Darfur and Chad: A fragmented ethnic mosaic

Abstract

In this article, I examine some of the interactions between the crisis in Darfur and Chad through its increasingly complicated ethnic threads and explain how Chad slid back into authoritarianism in 2004. Factionalism broke down the mesh of ethnic politics into personalised rule and allegiances. The international response to the crisis in Darfur allowed the Chadian leadership to reinforce its position in the country. Ever since, a precarious equilibrium set in. Déby has become the longest-serving president in the history of modern Chad. Previously weakened by interfactional agreements and oil wealth expectations and then by the crisis in Darfur, the regime re-established internal and external means for preserving the status quo. Yet appearances can be deceiving. The argument is based on fieldwork and secondary literature.

Keywords:

• Chad
• Darfur
• ethnicity
• resource curse
• state elites
• refugees
• humanitarian assistance
• Africa

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank William J. Foltz for his guidance and support. I also thank Elizabeth J. Wood, Max Glaser, Hugo Slim, Peter Eigen, Muzong Kodi, Ellen Lust-Okar, Séverine Autessière, Nicholas Sambanis, Lori Leonard, Douglas Yates, Marielle Debos, Jean-Luc Lebras, Philippe Bernard, and three anonymous reviewers who provided very valuable comments. The views expressed in this paper are the author's sole responsibility.

Notes

1. The others are the Massalit and the Fur. For an updated overview on the ethnicity of the region, see Prunier (2005, 4–8); De Waal (2005b); International Crisis Group's Africa Report 111, 1 June 2006 (La division de l'entourage du President, 12–15)

2. Khalil Ibrahim is the leader of the Justice for Equality Movement (JEM). ‘He has links with the dissident Islamist leadership in Khartoum’. Briefing: Darfur, Sudan: Prospects for peace, Alex de Waal, African Affairs, 128.

3. In Marchal (2004).

4. The other rebel leaders are not Zaghawa: one is a Tama – Mahamat Nour, who became prominent because of his audacious raid on N'djamena in April 2006; another is a Goran (or Toubou), Mahamat Nouri. An update discussion on the dynamics within the rebel groups can be found in Africa Confidential 47, no. 24, December 2006.

5. IRIN News, 30 January 2004. Sudanese bombs fell on the border town of Tine and killed two Chadian civilians, wounding 15 others.

6. ‘Déby hesitated, and in mid-May made two decisions fraught with consequences. He drove two financiers of the Sudanese rebellion busy organising a fund-raising campaign out of the capital, and he gave his approval to a plan of his Sudanese counterpart Umar al-Bashir to deploy combined patrols at the border, patrols from which Arab and Zaghawa soldiers would be excluded. For the members of the Republican Guard, it was a red flag, and it was a signal for the 16 May revolt’ (Marchal 2004, 12–13).

7. On the techniques of coup prevention, see Horowitz (2000) Chapter 13, or for interesting case studies see Decalo (1990). A wider discussion on civil–military relations and a complete literature can be found in Fever (1999).

8. Another major reshuffle took place in October 2005 with the dissolution of the presidential guard and in November with a change of the military hierarchy in each region of the country, with a total of 200 reassignments.

9. Marchal (2004).

10. New York Times, 15 March 2006.

11. The Wadai state has been quasi-independent since the fourteenth century and its story is also a long succession of wars, led by a powerful monarchy dominating an elaborate hierarchical structure. See Decalo: ‘the area still remains distinctively apart from the rest of Chad, refusing integration with – and political domination by – the southern regions and tribes that until so recently were regarded as merely hunting grounds for slaves’.  For an overview on the slave trade, trade patterns and communities, see Arditi (2003).

12. Our focus is here limited to Chad. We can accept the claim that Wadai has always been a ‘second – and opposing – center of gravity in Chad’ (Decalo 1990). As a matter of further research, a good starting point is Khayar's analysis of the Wadai elites.

13. See, for example, the multiple incursions executed by three parties: the Chadian loyalist army, the Chadian rebel factions and the Sudan-based Janjaweed militias, on and around election day, May 3rd 2006. Razzia or rezzous, as Chapelle call them, were pillaging raids, common to the Toubous and to other people in the Sahara.

14. Jeune Afrique l'Intelligent 14–20 May 2006. ‘Hinda, originaire du Ouaddai, passe pour pouvoir empecher un rapprochement de cette region avec la rebellion’.

15. Author's conversation with journalist, May 2006.

16. Nolutshungu, quoting Khayar (1984).

17. Déby: ‘I publicly make the following commitment: I will not be a candidate for the 2006 presidential elections. I will not change the Constitution, even if I have 100 percent majority! I say this to the rooftops: what remains for me to be done during my last mandate is to prepare Chad for a democratic change of government, a peaceful democratic change without any break. I want the country to go from one stage to the other smoothly without any rift. That is what will be my responsibility. I will assume it at any cost’. Le Monde, 4 June 2001.

18. RFI, 23 May 2004.

19. AFP, Wednesday, 26 May 2004.

20. Officially the Independent National Electoral Commission had on June 21 given the reform a provisional victory of 77.8% of the votes and put the turnout at 71.01% of some 5.3 million voters. There were no independent election monitoring teams.

21. The debate took a surprising turn when Powell acknowledged only in early September that ‘genocide’ was in fact taking place in Sudan. Bush repeated the genocide charge during an address to the UN General Assembly and ‘taken together, the congressional resolution and the two speeches were momentous’ (Strauss 2005, 130).

22. Interview with Déby, January 2005, Info-Tchad, the translation is mine. Interestingly, the same discourse was held in April 2006 with a threat of expelling the refugees.

23. .‘Après les assertions selon lesquelles Deby a exagérément amplifié, par médias interposés, les conséquences du conflit du Darfour qu'il utilisait pour ses propres ambitions démesurées, ambitions qui ont fini par agacer les observateurs et médiateurs de la crise soudanaise’; Alwihda, 28 November 2004. More recently, the discourse turned into threats: Mr Déby gave the international community until June to negotiate an end to the Darfur crisis before he ordered the 200,000 Sudanese seeking refuge in Chad to move elsewhere. ‘If after June we can't guarantee the security of our citizens and the refugees, then it is up to the international community to find another country to shelter these refugees’, New York Times, 16 April 2006.

24. Abderrazak El-Para, Algerian terrorist captured in the Tibesti in March 2004. See ‘L’étrange Ben Laden du Sahara’, Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2004.

25. Chad is part of the Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative. See Washington Post, July 26, 2005.

26. See for example the summary arrest of an Imam of N'Djamena, April 2006.

27. Déby's party, the MPS, started to plan for a constitutional change in November 2003.

28. Among others: International Crisis Group, Africa Report no.105. It is itself a reiteration, given that Africa's first peacekeeping operation of the former OAU took place in Chad. For an account of the operation, see Mays (2002), Pittman (1984) or Jah (2000).

29. Interviews, May 2006.

30. Author's interviews, reference to an HIV/AIDS project decision, February 2004.

31. On the unintended consequences of humanitarian intervention see also Anderson (1999), De Waal (1989), Duffield and Prendergast (1994), Duffield (2001), Kennedy (2004), Lischer (2005), Macrae and Zwi (1994), Rieff (2002), Weissman et al. (2004).

32. The statistical analysis refers to the period 1951–2001. See Salehyan and Gleditsch, 2006. Refugees and the spread of civil war. International Organization, 60: 335–66. The authors specifically mention the case of Sudanese refugees as having the potential to destabilise Chad.

33. Though looting is more common in Darfur, cases are being reported in Chad as well. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported four trucks carrying aid supplies were attacked near the town of Am Timan. (Reuters, 2 February 2007). See also ‘Looting in Abeche’ IRIN News, 27 November 2006.

34. UNHCR briefing note, 16 May 2006, available at: www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/chad?page=briefing&id=4469a2344: also InfoTchad, quoting a Sudanese newspaper, Sudanese Media Centre (SMC), 21 March 2006.

35. Although there is no consensus on the measurement of civil war, most authors posit three conditions: a threshold of 1000 battle deaths, at least 100 casualties on each side, a fight between state and non-state organised groups (Sambanis 2004). Our count is based on the author's database for the period 2005–2007 and relies on secondary literature. It excludes the incidents related to Janjaweed militia (for example, and includes only rebel vs loyalist incidents casualties. Many Chadian rebels are supported by Sudan directly or indirectly but the group's interests and participants are Chadian. According to Fearon (2004), Chad's latest civil war occurred in 1994–8.

36. Chad's president pledged four billion CFA (US$8 million) to buy food and other aid for 150,000 displaced people in the isolated region; but he has nonetheless remained vague about plans to provide a credible armed security force to defend the unmarked 900km desert border between Chad and Darfur.

37. www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4864508.stm, 11 April 2006.

38. ‘On a fait appel aux trois bataillons stationnés en République centrafricaine ayant participé aux renversement du Président Ange Félix Patassé. Revenus de Bangui, on les renvoie à l'Est dans la région de Tiné puis progressivement vers Insuru en territoire soudanais. Une fois arrivés à Unsuru, leurs cartes militaires et tout autre document tchadien leurs a été arrachés. Ils sont regroupés en section puis repartis dans les villages suivants. … vite les autorités tchadiennes ont apporté un démenti formel; et au fur et à mesure que les combats redoublaient d'intensifié, la présence des soldats tchadiens a été très significative aux côtés des deux rebellions du Darfour’. www.tchad-info.net/articles/voir_art.php?idart=1046

39. ‘Tom Herdimi was replaced as head of the oil project and his twin brother Timane was removed from the chairmanship of the Cotonchad board of directors. Two other members of the clan were also recalled: General Hassan Djorbo, forced to give up the key post as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to General Mahamat Salch Kaya; and Mahamat Hanon, who is turning over his post as head of the National Security Agency (the secret services) to Mahamat Ismael Chaibo, the most loyal of the Idriss Déby loyalists’ Jeune Afrique l'Intelligent, 30 May 2004: 79

40. The Law 001 – such was the name of the Law for the Management of Oil Resources, allocated 10% of the resources to the so-called future generation fund.

41. For an interesting synthesis and sketch of a paradigm shift in the literature, see Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no.4, 2005.

42. Massuyeau and Dorbeau-Falchier, 2005, 144–8 or International Crisis Group's Africa Report no. 111, 1 June 2006. At the same time, being bonuses considered in the framework of the Law 001, other oil funds are not accounted for (for example, a concession to a Taiwanese oil company for USD 30 millions).

43. For an interesting brief summary, see Humphreys, 2005 pp. 3–4.

44. Africa Confidential, 2007.

45. At the time of Tombalbaye there was an initial attempt to share positions and offices and to ‘undo the fragmentation though a one party system’ (Nolutshungu 1996, 176). Malloum tried to broaden the distribution of power with a geographical and ethnic balance which ‘led to a constitutional deadlock and civil war’. Under Goukoni, power sharing acquired the specific territorial meaning of allowing faction leaders – warlords – their respective areas.

46. See Nolutshungu, (1996), 178–86 and 195) on the process of ralliement and the ‘three-year-long mission of peace’ that won over the codos of the South and their leaders

47. See W. Foltz (1988) and R. Lemarchand (1988) where the figure of 1 billion USD is also reported with the following indication: 232 tanks, 3 MI-25 helicopters, 26 bomber planes, 2 ground support planes, 7 radar systems, 86 BMP personnel carriers (quoting Africa Confidential, 3 April 198). Also see Jane's Sentinel, May–June 1986. The figure is interesting if compared with the three-year commitment of international lenders in 1986 amounting to 500 millions USD (Buijtenhuijs).

48. owe this idea to William J. Foltz.

49. The initiative of shutting down oil to Chad belonged to Nigeria. For the recent reversal, see New York Times, 23 April 2006, ‘Idriss Déby, Chad's president, threatened to shut off the country's production of 180,000 barrels of oil a day by May if Exxon Mobil and other oil companies don't pay $100 million in new oil taxes’.

50. Six months after the diplomatic switch, the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) acquires all the exploration assets in Chad of Canada's EnCana for $202.5 million (see MarketWatch 23 January 2007). The policy change could be associated with the discovery that many of the weapons used by Chadian rebels who nearly overthrew Déby in April 2006 – from the ubiquitous Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades to more advanced artillery pieces mounted on Toyota Land Cruisers – came from China.

51. Le Monde, 5 August 2006.