Lydia Polgreen in Refugee Crisis Grows as Darfur War Crosses a Border [ 28 February 2006 New York Times ] notes nearly the same recent conflicts plaguing Chad that I did in The Wolves in Peacekeeping Clothing. However, she focuses only on the current number of Sudanese seeking refuge in Chad and doesn’t tap prior history. Chad’s troubles, as she calls them, are not limited to the rising flow of refugees or begin “in December when rebel groups attacked Adré and two other strategic border towns.” They began when President Déby turned the tap on the Chad-Cameroon pipeline in 2003, a project enabled by World Bank interests, and their goal is to secure control of it.
Besides ignoring the broader context, she opts for the usual source, John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, to supply the standard, ill-defined remedy of “international intervention.”
International intervention is what started this mess, first in Sudan, and now Chad. And the focus, as usual, is on the government in Sudan alone as if stomping on it enough to allow humanitarian aid to reach civilians is the best the world can do and an admirable goal. Sudanese and Chadians don’t want unkept promises and fleeting handouts. They want an end to the conflict. That will not come from sending in “peacekeepers” to act as a clean-up crew for the very global interests that fuel the fires which will amount to little more than militarised charity stations.
It will come when the global interests that are propping up the Sudan and Chad regimes, and at least one company is playing on both teams, are finally held accountable for the crimes they encourage and enable.