David Cronin
17 July 2007
Brussels — The European Union is preparing to launch a peacekeeping mission in eastern Chad as a response to attacks on civilians from militia crossing the country's border with Sudan.
Some 230,000 refugees from the Sudanese province of Darfur and 170,000 people uprooted due to violence within Chad are taking shelter in makeshift camps in eastern Chad, an arid region with little infrastructure.
As well as suffering from widespread malnutrition, the refugees have had to contend with incursions from the Janjaweed militia that have been accused of waging a campaign of genocide with the support of the Sudanese government. The security situation has been worsened further by rampant banditry and ethnic tensions within Chad.
Meeting in Brussels next week (Jul. 23-24), the EU's foreign ministers are expected to approve the deployment of a peacekeeping mission to the region.
The mission is likely to be composed of 3,000 troops and flanked by a police operation involving about a thousand personnel.
Initially, only European soldiers will take part in it, although it is anticipated that responsibility for the force could be transferred to the United Nations after a year. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, head of the UN peacekeeping department, has held talks with Brussels diplomats over the past week on some of the surrounding logistics.
Alain Délétroz from the International Crisis Group said that soldiers from France, Chad's former colonial ruler, must not dominate in the EU mission. He said he was encouraged by indications that only about half of the troops deployed will be French. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of troops in the EU's first ever mission to Africa -- Operation Artemis -- which was sent to Congo's Ituri province in 2003, were French.
France has been a key supplier of military aid to the regime of Chad President Idriss Déby, who came to power in 1991 following a coup. When his rivals attempted to oust him last year, their attack on capital N'Djamena was repelled with the help of France. Déby won a presidential election a few months later, but the poll was boycotted by opposition parties who claimed that it had been rigged.
"France has been accused of protecting Déby's regime by a number of African countries," Délétroz told IPS. "And by a number of European countries, although they may not voice their accusations publicly."
Délétroz said nonetheless that he would not be opposed to having a French general commanding the force. "This deployment will be even less French than Artemis, where you had close to 80 percent French troops," he explained. "Here the proportion would be better."
An EU official dealing with security issues said that the deployment is envisaged to take place between autumn and the end of this year. The rules of engagement for the mission have not yet been drawn up, the official added.
Lotte Leicht from the Brussels office of Human Rights Watch called on the EU to ensure that the mission has what is known in peacekeeping parlance as a 'Chapter 7' mandate, allowing it to take whatever steps are deemed necessary to protect civilians.
Human Rights Watch issued a report this month on the plight of children enmeshed in Chad's armed conflict.
Recruitment of children increased dramatically during 2006, with both the national army and the rebel group United Front for Change (FUC) resorting to it as violence between the two sides became intense. Children as young as eight were hired to fight, cook, and keep guard at lookout posts.
In May this year an agreement was reached under which both the government and the FUC undertook to help the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) identify and demobilise children in their ranks.
Yet while thousands of children had been recruited, little more than 400 have so far been demobilised, with Human Rights Watch attributing the slow rate of progress in part to the Chad government's reluctance to fully cooperate with UNICEF.
"When EU foreign ministers meet, it is important that they remind themselves that the recruitment and use of children under 15 is a war crime," Leicht added. "The EU has signed a cooperation agreement with the International Criminal Court. So any EU force deployed to Chad should see itself as a possible provider of evidence to the Court, and assist in possible investigations by the Court."
Michael Bailey, spokesman on humanitarian issues for Oxfam, said that while his organisation had been able to provide water and sanitation to eight of the 12 refugee camps in eastern Chad, it can only give families five litres of water a day, a third of the internationally recommended amount.
"The international aid effort has not been adequately financed," he said. "The UN is not providing the leadership and delivery on the ground we would expect from it."
Ulrich Delius, an Africa specialist with the German Society for Threatened People noted that one of every two children under five in the camps is undernourished, and that the Chadian security forces are failing to provide basic protection. "If measures for the safety of the refugees are not rapidly improved, there is a serious threat not only that thousands of refugees will die but that Chad will drift into chaos and anarchy."
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