For France and the UN, better the devil they know than the rebels they don't Nairobi, Kenya: Feb. 7th. (Economist) - A FEROCIOUS rebel attack this week on Chad's capital, Ndjamena, seems to have been turned back by the country's president, Idriss Déby. The local Red Cross says hundreds of civilians have been killed. Rotting bodies are being gathered from the deserted streets. The city centre has been looted and thousands of Chadians have fled across the Chari river into neighbouring Cameroon. But it was a close-run thing. Mr Déby was holed up in the presidential palace, rejecting French offers to airlift him out, and was saved only by the determined resistance of his army's elite units. Defiant, the president has dismissed the idea of negotiations with the rebels, who have retreated to positions around the capital. “They don't exist any more,” says a government official. “With whom should we sign a ceasefire?”
Chad is one of Africa's poorest and least stable countries and Mr Déby one of the continent's worst presidents. He has taken advantage of the fighting to arrest the country's peaceful opposition politicians. Human-rights campaigners fear they may be next. Still, Mr Déby is almost certainly right in saying that the rebellion was organised more in neighbouring Sudan than in Chad. The Sudanese government armed the rebels and sent them on their way. There may also be truth in his claims that Sudanese Antonov bombers strafed the town of Adre in eastern Chad. Now he is hopeful that France, the former colonial power, will stand by him. This may seem odd. Though Mr Déby was groomed by France and studied at the École Militaire in Paris, he is exactly the sort of African ruler that France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, wants to distance himself from. Mr Sarkozy says he is opposed to the old French habit of propping up dubious African regimes. “Françafrique”, as the policy was called, was meant to support African development by guaranteeing stability. Instead, it often provided carte blanche for leaders to become dictators and bleed their people dry.
Mr Déby is one such. The World Bank thought it had an agreement with him to spend Chad's new-found oil wealth on education and health. Instead, Mr Déby used a weak parliament to divert money to the military and enrich his narrow tribal elite. He changed the constitution to allow himself a third term in office. Indeed, the last time he was in big trouble, in 2006, the then French president, Jacques Chirac, wasted no time in ordering fighter jets to swoop over a rebel column, deterring an earlier assault on the capital. So why is Mr Sarkozy backing Mr Déby? Simply because the alternative would be worse. Mr Déby's demise would probably mean a freer hand for Sudan in eastern Chad and the ravaged Sudanese region of Darfur. That, in turn, would worsen the already dire humanitarian situation on the border between the two countries.
Keeping Mr Déby in office, on the other hand, should make it easier for a 3,700-strong European (in essence, French) peacekeeping force to deploy in eastern Chad to prevent the frequent incursion of Sudanese-backed militias, known as the janjaweed, where they have been attacking the Darfuri refugees. And besides, Mr Déby had said he will pardon six French aid workers convicted of trying to fly 103 children out of the country. The Sudanese government may have feared that the EU force would strengthen Darfur's rebels, some of whom are backed by Mr Déby. If so, it may have miscalculated. Mr Sarkozy has hinted that France might use military force against the Chadian rebels, should they attack Ndjamena again. It would not be a Gaullist action of old, for France has already won the approval of the UN Security Council, which worries equally about the humanitarian calamities in Darfur and eastern Chad.
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