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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 NDJAMENA 000989 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT. FOR AF, AFC, DRL, PRM, S/CRS 
LONDON AND PARIS FOR AFRICA WATCHER 
NAIROBI FOR OFDA 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/25/2011 
TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM KCRS CD
SUBJECT: CHAD'S POLITICAL DIALOGUE DEADLOCK 
 
 
Classified By: POL/ECON OFFICER MICHAEL P. ZORICK, REASONS 1.4 (B) AND 
(D). 
 
--------- 
SUMMARY: 
--------- 
 
¶1. (C) Post's monitoring of Chad's political pulse since the 
May 3 Presidential poll indicates, with each passing week, 
less and less life in any of the ideas so far proposed to 
bring a political solution to Chad's institutional crises. 
The two major blocks in the face-off, roughly centered on 
President Idriss Deby Itno and on the Coordination of the 
Political Parties for the Defense of the Constitution (CPDC), 
have backed themselves into their respective corners, and 
there seems no out for them to meet each other half way. 
Deby will do whatever it takes to ensure his own regime 
survival, while the opposition insists that his 
marginalization must be the end result of dialogue.  The 
opposition will not trust any initiative that comes from 
Deby, and will not entertain dialogue without international 
community control of the process and armed rebel 
participation.  The two sides appear to be irreconcilable. 
If there is any chance of breaking the deadlock, President 
Deby will have to demonstrate more convincingly than he has 
so far that this time he is serious about reconciling with 
his opponents and undertaking real reform.  END SUMMARY. 
 
¶2. (SBU) Post has engaged over the past several weeks in 
extensive political consultations with a wide variety of 
players from among Chad's political elite.  We have had a 
series of private conversations with members of Chad's legal 
political opposition; individual "Wise Men" from President 
Idriss Deby Itno's committee of the same name; with regional 
governors, business leaders, and civil society activists. 
 
¶3. (SBU) In each case, we have asked our interlocutors the 
same questions: Where is the "escape hatch" from Chad's 
current political, military, economic and social crisis? 
What is required of each of the key actors to allow them to 
walk through that door?  Are they capable of the political 
and personal compromises necessary to pursue constructive 
dialogue?  Do they believe the country is in crisis -- and do 
they want peace?  We have discerned some patterns to the 
responses we have received, but there is one common element 
to virtually every conversation to date.  No one to whom we 
have talked believes that it is now possible to have a 
credible political dialogue that can address Chad's many 
critical problems. 
 
--------------------- 
BLAME THE OPPOSITION 
--------------------- 
 
¶4. (SBU) Lamana Abdoulaye, a Committee of Wise Men member who 
is the head of a Deby-allied political party, "Union 
Nationale", as well as the President of the petroleum revenue 
oversight body, perhaps best represented the school of 
thought that may be summed up as "the Opposition Refuses to 
Talk". 
 
¶5. (C) Lamana and other Deby allies dismiss the leaders of 
the legal opposition parties grouped under the umbrella of 
the Coordination of the Political Parties for the Defense of 
the Constitution (CPDC) as having no impact whatsoever in the 
country, unless they agree to dialogue on the President's 
terms.  Per Lamana, Chad's political parties, rather than 
drawing support and funds from a popular base, are instead 
charities which must have resources to hand out in return for 
voter support.  As they are outside government, the 
opposition parties in the CPDC have no money or ability to 
influence public opinion, and the President can safely ignore 
them.  And, since each of them was at one time a Deby ally 
 
NDJAMENA 00000989  002 OF 004 
 
 
and minister, their credibility is suspect throughout the 
county's political class.  This is all the more true when the 
CPDC members take as their starting point for dialogue the 
international community imposing on Deby acceptance of 
significant curtailment of presidential and executive power. 
According to Lamana, Chadians see this as an unsophisticated 
effort by politicians on the "outs" to use the international 
community to remove Deby from office.  This, Lamana said, the 
President would never accept -- and because he has control of 
the state's levers (those few that still function), he has no 
need to acquiesce to these terms. 
 
¶6. (C) Lamana said that the opposition politicians should 
face facts: The President will remain President, and will 
exercise the powers of the executive.  The best the 
opposition can do is to conduct a cooperative dialogue with 
the government, which President Deby seeks to launch through 
his Committee of Wise Men.  The President can then conduct 
the affairs of state, and return to the discussion as a 
"referee" if needed to keep things moving along.  Lamana 
thought Deby would allow such a dialogue to address CPDC 
members' major concerns from 2003 -- a new census, achieving 
a balanced electoral board, and cleaning up the electoral 
code.  Lamana thought this would already be a huge step 
forward, given that Deby had previously refused to even 
consider changes to the electoral code, and the opposition 
should be satisfied with this -- all other subjects they have 
proposed, including government, security, or financial 
reform, were prerogatives of the executive, and could not be 
the subjects of a political dialogue. 
 
¶7. (C) This school of thought finishes its argument by 
acknowledging that the opposition politicians cannot accept 
to participate in a dialogue on these terms.  As Lamana 
points out, they have already made very public their starting 
point -- that Deby accept a process of dialogue that is 
controlled by outsiders (AU, EC, UNDP, donors) and is 
predicated on curtailment of his powers.  Anything less is 
absolute defeat for them, and so they will continue to refuse 
to talk to the President.  And, in their refusal to talk, 
they leave Deby free rein.  He will continue to "govern," and 
they become daily more irrelevant. 
 
¶8.  (C) Lamana and others close to Deby -- especially 
Committee of Wise Men member and Presidential Counselor 
Abderahman Moussa -- save special mention for the 
opposition's insistence that representatives of the 
"political military groups" (the armed Chadian rebels) be 
included from the beginning of a political dialogue.  They 
suggest that the political opposition seems to somehow draw 
legitimacy-by-proxy from the armed groups, despite the 
absence of formal ties.  Deby allies point to the 
opposition's idea that including the armed groups in dialogue 
goes hand in hand with the requirement that the international 
community control the dialogue process.  Neither idea is in 
the least acceptable to President -- he cannot openly 
negotiate with men who want to overthrow his government, and 
he cannot allow the international community to impose this on 
him. 
 
¶9. (C) However, no less than Deby's Minister for Foreign 
Affairs told us that Deby's envoys are in fact discretely 
negotiating with selected members of the armed opposition, a 
clear recognition that they represent a much greater threat 
to him than the political opposition.  Past history shows 
Deby to be adept at buying off his most dangerous opponents 
with cash or position as he did with former National 
Resistance Alliance rebel-turned-current Telecommunications 
and Post Minister Brigadier General Mahamat Garfa.  He has 
been equally adept, when these reconciliation efforts have 
turned sour, at killing off his armed opponents, as he is 
accused of in the case in 1993 with Abbas Kotty of the 
National Rectification Council (CNR), or in 2000 with Moise 
 
NDJAMENA 00000989  003 OF 004 
 
 
Kette Nodji and the Committee for a National Beginning for 
Peace and Democracy (CSNPD). 
 
¶10. (C) This, then, is the rub.  The President's advisors and 
"wise men" say Deby is fully prepared to conduct a highly 
"presidential" type of political dialogue.  They point to the 
political opposition's declarations and refusals to cooperate 
in such a conversation, and say it proves these men and their 
parties are simply not relevant.  They say the President will 
nonetheless move forward with his process, and talk to those 
who will talk to him: the 38 parties formally allied to the 
President's MPS Party, and those of the remaining 30-plus 
parties that are neither with the CPDC nor with the MPS 
alliance. 
 
-------------------------------- 
THE PRESIDENT CANNOT BE TRUSTED 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶11. (SBU) Key CPDC members Lol Mahamat Choua (RDP), Ibni 
Oumar Mahamat Saleh (PLD), Wadal Abdelkader Kamougue (UDR), 
Salibou Garba (AND), Saleh Kebzabo (UNDR), and Jean Alingue 
(URD), have maintained strong solidarity since the May 3 
presidential election that they all boycotted.  Privately and 
publicly, they have stayed on-message on the essentials: (a) 
that no credible political dialogue is possible without the 
full involvement of the international community to hem in 
President Deby; (b) that armed rebel groups must be 
integrated into the dialogue, a requirement that creates a 
near-necessity for the conversation to be held outside Chad; 
(c) that discussions must begin with an explicit, public 
Presidential admission that the country is in crisis that 
requires wide-ranging political, social and economic reforms 
to address; and (d) that the conference will exercise 
considerable powers, currently under the President's 
executive control, in the process of addressing the crisis. 
 
¶12. (C) Privately, at least some members are willing to 
envisage that this process might entail keeping Deby in the 
Presidency for the entirety of the next five years, as he 
believes he is entitled by the results of the May 3 election. 
 But they are clear that such a presidency would be gradually 
shorn of many of its executive powers, as the process of 
electoral reform led to parliamentary elections, and that new 
parliament -- brought to office without Deby's interference, 
and so presumably now representative of Chad's political 
class -- took action on political and economic reforms. 
 
¶13. (C) The oppositionists are adamant that, as currently 
proposed, the President's ideas for political dialogue are 
designed to ensure two things: that the international 
community is distracted by regular shows of empty political 
exchanges among the 60-plus parties not member of the CPDC, 
and thus sidetracked from asking the President to open Chad's 
political system; and that the President stays entirely in 
control of the country.  CPDC members are loath to join in 
any such process, knowing that where the international 
community may be fooled, the Chadian people won't, and their 
political viability will be demolished by participating in a 
Deby-led charade.  Those who have told us about invitations 
they have received from Deby's personal emissaries to engage 
in talks have all therefore so far rejected these overtures. 
 
¶14. (C) Thus, they're stuck.  In the opposition's view, 
President Deby will only engage in a masquerade, including 
plenty of grist for the papers and radio, but no opening for 
the country to address the crisis building in its society, in 
its economy, and at its borders.  They cannot accept being 
drawn into such a process, and by cooperating, legitimize the 
President.  They thus refuse to engage, and continue as best 
they can to raise the warning alarm: As long as there is no 
credible dialogue, and no attempt to directly involve the 
armed rebel groups, these latter will organize, plot, and 
 
NDJAMENA 00000989  004 OF 004 
 
 
inevitably attack if they can settle their internal questions 
of political leadership.  This is not a result the CPDC 
members seek.  They have few illusions that the rebels, 
should they take power by force, will then hand it to the 
political opposition. 
 
------------------------------ 
COMMENT: IS THERE ANY WAY OUT? 
------------------------------ 
 
¶15. (C) Discussions with representatives drawn from across 
Chad's political elite show virtually no room at this time 
for a credible dialogue between President Deby and his 
political opposition.  We expect Deby will seek to keep the 
international community distracted with regular announcements 
of committees, meetings, conferences and papers on dialogue. 
He will likely succeed in buying off some of his opposition. 
Others will self-marginalize by their refusal to talk on his 
terms.  Still others he will accuse of associating with armed 
rebel movements, a charge of which some will be guilty.  Deby 
will refuse a legitimizing voice in any discussion to armed 
"political-military" groups, leaving them to fulminate in the 
south and east -- and to plot.  Chad's political opposition 
will most likely continue to stand aside, doing nothing to 
accommodate Deby, and proving themselves to be essentially as 
irrelevant to the solution of the country's problems as the 
President believes them to be. 
 
¶16. (C) We, along with the European Union and other 
international partners, have called repeatedly for 
initiatives that could break this deadlock.  But no amount of 
coaxing or strong-arming on our part will get very far if the 
major actors themselves are not committed.  The key rests 
largely in President Deby's hands.  He needs to demonstrate 
that this time he is sincere not only about talking with his 
opponents, but also about introducing the reforms necessary 
to open up the political system.  To have any hope of being 
taken seriously, he will have to launch several initiatives 
at the outset, e.g., formation of a government of national 
unity with powers to pursue a credible reform program, 
electoral reforms before next year's legislative elections, a 
commitment to handing power over to a new leader after his 
next term is complete.  If he fails in this attempt to reach 
out to his enemies, the odds are stacked dangerously in favor 
of more fighting over political succession, not the beginning 
of a political dialogue for peace.  END COMMENT 
 
¶17. (U) Tripoli Minimize Considered. 
WALL