Chad rebels 'not afraid to die' if fighting Irish

IRELAND:SUDANESE-BACKED rebels in eastern Chad, to which Irish troops are being deployed, would "not be afraid to die" in any potential clashes with Irish troops on peace-enforcement duties with EUfor, a noted author and expert on the conflicts in Darfur and Chad has warned.

Speaking at the Irish Institute of European Affairs in Dublin this week, Alex de Waal, a fellow of the Harvard University Humanitarian Initiative and a director of the London-based Justice for Africa organisation, argued that EUfor's mission to Chad would prove a "test case for EU peacekeeping doctrine" in Africa.

De Waal, who was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur during 2005 and 2006, identified eastern Chad as a particularly problematic area within which to deploy a European - and predominantly French - peace-enforcement mission.

He described the border area to which Irish troops will be deployed as a "peripheral" region, which for decades has been controlled by the Chadian dictatorship in N'djamena and the Sudanese in Khartoum by means of the "militarisation of tribes as an instrument of local control".

Mr de Waal said that "very well armed and organised" rival Sudanese-backed militias would be active in the Irish area of operations. The battle-hardened militias on all sides would adopt a very "aggressive and assertive" approach on encountering EUfor troops, whatever their nationality. While he felt they might not target Irish base camps in the Goz-beida area, Irish patrols in the wider vicinity might come under attack if they found themselves "in the wrong place at the wrong time".

Asked how EUfor might interact with local militias, Mr de Waal said any attempt by the Irish or French systematically to disrupt their activities or to disarm them would lead to confrontation and a military situation that would require the withdrawal of EUfor forces in a manner "similar to that experienced by US troops in Somalia in the mid 1990s".

He said it would be practically impossible for EUfor troops to protect all of the refugees and internally displaced within the region given the large number and geographical spread of the camps in eastern Chad. The best policy for EUfor troops would be to adopt a "softly softly" approach to the warring factions and to adopt "under the radar, improvisational tactics based on consent and compromise" to limit the number of criminal acts and violent incidents.

Such an approach would minimise casualties and armed clashes, Mr de Waal argued, also pointing to the reality that the French in Chad had sustained their presence since 1986 only by "inflicting and sustaining casualties" on an ongoing basis.

Dr Tom Clonan isThe Irish Times Security Analyst. He lectures in the School of Media, DIT.