Rebels Dampen Prospects

(by Micah Albert, WashingtonTimes.com) KOUKOU, Chad – Koukou is a swampy frontier town on the southeastern edge of Chad, about 35 miles from the poorly defined border with Sudan´s West Darfur region.

There are no paved roads, and outside access this time of year – the end of the rainy season – is limited to planes using a well-worn dirt landing strip.

With too many donkeys and goats to count, people readily greet each flight delivering supplies and aid workers.

Chad is arguably the nation in Africa with the brightest prospects for the next quarter century turning the darkest in the shortest period of time. The reason: Conflict over Sudan’s Darfur region and rampant corruption have fueled an insurgency, while pushing away foreign investors interested in developing the nation’s oil reserves.

Koukou barely existed until there was an attack on several Chadian villages just miles from the Sudan border in April 2007, killing hundreds. Today, it is teeming with Chadians displaced in their own country.

“It was difficult to come here because they burned our village,” recalled Ismail Ahmat Ishach, a father of six. “We had to flee immediately, our families were scattered, and we had nothing to bring but what we wore that night.”

He was referring to the Janjaweed militias backed by the government of neighboring Sudan.

“It took us over three days to get here, and we had donkeys,” said Mr. Ishach, who added that he and his family were lucky to have made it here alive.

Tucked up against the relative safety of an impassible seasonal river, Mr. Ishach and 24,000 other displaced Chadians have relocated their lives and families to this makeshift village.

Chad remains the world´s fifth-poorest country, despite the start of oil production in 2003, an investment of $3.7 billion by a consortium of foreign oil companies headed by Exxon Mobil and the construction of an oil pipeline bankrolled in large part by the World Bank.

However, the bank froze its funding of the pipeline to ship oil from southern Chad to the Atlantic through Cameroon when the Chadian government reneged on its pledges to devote 80 percent of the revenue to development projects.

Instead, vast amounts of funds have been poured into the arms trade.

Each year, as the rainy season ends, rebels attempting to overthrow the government of President Idriss Deby are on the move from the east, where tens of thousands of refugees from Darfur and the Central African Republic languish in overcrowded refugee camps.

Along with the United States, Germany, Britain, Tanzania, Jordan and Syria, Chad ranks among the top 10 nations hosting refugees.

The ranking does not take into account the hundreds of thousands of displaced Chadians, labeled internally displaced persons (IDPs) instead of refugees.

Koukou is just one of 14 IDP sites in eastern Chad.

The problem of Janjaweed militia crossing the border to attack Chadians has become more systematic and deadly over the past year, and there is no sign that this pattern will stop.

A security vacuum exists because Chad’s army has redeployed to defend the government from Chad’s own insurgency.

The foreign minister of Chad on Monday called for a stepped-up U.N. peacekeeping presence, both in his country and in Darfur.

Moussa Faki Mahamat told the U.N. General Assembly in New York that the U.N. Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad and additional aid is needed to restore stability in eastern Chad.

While refugees are taken care of by the international community, IDPs are technically the responsibility of their own government.

Schools and basic health services are almost nonexistent in places like Koukou, which just recently received plastic sheeting for people’s huts, even though the rainy season will end in just weeks.

Arriving with her two children a few weeks ago, Khakeidja Hamat said she is “happy to be out of danger, even though we´ve left everything and don´t have much here.”

Mrs. Hamat and the IDPs in Koukou are from the Massalit tribe, one of the main tribes targeted by the Janjaweed. They also account for nearly half the Sudanese refugee population now in Chad.

What prevents Mrs. Hamat and her family from access to higher-quality services is the fact that she was born 10 miles inside Chad.

Like clockwork, the end of the rainy season brings about rumors of another coup attempt against the Chadian government and rebel activity mounting from this region. IDP sites also become targets of military recruitment.

“We are worried about our safety here in the coming months, especially for my children,” said Mr. Ishach “and won´t go home until the security situation improves.”

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