Chad: misunderstanding in the south-west of the country where violence continues

Chadian soldiers on manoeuvres. (Illustrative image) AFP - RENAUD MASBEYE BOYBEYE

Text by: François Mazet Follow

3 min

For more than a month, villages in Logone-Oriental province have been targeted by armed men whose origin and motives are debated. The canton of Andoum was targeted again on Friday, May 19.

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Three villages were burned by what one notable described as a veritable horde on horseback. Churches were looted and seven people were killed, including a village chief. There are also many missing people who fled at the time of the attack.

What the inhabitants of Andoum do not understand is that this attack occurred moments after the visit of the local authorities who came to give their condolences, following a first attack that left 16 dead and a dozen wounded, Wednesday, May 17, at dawn. The soldiers had pursued the attackers, killing six and capturing eight, but as soon as the official procession left, this Friday, May 19, Andoum was again targeted.

The previous week, it was the region of Goré, further southeast, which had seen several localities attacked. A total of thirty civilians had perished.

Faced with this situation, the government reported on groups of "bandits" carrying out "repetitive and planned incursions" from the territory neighboring the Central African Republic "with the aim of creating an insurrectional climate in the area". On Wednesday, May 17, the Minister of Defense, Daoud Yaya Brahim, said he was satisfied with the joint operation carried out for several days in the Central African Republic and said on our antenna that the local populations would be able to "breathe".

Yet it is concern that dominates. Several people contacted, since Saturday, in this region, wonder about the origin of these attackers who speak Hausa, Chadian Arabic or Fulfulde and travel by dozens by motorcycle, horse or dromedary. Our interlocutors say that we see them walking around, armed, into the city of Goré, without being worried.

Another example of tension: about sixty village chiefs from the canton of Beboni, near Doba, were summoned to Bebedja on Thursday, May 18, by a military delegation from N'Djamena. According to one participant, they were asked to draw up lists of persons in possession of weapons and to organize the disarmament of civilians. The canton chief told his interlocutors that the villagers had no weapons. He asks people not to move away from the villages.

Political reactions

This outbreak of violence since the end of April has prompted Chadian political actors to react. On his Facebook page, the opponent Succès Masra, originally from this region and who is still abroad, denounces "targeted massacres". "One part of the population is armed against another unarmed," he wrote.

In N'Djamena, indignation is shared: the opponent Théophile Bongoro affirmed, Friday, in front of the press that "the State is overwhelmed by these events", while the president of the National Human Rights Commission, Mahamat Nour Ibedou, calls for the creation of a mixed Chadian-Central African force.

For Mahamat Idriss Déby's former chief of staff, Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul, these "savageries" are neither "banditry" nor "ordinary inter-communal conflicts". On social networks, he calls for "to stand together with the authorities who are trying to pacify the area", while denouncing a "state that cannot be found" and wonders about the tour that the transitional president has just completed in eight provinces, without passing through the south of the country.

► Read also: North-West CAR: Chadian and Central African forces conduct an operation, according to N'Djamena

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