VZCZCXRO2860
RR RUEHDU RUEHGI RUEHJO RUEHMR RUEHPA RUEHROV
DE RUEHNJ #0425/01 0761223
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 171223Z MAR 06
FM AMEMBASSY NDJAMENA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3367
INFO RUEHZO/AFRICAN UNION COLLECTIVE
RUCNFUR/DARFUR COLLECTIVE
RUEHBP/AMEMBASSY BAMAKO 0523
RUEHGI/AMEMBASSY BANGUI 1121
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 1216
RUEHNM/AMEMBASSY NIAMEY 2493
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 1604
RUEHYD/AMEMBASSY YAOUNDE 0973
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0620
RUEHTRO/USLO TRIPOLI 0217
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA 0637

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 NDJAMENA 000425 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR AF, AF/C, AF/SPG, D, DRL, DS/IP/ITA, 
DS/IP/AF, H, INR, INR/GGI, PRM, USAID/OTI AND USAID/W FOR 
DAFURRMT; LONDON AND PARIS FOR AFRICAWATCHERS; GENEVA FOR 
CAMPBELL, ADDIS/NAIROBI/KAMPALA FOR REFCOORDS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREF ASEC CD SU
SUBJECT: EASTERN CHAD:  ICRC UPDATE 
 
NDJAMENA 00000425  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary: ICRC estimates there are approximately 
20,000 Chadians displaced along the border south of Adre by 
raids by Arabic-speaking nomads from both sides of the 
border.  It has no evidence of direct Sudan government 
involvement but assumes complicity.  The principal factor in 
ICRC's analysis is the absence of Chadian security forces. 
End Summary. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Interim ICRC chief Walter Stocker called on 
Ambassador Wall March 15 to introduce incoming permanent 
chief Thomas Merkelbach; misoffs obtained more detail at a 
lunch for ICRC on March 16.  Stocker said that conclusions 
drawn by Human Rights Watch and various media in recent 
reporting on violence in eastern Chad differed in significant 
respects from conclusions drawn by ICRC teams present and 
active every day on the scene. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Stocker said that there had been, without question, 
a significant increase in violence since the Chadian security 
forces departed the area south of Adre in the wake of the 
attack on Adre in December.  Some semi-permanent villages had 
been destroyed in the border zone, resulting in 12,000 
displaced Chadians in the area of Madoyna and Koloy (mainly 
Dadjo ethnicity) and 7-10,000 in the area (somewhat further 
up the Wadi Kadja) of Goungour and Borota (mainly Masalit 
ethnicity). 
 
¶4.  (SBU) The Madoyna/Koloy area, Stocker said, had long been 
a troubled zone, because Chadian territory there extended 
across the Wadi Kadja, whereas upstream and downstream the 
border lay upon the Wadi Kadja itself.  Some of the Dadjo 
people there had significant herds of cattle and were 
semi-nomadic.  Previously, attacks on the Chadian population 
in this trans-Kadja zone had taken place mainly in the rainy 
season, when the river became difficult to cross and left 
that population undefended, but now, with the departure of 
the Chadian security forces, these people had become exposed 
in all seasons.  In fact, Stocker said, there had been a 
major attack last September with 80 deaths, which had spurred 
the Chadian government to send in gendarmes to the area, but 
they withdrew in December with the rest of the Chadian forces 
in the area.  After this departure of security forces, the 
trans-Kadja population had begun to move out even before 
there were renewed raids, in anticipation of them.  Stocker 
said that he did not wish to overemphasize the quality of 
Chadian security forces, when they had been present.  They 
had often been guilty of intimidation and extortion of the 
local population, but they had nonetheless been a factor of 
dissuasion against raids. 
 
¶5.  (SBU) According to Stocker, the Goungour/Borota border 
zone included some 20 Masalit villages, and the pattern there 
followed the pattern further east in the trans-Kadja area: 
Some of the villages had been largely destroyed, some not. 
Many of the displaced persons, especially in Goungour/Borota, 
had only moved a few kilometers and were still able to get 
back to their farm plots during the day.  Some had gone on to 
refugee camps in the region (southwest to Goz Beida or 
northwest to camps between Abeche and Adre).  UNHCR, he said, 
was having difficulty disinguishing between Chadian Masalit 
and Sudanese Masalit, as it appeared that some Sudanese 
Masalit who had taken refuge on the Chadian side but not in 
camps (as they thereby could keep their cattle) were now 
coming to the camps due to increased instability on the 
border. 
 
¶6.  (SBU) UNHCR on March 14 had used the figure of 50,000 
displaced persons from the two affected Chadian border areas, 
Stocker said, but that number was provided by district chiefs 
citing the entire population.  ICRC held to its figure of 
approximately 20,000. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Stocker said that the violence of the recent raids 
had been proportional to villagers' armed resistance.  In 
those villages in which self-defense units had been 
established and fought back, as was true of a raid in the 
 
NDJAMENA 00000425  002 OF 002 
 
 
trans-Kadja area on March 6, there had been some significant 
casualties.  One worrisome development was that some of these 
self-defense units appeared to be coordinating with Sudanese 
rebel forces.  The Government of Sudan had claimed that an 
attack in Sudanese territory opposite Borota was an attack by 
Government of Chad forces, but more likely this had been an 
attack by Sudanese rebels supported by the Chadian 
self-defense groups.  Such coordination would tend, Stocker 
noted, to expose these villages to retaliation from Sudanese 
Arab groups. 
 
¶8.  (SBU) Stocker said that there was a significant Arab 
presence around Misteri, across the Wadi Kadja in Darfur, as 
well as a Sudanese armed forces garrison there.  However, 
Stocker said, the ICRC teams operating on the Chadian side 
had seen no evidence of direct involvement by Sudanese 
regular ground or air forces in attacks on Chadian villages. 
There was evidence of use of RPG's but there were no bomb 
craters. 
 
¶9.  (SBU)  Stocker said that the present increased 
instability in the border area south of Adre had to be seen 
also in the larger context of the "serious pauperization" of 
the whole border area of eastern Chad by the influx of 
refugees and the conflict in Darfur.  Refugees' demands on 
grazing areas, water, and firewood; the halt to cross-border 
commerce; and the shift of cattle migrating routes into Chad 
(involving increased straying of cattle onto cultivated land 
and increased cultivation of the narrow cattle corridors by 
agriculturalists) had all taken a heavy toll.  Without a 
political solution to the conflict in Darfur, conflict in 
Chad "would self-ignite on a permanent basis." 
 
¶10.  (SBU) According to Stocker, the Arabic-speaking nomads 
lauching these "mostly commercial raids" were to some extent 
from the Sudanese side but probably to some extent from the 
Chadian side, as there existed a significant nomadic 
Arabic-speaking population in Chad and the Oueddai Region 
specifically.  In the face of such attacks and because of the 
absence of security forces, and also because of the prospect 
of an "easier life" in refugee camps, some of the villagers 
had decided to take to the road and seek a place in refugee 
camps; if they did not get into camps in Chad, some would be 
likely to seek refuge in camps in Darfur.  However, when ICRC 
personnel questioned these displaced persons, none of them, 
so far, had requested aid but only the necessary security to 
be able to go back to their villages.  According to Stocker, 
WFP was beginning to preposition food stocks in the region to 
meet the eventuality of nonreturn of these people to their 
villages.  There was no emergency at present, but a food 
problem would develop if the people did not plant their 
fields before the rainy season. 
 
¶11.  (SBU) As for the suggestion that genocidal extermination 
of populations was taking place in these two zones along the 
border, as suggested in recent media coverage, Stocker said 
there were no casualty figures to suggest the appropriateness 
of such terminology.  The media had, for example, cited a 
hospital run by Medecins sans frontieres where casualties had 
"doubled" since the beginning of the year.  The casualties 
did double there, but the total was 100, a small figure, and 
50 percent of those were Sudanese rebels seeking treatment in 
Chad.  The order of geographical scale of the two narrow 
areas of violence on the Chadian side of the border, and the 
order of scale of the areas of violence in Darfur, were in no 
way comparable.  By the same token, security for 
international workers on the Chadian side remained far better 
than across the border in Darfur.  However, Stocker 
emphasized, it was essential to monitor the Chadian border 
region very carefully, and ICRC would continue to do so. 
 
 
Tripoli Minimize Considered. 
WALL