Nomads Describe Persecution in Chad

And then there has been the spillover from the conflict in Darfur, where as many as 450,000 people have died from disease and violence since fighting began more than four years ago. Arab militias coming from Sudan, often with help from relatives here, have attacked and burned villages across eastern Chad, which shares many of the same tribes as Sudan.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

For the most part, Deby's government has emphasized the Darfur narrative above all others in his appeals for international aid and for European Union peacekeepers, who are expected to arrive in conjunction with a U.N. force headed to Darfur around December.

Chadian officials say that just as in Darfur, the vast majority of internally displaced people in Chad are farmers -- mainly from the Daju tribe -- who were driven from their homes by Sudanese Janjaweed, with some participation by Chadian Arabs.

"We asked the Daju victims why they were attacked," said Abulkadir Yassine, a Daju and roving ambassador for the Chadian government. "They say the Arabs want to drive out all the African Negroes as they have in Darfur. This is a problem of Arab ambitions in Chad."

But the stories of Chadian nomads offer a more complex explanation.

They say the Chadian government, in a divide-and-conquer political calculation aimed at quelling its internal rebellion, has fueled the conflict by arming certain Chadian farming communities -- particularly the Daju -- against Chadian nomads.

"The problem is with the government," said Yusuf al-Jhaly, a nomad leader. "They are supporting other tribes to fight the Arabs, giving them weapons, uniforms and training. This is the system of the government."

In a highly unusual move, a prominent Daju sultan was ousted earlier this year because he did not support the government's plan to arm his people, he said, and because many Dajus felt he was too sympathetic to nomads they now consider their enemies.

"The government, if you follow their politics, they will give you weapons," said the sultan, Seid Ibrahim. "In my mind, I do not want to be on one side, to take my tribe to destroy the other tribes. In this way, I do not want to be sultan, because I do not want to punish myself."

The nomads said the problems escalated during their seasonal journey south earlier this year.

They said their temporary settlements, called fariqs, were routinely attacked by Daju militias and government soldiers seeking to disarm them. The nomads said that if they did not have any weapons, they were beaten and tortured, and in some cases, their wives were raped in front of them.

They said a government helicopter attacked one settlement four times in a single day, an incident confirmed by the Chadian interior minister, Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, who cast it as a matter of self-defense against mercenary Janjaweed militias.

"We have set up mobile forces equipped with all necessary weapons, even helicopter gunships patrolling," said Bachir, who showed off a semiautomatic weapon during an interview and boasted about arms the government has purchased with an influx of oil revenue. "Whenever movement is mentioned, we go and destroy them."

The Chadian nomads did not deny that some among them took part in attacks on Daju villages in March but said the attacks in the areas of Tiero and Marena were in part retaliation for harassment by government and Daju militias.

The villages were home to two prominent Daju militia leaders who were killed along with scores of civilians.

According to displaced villagers, Chadian rebels also joined the attack as punishment for the Daju's refusal to join the rebellion.

"If the government or [militias] come and attack a fariq, what happens to the other Arabs?" asked Jama Burma, a nomad. "They come to help their people. And then the government calls them Janjaweed."

"Some Chadian rebels are Arabs," added his friend Al-Mahadi Bahar. "But the government wants to punish all the Arabs."

Bahar said the nomads no longer feel safe in the southern Dar Sila region, where much of the fighting has taken place and which is home to precious grass and water during the dry season that begins around October. As a group of cow-herding nomads headed north from there, they said, Daju militia members stood in the nomads' path and fired shots into the air as they passed.

In recent weeks, the Chadian government has deployed at least 1,000 horses to boost its military presence in Dar Sila and warned some nomad leaders to avoid their traditional migration routes south after the rains, according to a government official.

"The local population is saying that the nomads have no land in Chad," said Yusuf Hamadi, a nomad. "They say that the nomads migrated from Syria, from Jordan, from Arab land. But we have been here 700 years. We are Chadian."

Hamadi and others said they have contemplated fleeing into Sudan partly because they think the Sudanese government would be friendlier.

It is a dynamic that has troubled U.N. officials, who noted in an August report that some Chadian nomads who have fled into Sudan have been directed to occupy land that had belonged to displaced Darfurians.

"I cannot say that Sudan is better than Chad, because Chad is my country," said Unis Hussein, a nomad leader. "But people migrated to Sudan because there is no security in Chad. In Sudan, the government can give you land for herding, some area for farms. You are free."