Chad threatens to quit as Darfur mediator as border tension
NDJAMENA, June 18, 2004 (IRIN) — Chad has threatened to abandon its role as
mediator between the Sudanese government and rebels in the Darfur region
amid growing indications that the Darfur conflict is spilling across the
border into eastern Chad.
Ahmad Allami, a personal advisor of President Idriss Deby who is chief
mediator in the Darfur peace talks, told IRIN that a former Chadian rebel
movement was being revived on the Sudanese side of the border and that
Sudanese Janjawid militia groups fighting alongside the Sudanese army in
Darfur had begun to recruit Chadian Arabs into their ranks.
“The Janjawid are recruiting elements in Chad. These are exclusively
Arabs. This situation risks degenerating into an inter-ethnic war between
a coalition of Arabs and other ethnic groups in the region,” Allami told
IRIN on Thursday.
“Chad may well reconsider its position as mediator in the Darfur conflict
because we are wondering whether Khartoum is simply allowing the situation
to become rotten,” he added.
Allami also accused the Janjawid, who mainly consist of Arab-speaking
nomadic herdsmen, of helping to revive the Renewed National Front of Chad
(FNTR) rebel movement, which stopped fighting the government in 2002.
“There is confusion between the Janjawid and Chadian rebels of the FNTR,”
Allami said.
He was speaking shortly before news broke of another major clash between
the Chadian army and a Janjawid militia group raiding across the border.
Agence France Presse quoted a Chadian military source as saying the
Chadian army killed 69 Sudanese raiders on Thursday when it intercepted a
column of Janjawid near Birak, a small town on the Sudanese frontier. Two
of the intruders were captured, it added.
However, an official of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Belgium which has a
mobile clinic in Birak, said residents in the town had reported that only
about 30 Janjawid were killed in the clash.
Achim Khaldi, a field officer with MSF Belgium in the nearby town of
Guereda, told IRIN by satellite telephone that residents in Birak had
reported that a large group of Janjawid raiders on horseback galloped into
the nearby village of Figueira before dawn to steal cattle.
However, the Chadian army pursued them as they headed back across the
border and engaged them in a battle on the Sudanese side.
“There were clashes at the border. Lots of people were injured on Sudanese
soil – we do not know how many. The inhabitants told us there were around
30 deaths,” Khaldi said, adding that MSF personnel had not yet been to the
scene to confirm the casualties.
Allami was careful not to accuse the Sudanese government directly of
stoking trouble on the Chadian side of the border, but he said figures of
considerable influence in Khartoum were behind the move.
“There must be an invisible hand guiding these troop movements and the
recruitment of combatants that has been observed,” he told IRIN. “I am not
accusing the Sudanese government, but I think that influential Sudanese
people are behind what is happening,” he added.
The conflict in Darfur pits the Sudanese government and its Janjawid
allies against two rebel movements which draw their support from sedentary
farmers of the black African Zaghawah, Masalit and Fur tribes.
Diplomats say the conflict represents the continuation of a long-running
feud between Arab-speaking nomadic herdsmen and black African farmers in
the region. Since the ethnic groups involved live on both sides of the
frontier, they say there is a serious danger that the Darfur conflict
could destabilise Chad too.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR estimates that nearly 200,000 refugees from
Darfur have already crossed into Chad after Janjawid and government forces
attacked their villages and drove them from their homes.
The United Nations estimates that more than a million people have also
been internally displaced within Darfur as a result of the 16-month-old
conflict and that two million people affected by conflict in the semi-arid
region urgently require humanitarian aid.
Military sources and eyewitnesses have reported a string of Janjawid raids
across the border into eastern Chad during recent months and these show no
sign of abating.
“Janjawid attacks on Chadian territory continue,” Colonel Hamat Bong
Aware, a military commander in the eastern town of Abeche, told IRIN on
Thursday. “Three days ago, a group attacked the Abdi region. They killed
three people and stole 60 camels. Our forces ran after them but failed to
catch them.”
The colonel said it was often difficult to tell whether the raiders
entering Chad were Sudanese Janjawid or Chadian rebels linked to them.
“You never know. You can’t really tell the difference between them,” he
said.
Abdoulaye Adu, a Chadian farmer, lying with bullet wounds in Abeche
hospital, meanwhile told an IRIN correspondent how he was injured in
another Janjawid raid on the village of Agan in the Tindelti district on 4
June. “Close to 50 men on horseback attacked us around 4 am. The attack
lasted 20 minutes or so. I received a bullet in the chest. Five of my
brothers were also wounded and we were evacuated to hospital in Abeche.”
Allami named two former Chadian government officials as being closely
involved with current efforts to launch attacks on eastern Chad from
Sudanese territory. He said one was Acheick Ibn Oumar, who served as
foreign minister under former president Hissene Habre during the 1980s.
The other was Ahmat Hassabalah Soubiane, who served as Chad’s ambassador
to the United States until the end of last year.
Several prominent Chadian Arabs associated with rebel groups opposing the
Chadian government had travelled repeatedly to Sudan in recent months and
a former senior figure in the FNTR was now a Janjawid commander, he said.
Relief workers involved in bringing aid to the Darfur refugees in eastern
Chad confirmed that the situation along the border was tense. The region
was full of armed men and it was not always clear who they were fighting
for, they added.
“There is continuous movement of Chadian army soldiers along the border.
Armed groups abound in the border area and it is difficult to tell whether
they are from Sudan or Chad,” one relief worker told IRIN by phone from
eastern Chad.
The hardening in the Chadian government’s attitude towards Khartoum
follows an abortive army uprising in the Chadian capital N’djamena last
month.
Diplomats and military sources said that one source of discontent which
fuelled the revolt was dissatisfaction within President Deby’s influential
Zaghawah ethnic group over the conciliatory line taken by the Chadian
authorities so far towards the Sudanese government.
Many prominent Zagahwahs, including some members of Deby’s own family,
felt that Chad should be doing more to support their kinsmen on the
Sudanese side of the border who have taken up arms against the government
in Khartoum, they added.
Deby’s government has hosted a series of talks between the Sudanese
government and the two rebel movements in Darfur: Sudan Liberation Army
and the Justice and Equality Movement, since December.
These led to the signing of a ceasefire agreement in April, but each side
has accused the other of frequently violating the truce.