Rebels Retreat to East; Aid Workers Warn of Crisis in Capital, Camps
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 4 -- Thousands of residents poured out of N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, on Monday as clashes between rebel and government forces cooled after two days of combat, according to reports from the besieged city.
Though scattered fighting continued Monday, rebel forces broke off their attack on the palace of President Idriss Déby and retreated to positions east of N'Djamena as civilians fled westward, across a bridge into neighboring Cameroon. Humanitarian groups began moving workers and resources toward the border to help the fleeing civilians.
The pause in the fighting came as the U.N. Security Council condemned the attacks, potentially opening the way for France, which has 1,800 troops in Chad but is officially neutral, to side openly with Déby in his struggle to assert control in the former French colony.
Aid agencies warned of possible disaster in the capital and the refugee camps along the nation's eastern border. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Darfur conflict in neighboring Sudan depend on aid flowing through Chad, an oil-rich but impoverished country with a history of severe corruption and political instability.
The scale of casualties in N'Djamena was not clear. Reports from the scene described streets with unrecovered bodies and burned-out vehicles.
"We have a lot of injured and dead people in town," said Christophe Droeven, Chad representative for the aid group Catholic Relief Services. He spoke from Belgium, to which he was evacuated over the weekend, but has kept in close contact with staff members in Chad.
Rebel leaders told news organizations that they were pulling back from the capital to allow civilians to leave safely, but the move was widely seen as a victory for Déby, the French-trained fighter pilot who has ruled Chad since 1990. He has survived numerous attempts to unseat him in recent years, including a similar assault on the capital in 2006.
"As of now the Chadian government is patrolling the capital very aggressively, and the rebels are not even in the city," said David Buchbinder, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who specializes in Chad.
The attack on N'Djamena began Saturday after the rebels moved swiftly through Chad's eastern desert region on hundreds of pickup trucks mounted with machine guns. The government contends the rebels are supported by Sudan; the rebels depict themselves as fighting to overthrow a brutal dictatorship.
Once in the city, they turned their guns on Déby's presidential palace.
The government counterattack, bolstered by helicopter gunships, gathered strength on Sunday. Chadian government officials portrayed Monday's events as a potential turning point. "The whole of N'Djamena is under control and the savage mercenaries are routed," Interior Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir told Radio France Internationale.
John Prendergast, an Africa analyst with the Enough Project, an anti-genocide activist group, said that government forces had "pushed them back. Déby's in a much stronger position than he appeared to be just 24 hours ago."
As rebels retreated from the city, international denunciation of the coup attempt grew louder.
The U.N. Security Council issued a statement saying it "strongly condemns these attacks and all attempts at destabilization" and supports efforts by the African Union to mediate the conflict.
The council did not agree to a French request seeking approval to use "all necessary means" to put down the rebellion but did call on member states to "provide support in conformity with the U.N. charter, as requested by the government of Chad."
The French ambassador to the United Nations, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said in a statement: "It is essential that in this very difficult moment, President Déby get all the help he needs to end violence in Chad."
France's plans for its forces in Chad, which include strike aircraft, remained unclear. President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered Mirage fighters to survey the Sudanese border to ensure there is no "foreign incursion." Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said his government hoped it "wouldn't have to use" the new U.N. authorization.
In the meantime, the French military has been leading the evacuation of foreign citizens, picking some up in armored vehicles for transport to the capital's airport. In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that fewer than 100 U.S. citizens have been taken out of the country and that some have stayed behind. The U.S. Embassy has been evacuated.
The U.N. World Food Program announced Monday that assistance to 400,000 people in Chad was in peril because of the fighting. Unless peace was restored quickly, the pre-placement of food in eastern Chad, near Darfur, could be interrupted in advance of the five-month rainy season, which begins in June.
The agency was sending a team to northern Cameroon, near the Chadian capital, to assess humanitarian needs there as civilians fled the fighting.
Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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