Dead civilians and Chad!

GOOD MORNING FLINT !
02/04/08
By Terry Bankert
http://attorneybankert.com/
Posted full article first to Flint Talk THEN summarized, for discussion,
http://flinttalk.com/viewtopic.php?p=24061#24061
also posted to: Full article at Goggle blog Good Morning Flint,
http://goodmorningflint.blogspot.com/
with citations. also posted to MLIVE Flint JOURNAL Flint Community blogs, Flint Citizen, Craigs list, Face Book, My Space and . Please circulate and post freely. Do you have suggestions for other sites to post to. Recent BANKERT VLOGG:
#1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnHdn-Ilu0E

Chad President under siege as fighting rages [IW]

Here I am morphing together several current news posts to gain some understanding about this dirty little war.[trb]

The most recent rebellions in Chad began in 2005 in the east, erupting at the same time as Darfur conflict in Sudan. More than 200,000 people have died in five years of fighting between ethnic African tribes and Sudanese government forces and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes. [WP]


The rebels arrived Friday on the capital's outskirts in about 250 pickup trucks mounted with machine guns after a three-day push across the desert from Chad's eastern border with Sudan. They entered the city early Saturday, quickly spreading through the streets.[IHT]

Imagine you are in a small impoverished coutry run by a despot and trigger happy stoned kids with automatic weapons in trucks come screaming by shooting everything in sight and routing an army. This has been the plot line of a hundred good and bad movies and it continues today.[trb]

I bet a lot of big money people are watching this closely.[trb]

The rebel assault may also impact on Chad's position as a major oil exporter since the completion of a $3.7bn pipeline linking its oilfields to terminals on the Atlantic coast, run by US and Malaysian multinationals.[GU]

We seldom think of parts of the world that our feet are not on. Horrible things are happening in or around Chad region that borders the war-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan.How many will die before we notice.[trb]

Rebel forces cut Chad's capital in two yesterday and laid siege to the palace where President Idriss Déby was overseeing a last effort to save his authoritarian 18-year rule.[GU]

Think of machine guns in crowed neighborhoods but now vacant street.[trb]

Hundreds of civilians were injured in a third day of fighting for control of the capital of Chad yesterday as France tried frantically to broker a settlement in its former African colony.[IW]

Militiamen loyal to President Idriss Déby, besieged in his presidential palace in N'Djamena on Saturday, were said to have retaken part of the capital in confused street fighting yesterday. Médecins sans FrontiPres said many hundreds of civilians had been wounded in the crossfire.[IW]

You could almost feel sorry for Deby until information about how bad this French puppet is.[trb]

Deby came to power through a rebel force that seized N'Djamena in 1990.[IHT]

An aide to French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Sudan wanted to crush Deby's regime before the arrival of a European Union peacekeeping force, which is to operate along the volatile border with Darfur.[IHT]

The United Nations must be trying to prop up the oil intrests and save lives.I wonder if we have advisors there.[trb]

Sudan has been accused by the Chad government of arming a column of rebels who drove unopposed 400 miles across the Sahel desert to the capital in 300 "technicals", or armed pick-up trucks, on Thursday. The French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, said yesterday that the attack was perhaps intended to torpedo EU plans to deploy a force to protect Darfuri refugees on the Chad-Sudan border.[IW]

Bad for the people.[trb]

But the government was evidently caught unprepared by the speed of the rebels' move on the city after several thousand fighters in about 250 vehicles swept across the country in three days. Chad's army chief of staff, Daoud Soumain, was killed defending the capital.[GU]

Chad has been convulsed by civil wars and invasions since independence from France in 1960. The recent discovery of oil has only increased the intensity of the power struggles in the largely desert country, and another Chadian rebel group launched a failed assault on N'Djamena in 2006. [WP


The United Nations Security Council met for emergency consultations on the situation Sunday and planned to meet again Monday to resume work on a presidential statement on Chad. A statement from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said he was "profoundly alarmed" by the fighting in Ndjamena.[IHT]

The assault has forced the European Union to delay the deployment of a 3,700-strong peacekeeping force, dominated by France, to protect hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees from Darfur now living in eastern Chad from cross-border raids, and may possibly prevent it taking place at all.[GU]

Rebel leaders, including President Déby's nephew Timane Erdimi, insist that their only motive is to topple a "corrupt and authoritarian" regime.[IW]

In N'Djamena, Koulamallah claimed Deby was trapped at his presidential palace, surrounded by tanks and armored vehicles, and that they controlled the rest of the city after two days of fierce fighting.[IHT]

Idriss Deby came to power in 1990 after toppling Chadian President Hissene Habre - with the help of the French secret service. [BBC]

A shrewd tactician, Mr Deby had been President Habre's chief-of-staff, leading a series of victories over rebel forces in the 1980s and earning a reputation for courage and military prowess[BBC]

French warplanes stationed in Chad helped to defeat an attempt by a coalition of three rebel groups to depose President Déby two years ago. France, which has 1,450 troops in Chad as well as aircraft, has refused to intervene.[IW]

President Sarkozy spoke to President Déby twice on Saturday (his wedding day). He is reported to have offered to fly the Chadian leader out of the country, but he refused. He also discussed the fighting in Chad with Colonel Gaddafi of Libya, one of the official peacemakers appointed by the African Union.[IW]

M. Kouchner pleaded yesterday for a "truce, negotiations and some kind of arrangement" to end the conflict. Diplomatic sources said that a truce might be possible but that President Déby's forces, backed by helicopters and tanks, seemed to be recovering ground. [IW]

Diplomats and analysts in the region worried that the escalating violence could lead to a civil war in Chad and a war between Chad and Sudan. Either possibility would be devastating to a region that was already suffering one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises, with more than 2.5 million Sudanese and Chadians displaced by the conflict in Darfur and its reverberations in Chad. [TNYT]

The government said an assault by Sudanese forces and Chadian rebels on Adre in eastern Chad, which it called a "declaration of war", had been repulsed. But the rebels insisted last night that their forces had captured the town. Reports from N'Djamena said the rebels in pick-up trucks armed with machineguns and cannons had attempted to besiege the palace in the west of the capital on Saturday. They had been forced back yesterday by militia loyal to the President, supported by tanks.[IW]

The Chadian military struggled to regain control of the capital, Ndjamena, using tanks and helicopter gunships, officials said. Rebels fought back with automatic weapons, truck-mounted machine guns and artillery, witnesses said. French military officials said there was open fighting across the city, and news agency photos showed bodies in the streets.[TNYT]

Foreign residents said fighting resumed before dawn, after a ceasefire overnight. "The city is cut into two – the rebels occupy the west, and the government forces the east," said the Reuters reporter, Moumine Ngarmbassa, in N'Djamena. "People are frightened that this fighting will go on and on."[IW]

French military planes evacuated more than 500 French and other foreign nationals to Gabon on Saturday. Another 400 were awaiting evacuation.[IW]

Deployment of the 3,700 soldiers of Eufor, the European Union peacekeeping force for the Sudan-Chad, border began with a handful of troops last week. The French Defence Minister, Hervé Morin, said yesterday that the arrival of the remaining troops would be postponed until Wednesday.[IW]

President Déby has accused Sudan of arming and inspiring the rebel attack to prevent the deployment of Eufor. Sudan denies any involvement. Timane Erdimi, one of several senior government figures to defect to the rebels, said: "Sudan welcomed us on its soil and looked after our sick. But we took our arms from the Chadian army."[IW]

He packed his government and armed forces with members of his Zagawa clan, which comprised only 1.5% of the country's 10 million-plus population. [BBC]

Critics say his single biggest failure was putting his clan before his country. [BBC]

He has lost the support of most Chadians in part because he made himself and his allies rich from the country's recently acquired oil wealth. Chad is listed by Transparency International as among the most corrupt countries in the world. [GU]

Three years ago Déby changed the constitution to remain in office for a third term, prompting mass desertions from the army.[GU]

Regionally he has been increasingly viewed with mistrust, and he fell out of favour with Chad's former colonial master France over drilling rights in the 1990s. [BBC]

On Sunday evening, the interior minister, Mahamat Bashir, said the capital was "entirely under control."[TNYT]

Chadian Gen. Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour alleged that Sudanese troops were involved and called it a "declaration of war" from Sudan. [WP]

"Sudan does not want this force because it would open a window on the genocide in Darfur," Chad's Foreign Minister Amad Allam-Mi said on Radio France Internationale. [WP]

"The savage mercenaries are fleeing, and our forces of defense and security are at their heels," he said on Radio France International. "They tried to attack, but they were pushed back with the last energy, and we put them off-track once again."[TNYT]

This guy will be dead within the week.[trb]

Chadian rebels said Monday they had voluntarily withdrawn from Chad's capital overnight, but it was unclear if they succumbed to the helicopter gunships and tanks deployed by government forces. [WP]


—end---
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Posted here by Terry Bankert 2/3/08 http://attorneybankert.com/


–where did this stuff come from---

[IW]
The Independent World
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/chad-president-under-siege-as-fighting-rages-777693.html

[trb]
Comments of Terry Bankert
http://attorneybankert.com/

[IHT]
International Herlad Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/04/africa/AF-GEN-Chad-Fighting.php

-
[GU]
Guardian Unlimited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2251816,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

[BBC]
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7224008.stm

[TNYT]
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/world/africa/04chad.html?hp

[WP]
Washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/04/AR2008020400251.html?hpid=moreheadlines

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