Chad emerges as African power broker as France steps back
By John Irish and Daniel Flynn
PARIS/DAKAR | Wed May 8, 2013 8:06am BST
(Reuters) - Chad's President Idriss Deby, a survivor of countless
rebellions, has stepped into a void left by Africa's traditional
heavyweights and turned his desert nation into a powerbroker as
<
http://uk.reuters.com/places/france> France disengages from its former
colonies.
The success of Chad's 2,000 battle-hardened troops in a French-led mission
to hunt down al Qaeda fighters in the deserts of northern Mali has marked it
out as the only African nation to quickly deploy an effective fighting
force.
In March, Chadian peacekeepers then played a decisive role in allowing
rebels to seize power in Central African Republic, cementing 60-year-old
Deby, who seized power in a 1990 coup, as a regional kingmaker.
Some trouble now appears to have arrived closer to home: last week Deby
headed off what Chadian officials described as a coup plot. Two senior
generals were arrested and four people were killed, although the details
remain murky, with opponents calling it a government move to crush dissent.
Whatever the circumstances of last week's incident, expressions of alarm
from Paris showed Deby's importance to the former colonial power as France
seeks to row back from its role as "Africa's policeman".
"France wants stability in Chad," said a senior French diplomat. "Chad is an
important partner for France in Africa. It is participating in the fight
against terrorism in Mali and plays a stabilising role in the region."
Chad's military success has handed Deby status among his West African
counterparts, who thanked him at a February summit for his decisive
intervention in Mali. He seems set to win Chad's first seat on the U.N.
Security Council in 2014.
It is a remarkable turnaround for Deby, a taciturn French-trained ex-fighter
pilot who only survived a rebel attack on his presidential palace in 2008
thanks to support from Paris.
Long one of the poorest countries in the world, Chad has started earning
hundreds of millions of dollars a year since ExxonMobil began pumping oil in
2003.
That has allowed Deby to rearm and slowly position himself as a central
African strongman, filling a gap left by traditional regional powers.
To the north, the 2011 civil war in neighbouring
<
http://uk.reuters.com/places/libya> Libya removed an influential if
mercurial player, Muammar Gaddafi, while flooding the Sahara with weapons.
In a bid to fill Gaddafi's shoes, Deby revived the overthrown Libyan
leader's Community of Sahel Saharan African Countries in January.
To the West, Nigeria, West Africa's richest and most populous country, has
pulled back from the region as its sparsely-equipped military has been
stretched combating the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency at home, which has
killed thousands since it flared again in 2009.
Nigeria sent 1,200 troops to Mali, but unlike the Chadians they played no
part in frontline battles against the Islamists. The Nigerians form the core
of an African force playing a policing role well behind the French and
Chadian offensive.
Chad, by contrast, burnished its reputation in March by announcing the death
of the elusive and feared al Qaeda commander, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid. Its
claim to have killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, mastermind of January's mass
hostage-taking at the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria, has not been
confirmed.
"Who would have thought six months ago that we would be paying so much
attention to Chad?" said John Campbell, senior fellow for Africa Policy
Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. Ambassador to
Nigeria. "Chad has found space because of Nigeria's withdrawal."
CHAD THE KING MAKER
In Central African Republic, Chad's decisive role in the change of
government exposed South Africa's pretension of acting as a continental
superpower. Pretoria had sent a contingent of some 400 troops to prop up
President Francois Bozize.
Deby, who had helped Bozize seize power in a 2003 coup, had tired of
Bozize's refusal to share power with the opposition which was stirring up a
revolt along Chad's southern border.
The final straw came when Bozize disbanded his Chadian bodyguard and turned
to South Africa for military aid. Deby ordered Chad's peacekeepers to step
aside and Seleka rebel forces stormed the capital, as France made good on
its promise not to intervene militarily.
South Africa's involvement ended with 13 of its soldiers killed, showing
Pretoria lacked the regional knowledge and military resources to play a
decisive role in Deby's backyard.
"Deby wanted more recognition for what he had done for Bozize," said one
close aide to the ousted president. "But Bozize turned to others for help
and Deby did not like that."
Chad appears set to play a key role in the transition. Two summits in the
Chadian capital N'Djamena, attended by a stony-faced South African President
Jacob Zuma, confirmed rebel leader Michel Djotodia as CAR's transitional
president.
Djotodia, who spoke with Deby before the coup, is backed by rebel generals
with close ties to Chad: his head of military operations is a former member
of Deby's presidential guard.
"That the French did not help Bozize contributed to his downfall, but the
kingmaker was clearly Chad," said Alex Vines, head of the Africa programme
at Britain's Chatham House international affairs think tank.
NO FRENCH PROXY
In Paris, Deby is regarded as a useful ally as a cash-strapped France
reassesses its priorities. Paris is shifting attention towards Asia and
ending the post-colonial system of 'francafrique' under which it intervened
more than 40 times to prop up African leaders who backed its business
interests.
President Francois Hollande sent French troops to Mali saying al
Qaeda-linked rebels could use a northern enclave to threaten global
security. But he has vowed to promote democracy in Africa and end French
meddling in purely domestic politics.
Deby remains an unpredictable ally. With tax from 120,000 barrels a day of
oil production supplying state coffers and investment interest from
<
http://uk.reuters.com/places/china> China, he does not need France for
cash. Economic growth hit 7 percent last year, though Chad still ranks near
the bottom on indexes of economic development.
Vines said Chad cooperated with France in Mali because their goals were
aligned but Deby is no "proxy" for French interests: "In Central African
Republic, I can't imagine France would want the Seleka rebels in power ...
It's highly destabilising."
Since seizing power in a 1990 coup, Deby has won a series of elections
disputed by international observers and faces allegations of graft and
rights abuses. He has weathered at least seven rebellions, mostly from the
lawless east.
Officials in Paris insist that were Deby to be in trouble again, France
would not get involved this time. But they acknowledged that Deby's
usefulness is forcing Hollande's government to turn a blind eye to his
domestic dealings.
"When Deby came to Paris before Mali, we raised the difficult internal
questions, but now we have to find the right balance," said one French
diplomatic source.
THREAT FROM WITHIN
The circumstances of what Chadian officials described last week as a bid to
"destabilise the Republic" in N'Djamena remain unclear, with opponents
accusing Deby of preemptively crushing dissent.
With many of his best fighting troops 1,500 miles away, Deby is more exposed
that he has been for years. Timan Erdimi, Deby's nephew, vowed last month to
revive the UFR rebel movement in eastern Chad, which almost toppled Deby in
2008.
Opposition leaders have publicly questioned the wisdom of lavishing money on
the mission in Mali - estimated at some 100 million euros - given shortages
at home.
Despite its oil, landlocked Chad has been rocked by humanitarian crises over
the last decade including conflicts in the east and south, drought in the
arid Sahel, and flooding. Two journalists who have criticised the government
have been jailed in recent weeks.
Opposition leaders say many in the military are demoralised by the failure
to pay bonuses and the loss of some 36 soldiers - the heaviest of any
foreign army - battling Islamists in Mali.
"If we tried to destabilise him, we would be categorised as trouble makers,
Islamists even," said opposition leader Acheikh ibn Oumar, exiled in Paris.
"An attempt to destabilise him is more likely to come from within his own
circles in the capital."
(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburg and Ange Aboa in
Bangui; Editing by Peter Graff)
------------[ Sent via the dehai-wn mailing list by dehai.org]--------------
Received on Thu May 09 2013 - 17:27:24 EDT
