country can accept that his kin be massacred before his eyes. The problem in Dar Tama (the Tama homeland) is real. People are dying by the hundreds. Livestock is pillaged and stolen. … This must stop,” he told reporters.
Nour, a former rebel chief who made peace with Deby in December, said he had no personal quarrel with the Zaghawa president but had “enormous problems” with some members of the presidential entourage.
The planned EU peacekeeping force is intended to protect civilians, refugees and aid workers. According to U.N. figures, there are 400,000 Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians in Chad and 200,000 displaced people in Central African Republic.
The EU force for Chad is deploying to complement an even bigger United Nations/African Union force planned for Darfur, where a local rebellion and ethnic fighting since 2003 have killed some 200,000 people, experts say. Sudan’s government rejects this figure, saying the death toll is much lower.
(Reuters)