The European Union is expected next week to authorise the immediate dispatch of a military force to eastern Chad to deter attacks on refugees from Darfur, but humanitarian workers are concerned it will be led or dominated by France.
| In a strange way I understand their concerns. |
Although the Chadian crisis is less severe than the one in Darfur across the border, the 3,000-person force will have a more robust mandate and better equipment, including aircraft and attack helicopters, than the largely African force that is about to deploy in Sudan's western region under combined African Union and UN command and control. The EU will conduct air patrols, including those carried out at night, to spot groups assembling for attacks on civilians.
| Funny how the EU was able to ante up to protect a French client state. |
The French offered to provide around half the force and acts as lead nation when the numbers of internally displaced people began to rise dramatically last year.
| Perhaps they can mobilize the Fighting 515th Belgian Heavy Barbershop Battalion. |
France already has a powerful military presence in its former colony and helped to protect the country's long-ruling President Idriss Déby from a coup in April last year. Rebel forces who operate near the Sudanese border reached the capital, Ndjamena, but were pushed back in fighting which left around 300 dead.
"The important thing for the EU force is that it has to be perceived as neutral and impartial," Thomas Merkelbach, the head of the local delegation of the Red Thingy Cross said yesterday. "Its troops should come from a variety of nations and not have one dominant country. It could become a problem if it is perceived as a French force."
| Why? The French have been there for decades, and everyone knows which side they're on. Oh. |
While the EU force will be better equipped and trained than the AU/UN hybrid force for Darfur, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, originally wanted it to be a UN force with 11,000 troops. "It's encouraging that the president of Chad has agreed to this force", Mr Ban told reporters after arriving in the capital yesterday for a one-day visit to meet Mr Déby. But in a report to the security council last month, Mr Ban explained that Mr Déby insisted on having an EU rather than a UN force. |