Chad severs ties with Sudan

[WhiteTara]

The killing by the Janjaweed has spilled over into Chad, destabilizing their fledgling government. Bush made promises and again, didn't fund. What began as enough troops have ended in less than 500 and even that is evaporating. If we want to interfere in other people's governments, I woud think this one would be a good start.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/9d4087ea-cc1b-11da-a7bf-0000779e2340.html

Idriss Déby, president of Chad, yesterday said he was cutting off diplomatic ties with neighbouring Sudan, a day after his forces repulsed a dawn rebel attack on the capital.

Officials said more than 100 people were killed after insurgents fought government troops in N'Djamena. Mr Déby, speaking at a public rally, has repeatedly accused Khartoum of backing the rebels, which he has described as mercenaries. Sudan has denied the allegations.

snip

However, the attack highlighted his tenuous grip on power and was the most daring by rebels who have been fighting since last year in eastern Chad. It followed a raid this week on a strategic town in the country's centre.
The French Defence Ministry said its 1,200 troops stationed in Chad were "neutral" and "would not intervene in internal politics", even to stop a coup d'état against the democratically elected president.

snip

Chad, which has a history of rebellions and autocratic rule, shares a long, porous boundary with the crisis-ridden Sudanese region of Darfur, where a three-year insurgency has spilled across the border, exacerbating Mr Déby's internal problems.

The Chadian rebels have used Darfur as their base. The lawless region is awash with weapons and armed groups. A concern is that the longer the violence continues the less chance there will be of solving the Darfur crisis.

[Kutjara]

1. The Bush Motto:

No Oil = No Interest

[Igel]

2. There's oil.

No access. No country adjacent to Sudan has authorized fly-over for non-sanctioned operations. Nor are they likely to.

Were they to, there's little desire to put white Xian forces on the ground in a brown-black Muslim country that declared shari'a its governing law, in which the difference between the corpse of a combatant and the corpse of a civilian is whether or not it has a weapon in its hand, and the good guys are indistinguishable, by and large, from the bad guys.

There's no UN resolution authorizing the use of force contrary to the government's wishes. The UN can't even agree it's genocide; pretty much those that stand to get Sudanese oil and trade say that the military option's dead, "No blood while they're selling us oil." Since Khartoum has put restrictions on how many AU troops and where they can go, that's that. Unless we want another coalition of the willing making up their authorization as they go, so as to ignore the UN and Sudanese sovereignty.

The "good news" is that there's been a report that a couple of military bases in Eastern Sudan were attacked by Western Sudanese allies.

Can we call it a civil war yet?

[Kutjara]

4. Chad?

I was actually thinking about the lack of support for Chad. Does Chad have significant oil reserves? I would think that if it did have significant quantities of readily exploitable oil, we'd be supporting their 'freedom' with everything we have.

[Igel]

7. Not significant.

Something like 160k barrels exported a day, high-sulfur.

It's been the subject of a scandal for the last year or so. WorldBank gave them money for the pipeline on condition the profits go for 'good works' like education and medical care; Chad wanted to renegotiate to include "paying civil servants". Wolfowitz said, in effect, "No dice--a deal's a deal" and threatened some punitive action.

Today or yesterday they threatened to cut it off.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2228491&mesg_id=2229048

Presumably their oil is part of the same structure that contains oil under Darfur, but I'm certain no geologist.

[951-Riverside]

6. I can't imagine the outrage if the Iraqis were two shades darker...

and a solder got his pinky hurt, as I see it America and the rest of the racist white world isn't going to send their "boys" to die over "blacks" remember they had no problem "cutting and running" out of Somalia after one day of fighting.

[Call me Deacon Blues]

3. I was all tore up when he broke up with Jeremy

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

:rofl:

[WhiteTara]

5. Is US administration only weak and incompetent, or is it two-faced

headlines from the Sudan Tribune.
http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=15054

s only weak and incompetent, or is it two-faced ?" --- Washington Post editorial, April 11, 2006

By Eric Reeves

March 13, 2006 —The Washington Post editorial (full text of this important statement at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/10/AR2006041001535.html) has asked the essential question of the Bush administration; tragically, the preponderance of evidence suggests that "two-faced" and disingenuous is the better description. What follows from this ugly reality is a lack of meaningful US policy for Darfur and eastern Chad, with the bleak diplomatic prospect that US leadership will be lacking as the Darfur region enters its period of greatest and most remorseless human destruction. Despite various posturing comments by Mr. Bush about a significant NATO role in Darfur ("NATO stewardship" was his phrase in February), statements from senior NATO officials in Brussels indicate that the role of the Alliance will in fact be highly limited. It is all too clear that senior Bush administration officials, at both the State Department and Pentagon, have failed to communicate effectively with NATO allies in Brussels, leaving a gaping disparity in public statements. The Bush administration has not invested the political and diplomatic capital necessary to sway the Alliance, which moves by notoriously slow consensus.

None of this excuses the European members of NATO in their feckless and shameful response to the Darfur crisis. Particularly in the wake of the war in Iraq, with American military and diplomatic power consumed or squandered, European leadership on Darfur is essential. Yet France, Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries, Spain, and the countries of Eastern Europe---which so long endured their own brutal tyranny---have all been essentially useless in crafting a meaningful Darfur policy. Even the Blair government in the UK has done little more than exhibit the occasional spasm of moral indignation.

The European Union seems to believe that its partial funding of the African Union mission in Darfur exhausts obligations in the face of genocide. Here we should recall that the Parliament of the European Union voted by a margin of 566 to 6 in September 2004 to declare that the realities of Darfur are "tantamount of genocide"---a disingenuous turn of phrase evidently meant to avoid the explicit judgment of "genocide." This evidently freed these many signatories to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide from their various contractual obligations, preeminently to "prevent" genocide (Article 1). Nonetheless, European acquiescence before genocide (or realities "tantamount to genocide") in Africa remains conspicuous.

DARFUR AND EASTERN CHAD: EXPANDING CATASTROPHE
more * perfidy.