Aid Worker Attacks in Chad a Sign of Worse to Come?
Published November 13, 2009 @ 04:37PM PT
I'd like to think that there's a special place in a particularly fiery afterlife for anyone who attacks humanitarian aid workers.
The UN announced today that six international humanitarian agencies are suspending operations after a French ICRC worker was kidnapped and a Chadian national staffer with Solidarite was murdered. The suspension will impact service delivery to 37,000 Darfuri refugees and internally displaced Chadians, and comes after an increase in attacks in recent months. Since the beginning of 2009, 190 attacks on aid operations have been reported.
The culprits remain unknown, but could be any of the number of rebel factions (Chadian or Darfuri) or opportunistic bandits that roam freely in the Chad-Sudan border region. Sudanese-backed Chadian rebels are known to attack humanitarian convoys and compounds in eastern Chad, steal their vehicles, and drive them back to basecamp in Sudan; evidence of this was also noted in the recent UN Panel of Experts report on Darfur.
Attacks often peak in advance of another rebel incursion -- now that the rainy season is over, are Chadian rebels gearing up to make another pass at N'djamena? Or is this just a case of cut-and-dry banditry?
US Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration has been working to mend relations between Chad and Sudan and end the proxy war between the two countries, which is critical to achieving peace in Darfur. If Chadian rebels attack again, be ready to watch this all fall apart -- Chad will assume Sudan is behind it (not necessarily unreasonably), and the last time it happened, Chad went on bombing raids inside Darfur.
Here's to hoping that this is all just pointless speculation on a rainy Friday night, and that too much time studying Chad and Sudan has turned me into a conspiracy theorist.
[Photo by the author, all rights reserved: Traveling in a humanitarian convoy in eastern Chad.]
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Michelle became involved in the anti-genocide cause at a young age, and has been involved in various activist endeavors, including the Teach Against Genocide pilot campaigns, ever since.
