THE “genocide” catastrophe in Sudan’s western province of Darfur, which has been seeping into neighbouring Chad for much of the past three years, is now bleeding freely across the border.The Arab government in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital on the river Nile, has exported the Darfur calamity by backing Chadian rebel groups which it allows to operate from bases in Darfur.
This expansion of the Darfur chaos has created a major regional and international crisis. It seems certain to lead to the collapse today of long-running peace talks designed to resolve the western Sudan conflict that has seen more than 300,000 black African Darfurians killed, mainly by Khartoum-backed Arab militias – the so-called janjaweed (Arabic slang for armed men on horseback) – and more than two million made refugees.
Oliver Bercault, a researcher with advocacy group Human Rights Watch, said last week, while visiting N’Djamena, Chad’s capital: “Darfur has become like west Africa and eastern Congo, where war is exported and flowing over borders. It is just very sad for the civilians caught up in it all.”
Diplomats and aid workers are freely admitting that the situation is now totally out of control and extremely dangerous, leaving millions of civilians in both Darfur and Chad virtually abandoned to their fates.
What had been a Chadian tragedy long in the making became obvious to the outside world in mid-April when a column of Chadian rebels, trained by the Sudan government, made a lightning advance from bases over the border in Darfur across 600 miles of desert to attack NÂ’Djamena. The rebels, in trucks mounted with heavy machine guns and carrying mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, stormed the capital.
Some 350 people died in the fighting after soldiers loyal to Chad’s President Idriss Déby repulsed the attack with helicopters, tanks and artillery. French fighter jets flew overhead in support of the beleaguered regime, an ally of Paris.
The multiple fallout from this latest African tragedy will today focus most immediately on the people of Darfur, who, for the past three years, have endured assaults by Sudanese government forces and militias that the US administration has labelled genocide – a contention supported by human rights organisations and a host of independent observers.
But despite such a serious charge against the Sudanese government, neither the UN, Western nations nor the African Union have been able to find a solution to stem the violence. Darfur – and now Chad – is a stunning example of the world’s inability to resolve such humanitarian crises.
Long-running peace talks on Darfur in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, are expected to be disbanded today with no agreement. Sudan’s government has rejected the key proposal – that 20,000 UN peacekeepers replace the current 7000 ineffectual African Union troops, financed by the US and the European Union, trying to maintain peace in a region the size of France.
Robert Zoellick, the US deputy secretary of state, last week said of the peace talks: “Either you get approval of the [Khartoum] government or you invade, and that’s a very big, serious challenge.”
In other words, all the game plans to provide relief and succour to the besieged and careworn ordinary people of Darfur are falling apart.
Human Rights Watch said the Khartoum government is using the chaos in Chad and the failure in Abuja as cover to launch new military offensives in Darfur on African villages – a continuation of a campaign of ethnic cleansing, allowing Arab pastoralists loyal to Khartoum to take over the better watered and higher ground of African agriculturalists.
This latest assault is also backed by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden who, in his latest audiotape, urged his followers to launch a second front against “the West” in Darfur.
The suffering of the millions of internal refugees in Darfur worsened still further when the UN announced last week that its food rations will be halved.
The UN World Food Programme [WFP] in Sudan costs £440 million a year, approximately. But donors have provided only one-third of this sum for 2006 . Britain and the US are the two most munificent bilateral donors. But, apart from Libya, no Arab state has contributed anything, despite windfall gains from high oil prices and Sudan’s membership of the Arab League.
WFP director James Morris said his only option is to reduce the daily ration from 2100 calories to 1050 per person. The cut takes effect next month. “This is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made,” said Morris. “Haven’t the people of Darfur suffered enough?”
Chad is a vast expanse of rock and desert twice the size of France where the harsh conditions have been ameliorated only by the fresh waters of Lake Chad. But since independence, the huge inland sea has receded to less than 20% of it former water volume and now covers just 500 square miles.
The reasons for this environmental and economic disaster are complex, but Lake ChadÂ’s disappearing act is just one more major factor in a regional disaster of epic proportions.
The challenge of Chad for the West is daunting as Sudan has begun a campaign to topple a government in NÂ’Djamena that is hardly more palatable than the appalling regime in Khartoum.
Chad is an oil-rich state which is, nevertheless, one of the poorest countries in the world. Half the population is illiterate. There is no electricity or piped water outside the capital. Since independence from France, Chadians have experienced a 30-year civil war – which ended in 1990 and which is beginning again now – together with four coups and several attempted coups.
Ironically, President Déby himself came to power in a coup in 1990, thanks to support from Sudan which gave him and his rebels bases in Darfur.
He is now opposed by a mishmash of rebel groups, including Sudan-backed factions, who have united in one main alliance, the United Front for Change. He is even opposed by many of his own relatives, angered by the way he is squandering oil riches, including expenditure on the white armour-plated Hummer in which he travels around NÂ’Djamena.
Two of Déby’s uncles defected from their posts as top Chadian Army commanders in February to become rebels, an illustration of the desperation that exists among the 10 million people of Chad.
Western strategists now surely realise that Déby will have to be got rid of before Darfur can be tackled. But they worry that if Déby falls that a new government will be sympathetic to the very regime in Sudan that has wreaked such havoc in Darfur.