The French in Chad as Rebels Overrun Ndjamena

Sunday nights at the United Nations Security Council aren't known for four-hour blowout negotiating sessions. Violence in central Africa, however, summoned the fair arbiters of 21st century international peace and security to the horseshoed table yesterday. The region faces nightmarish mahem.

France conquered Chad in 1920, relinquished control in 1960, and yesterday French military swept in to evacuate Westerners as rebels overran the capital city of Ndjamena. Reports now are unclear; it seems as if Chadian president Idriss Déby has fought them off, though, according to the Associated Press, in the city "casualties were believed to be high." After taking fire, the US embassy now stands evacuated and abandoned.

Bloodshed in Ndjamena threatens to bring a bloody cauldron of fighting and murder to a boil. Three different Chadian rebel groups have banded together. As recently as 2006, rebels attempted to topple Déby's government in Ndjamena; since, Deby has gone against the country's constitution and taken a third term as president. Now, the banded rebels, which swear allegiances to distinct clans, charge Deby with corruption and stacking his parliament with his own Zagawa clan. (Zagawas make up less than three percent of Chad's population.)
 
Eastern Chad today houses hundreds of thousands of displaced Darfuris on its border, a remote region that has for years been home to varying forms of unrest. A force of more than 20,000 UN peacekeepers had been scheduled to land in Darfur by the end of 2007, but that didn't happen. Officials have since said that deploying a force by the end of 2008 would be a goal, and more importantly, any effort to calm the situation in Chad first depends on the pacification of Darfur. On Friday Reuters reported that Chad wrote to the Council, "Faced with the aggression orchestrated and strongly supported by Sudan, the Chadian government intends to use its legitimate right of defense by all means at its disposal, including pursing the aggressors into Sudanese territory."

In effect, the border between the two countries is entirely imagined. Roads are dirt, crossings are controlled by rebel groups, not state-paid customs and border control officials. That said, the more this border widens, the more a severe conflict could not only spread but also challenge the sovereignty of Ndjamena and Khartoum, and as it all goes down, put into question the postcolonial borders of both nations.

The wildcard is France. In the past, Paris has come to Chad's rescue, in the strange custom of a former kidnapper protecting out of obligation. Nicolas Sarkozy, the newly-married French president, this time instead offered President Déby a ride out of town. The Chadian president refused. French officials have said that Sudan is backing the Chadian rebels.

The Council released a statement this morning support the government in Ndjamena. Interpretations were being made as to what kind of support the statement authorizes, but French military support could soon be on the table.

UPDATE: France appears to have stepped on on Déby's behalf, and violence in the capital has quieted.

AFRICOM: US Going it Alone Again, Naturally

New peace talks aimed at resolving the crisis in Darfur began this weekend in Libya. The prospects don’t look good. Although the Sudanese government agreed to a cease-fire on Saturday, leaders of some of the most potent rebel groups did not even show up.

Congress, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and President Bush have all called the situation a genocide. But while the U.S. has given more than $2 billion in aid since 2005, according to Bush, at the same time it’s changed its military position in Africa. You have to ask, is the U.S. repeating its go-it alone style of foreign policy in yet another hotspot?

Since February 2003, when violence broke out in Darfur — an area of the Sudan that is roughly the size of France — more than 200,000 people have been killed, and nearly 3 million have been driven from their homes. Tens of thousands live in refugee camps, sheltered by tattered brown tents. Not only has the situation grown far more complex as rebel groups have splintered, but violence in Chad, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo suggest that Darfur isn’t an isolated issue.

“We all know that Africa cannot fully develop economically, politically or socially where there is violence, the threat of terrorism or fear about the security of legitimate governments and the people they represent,” Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary for African affairs, told Congress in August. Her testimony explained the U.S.’s “new strategic relationship with Africa” by way of Africa Command, or AFRICOM, which will create a permanent U.S. military command on the continent in conjunction with the State Department. To put it simply, the endeavor is an attempt at diplomacy and nation-building backed by military firepower.

The State Department has acknowledged how touchy the notion is, but what may be more worrisome is the idea that, with military might and economic leverage, the U.S. can act alone in this world.

Glancing back at recent history, this has proved to be a dubious strategy at best. Earlier this fall, the climate change talks Bush orchestrated alongside those held by the U.N. turned out to be a disaster. Moreover, flying solo in Iraq has left the U.S. without a friend to help shoulder the burden.

Given the situation in Iraq, and adding the increasingly dire situation in Darfur, can the U.S. really afford to continue to go it alone?

(Originally published in Metro in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Image of Intifada transit refugee camp from USAID.)

Dancing Sudanese Women for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon

New York Times UN correspondent Warren Hoge files a report from Juba in southern Sudan where Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon arrived today to a "raucous welcome." He'd come to ensure the lasting peace where, for more than 20 years, Christians had battled the Arab capital of the country, Khartoum.

10,000 UN peacekeepers are currently on the ground there, and Hoge reads into Ban's straightforward statement, "As you know well, this remains an essential--and fragile--cornerstone of peace across the whole of Sudan," a reference to a possible solution in Darfur, the region northwest of Juba where millions have been displaced and hundreds of thousands slaughtered. Genocide continues today.

Ban stepped off the plane and found himself faced with a crowd of dancing women and men in warrior headdresses.

It's clear that Ban is doing a bit of diplomatic dancing, warming up to Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and while he couldn't get Bashir to announce a full-on cease-fire (Bashir claimed security concerns), instead he'll work to "bring about" a cease-fire.

During the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York later this month, Ban will corral regional leaders for a "high-level meeting."

Talking abounds while reports trickle out about open conflict in the refugee camps.

Sudanese Refugees Band in Gangs on Cairo Streets

The streets of Cairo today are witnessing a confluence of American gang culture and strife in Sudan.

According to a Reuters report, there are nearly a million Sudanese refugees living on the streets of Egypt's capital city, regularly considered the cultural hub of the Arab world. And the ensuing strife sounds like Los Angeles in the early 1990s, only the rival gangs are not the Bloods and the Crips. In Cairo there are the Outlaws and the Lost Boys.

And they hack each other to death, as Abigail Hauslohner reports, with machetes.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, this population wave comes not from the genocide in the western Darfur region of Sudan, but from the ostensibly resolved two-decade old war with Christians in the south. As the war ended, UNHCR shifted their policy and the displaced lost their refugee status. Now the millions of Sudanese on Egyptian streets face racial discrimination and violence. They cannot find work and have joined gangs loyal to particular Cairene neighborhoods.

UNHCR wants the refugees to either return to Sudan or integrate into Egyptian society, but as is the case with so many refugee waves, without a plan for assimilation, the groups end up disenfranchised and do double damage: they lose out on opportunity, and the local region, in this case Cairo, which is a remarkably safe place, now has violence on its streets.

(Photo of downtown Cairo by Andrew Bast.)

 

Darfur for Dummies

by Mik Awake

If you’re anything like us here at The Inquirer, the utterly baffling conflict that continues to rage in Darfur is about as clear to you now as the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was in high school. Like many, you’re probably at a loss to explain who is fighting whom, who are the victims, and what’s at stake.

It seems as though every time someone attempts to take a step back and decipher the situation, the coverage only makes sense (like many Shakespearean dramas) while you’re reading it. But after you put away the article, magazine or treatise, all sense eludes you.

Fret not, for today The Inquirer has assembled a Cliffs Notes version of the conflict that, since 2003, has become the first genocide of the 21st Century. Or: the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis. Or: simply, Darfur.

MSM Blunder: Don't Be Surprised Later Because Bush Said It Already

The media bigwigs can’t always get it right. To do that, they’d have to be everywhere all the time, and, well, that’s just impossible. But boy did they miss a doozy (and they were there!) on Monday when President Bush took a trip over to the State Department and met with, essentially, his war cabinet.

GENOCIDE IN DARFUR: Follow-Up -- One Big Double Standard

All last week The Inquirer reported on Genocide in Darfur. And all week we meant to post an essay singling out New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof. As it played out, some hard news pieces came our way, zapped our resources and the piece went by the wayside.

That's why we're catching up now, because Kristof wrote a spot-on column in today's paper about the world's double standard in dealing with Darfur.

GENOCIDE IN DARFUR: The Failed Darfur Peace Agreement

by Eric Reeves

For the past seven years, Eric Reeves has worked full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst. He publishes regularly on the topic and has testified several times before Congress. He is a professor at Smith College and runs the endlessly informative sudanreeves.org.

The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) has collapsed with shocking rapidity. No facile comments from the UN’s Pronk, US officials, or other international actors who pushed through this deeply flawed agreement can change the brutal realities on the ground, and the rapid deterioration in security. The African Union may have been funded through October 1, 2006---perhaps even beyond---but it has lost all credibility with the people of Darfur. It simply cannot function meaningfully in providing security for civilians or humanitarians.

GENOCIDE IN DARFUR: The Arab League's Impotence

by Mik Awake

Formed by seven countries in 1945, the Arab League is now a powerful political and economic alliance of twenty-two nations – twenty-three if you include the East African country of Eritrea. The mission statement of the Arab League reads something like this:

Serve the common good of all Arab countries, ensure better conditions for all Arab countries, guarantee the future of all Arab countries and fulfill the hopes and expectations of all Arab countries.

GENOCIDE IN DARFUR: What USAID Looks Like

For all the criticism thrown at the international community, humanitarian agencies and many countries have saved countless lives in the crisis. The US alone has provided more than $1 billion to Darfur, and below are a handful of photos of that money at work.