VZCZCXRO9810
PP RUEHMA RUEHROV
DE RUEHNJ #1334/01 3191621
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 151621Z NOV 06
FM AMEMBASSY NDJAMENA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4577
INFO RUCNFUR/DARFUR COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 NDJAMENA 001334 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE, SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM PREF CD SU
SUBJECT: IDP CRISIS IN GOZ BEIDA 
 
REF: N'DJAMENA 01327 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
¶1. (SBU) Goz Beida has become significantly more 
unstable as a result of attacks on villages which have 
produced a new wave of internally displaced persons 
(IDPs).  Attempts to tally numbers of individuals and 
families are underway, but UNHCR staff from the town of 
Kou Kou-Angarana estimated that recent IDP arrivals 
could number up to 5,000.  A scorched-earth policy 
meanwhile is underway as Arab attackers, the majority 
of whom are suspected to be Chadian, enter and burn 
villages in an intensified conflict over land and 
grazing rights.  While on a mission to visit the 
remains of a village in Leboutigue I, OFDA official and 
Poloff were forced to evacuate after warning shots were 
fired as their delegation toured the site.  There is no 
time or geographic pattern to the attacks, and UNHCR 
Goz Beida reports that many attacks occur 
simultaneously, suggesting an increased level of 
sophistication among organizers and perpetrators of the 
violence.  In response, five Government of Chad (GOC) 
Ministers have been deployed in the Goz Beida vicinity. 
END SUMMARY. 
 
SKYROCKETING INSECURITY 
------------------------ 
¶2. (SBU) Since November 5-6, sustained attacks on 
villages in and around Goz Beida by marauding bands of 
Arabs have resulted in scores of villages attacked, 
looted and burned; in innumerable civilian casualties; 
and in a new wave of IDPs.  UNHCR staff from Kou Kou- 
Angarana estimated that IDPs, now sleeping on roadsides 
between Goz Beida and Kerfi and under trees throughout 
the region, could number up to 5,000.  The Goz Beida 
Hospital has no more beds available to treat the flow 
of gunshot wounds and burn patients it is receiving, 
and UNICEF is providing mats and blankets for those 
"non-critical" overflow patients who are forced to 
sleep outside on the hospital grounds.  Hospital staff 
told Poloff November 13 they were expecting two 
truckloads of wounded from violence in Koloi within the 
next 24 hours. 
 
¶3. (SBU) New IDPs (about 200 families) from the village 
of Domboli (15 km from Goz Beida) recounted for Poloff 
what seems to be the standard modus operandi of the 
recent attacks.  These IDPs had fled their village on 
November 10, after a group of 30 Arabs entered at 
approximately 09:00, opened fire on the local 
population and then confiscated their animals.  The 
Arabs stayed in the village for three days to ensure it 
was emptied of villagers. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Victims of the violence are from the Dadjo 
tribe, and the perpetrators are "Arab," according to 
IDPs.  This group includes local Chadian Arabs, members 
of tribes allied with Chadian Arabs (including the Mimi 
and the Ouddai) and Janjaweed elements.  The attackers 
are reported to be on horseback carrying Kalashnikovs, 
and so far the Goz Beida Hospital has confirmed only 
one Arab alliance injury, a Mimi (tribal group 
affiliated with Arabs) woman who was beaten by her 
Dadjo neighbors.  IDPs reported to both UNHCR and to 
Poloff that it was difficult to tell Chadians from 
Sudanese in the attacks, the majority of which took 
them by surprise.  There is widespread confirmation 
among those attacked that the perpetrators "are our 
neighbors," illustrating the Chadian-against-Chadian 
nature of the crisis. 
 
¶5. (SBU) Poloff and visiting OFDA representative 
experienced this latest violence firsthand on November 
13 when they, along with several UNHCR representatives, 
were touring the village of Leboutingue I, which had 
just been attacked and burned.  Less than ten minutes 
into the visit, at least three shots from an 
approximate distance of 500m were fired, presumably as 
a warning to the delegation, which was inspecting and 
photographing the devastation.  The group was forced 
back to their two vehicles and left the scene without 
further incident.  Both Embassy N'Djamena and UNHCR 
were alerted immediately.  NBC News reported the 
incident and noted that USAID staff has been shot at. 
 
¶6. (SBU) Speculation remains over the motivation for 
this latest campaign of ethnic violence.  UNHCR Goz 
Beida describes it as a conflict over land and grazing 
rights.  On the one hand, villagers accuse the Arabs of 
burning grazing land (which was observed ablaze by 
Poloff on November 13) to prevent their return to the 
region.  On the other hand, Arabs contend that the 
 
NDJAMENA 00001334  002 OF 002 
 
 
villagers themselves set fire to grazing land as they 
were fleeing in a desperate attempt to prevent the 
attackers' return to the region with their cattle, 
horses and camels. 
 
GOC RESPONDS 
------------- 
¶7. (SBU) The GOC dispatched five Ministers - Defense, 
Public Security, Cooperation, Agriculture and Interior 
- to Goz Beida and Kerfi in response to violence there 
following announcement of a state of emergency 
(reftel), but UNHCR Goz Beida claims that any concerted 
GOC plan of action remains unarticulated.  The 
statement by the GOC placed the blame for this 
insecurity squarely on Sudan.  As part of the GOC's 
declaration of a state of emergency, the GOC was 
imposing "pre-broadcast censorship" on all media 
reporting in Chad.  As if to prove its point, the Goz 
Beida Prefet expelled Radio France One reporter Sonja 
Rolley, an accredited journalist whose radio 
commentaries in French are broadcast throughout the 
country, from Goz Beida on the morning of November 13, 
hours before the state of emergency was declared.  NBC 
and New York Times journalists reporting from Goz Beida 
proceeded with their live coverage from the camps but 
feared confiscation of equipment upon exit from the 
country.