VZCZCXRO3147
RR RUEHGI
DE RUEHNJ #0623/01 2071308
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 261308Z JUL 07
FM AMEMBASSY NDJAMENA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5573
INFO RUEHUJA/AMEMBASSY ABUJA 1427
RUEHGI/AMEMBASSY BANGUI 1408
RUEHKM/AMEMBASSY KAMPALA 0384
RUEHKH/AMEMBASSY KHARTOUM 0479
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 1721
RUEHNR/AMEMBASSY NAIROBI 0738
RUEHNM/AMEMBASSY NIAMEY 2985
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 2220
RUEHYD/AMEMBASSY YAOUNDE 1587
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA 0926
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0987

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NDJAMENA 000623 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SECSTATE FOR G/TIP 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM MCAP KAWC PREL CD
SUBJECT: UNDER-AGE RECRUITMENT IN CHAD 
 
¶1.  SUMMARY:  International media attention to under-age 
recruitment in Chad, stimulated by reports from Human Rights 
Watch and UN, has brought an indignant rebuke from the 
government spokesman, but, at the working level, it appears 
to have resulted in enhanced cooperation from the Ministry of 
Defense with UNICEF.  END SUMMARY. 
 
¶2.  The rise of instability and armed conflict in eastern 
Chad in the past four years, with a proliferation of Chadian 
and Darfurian rebel groups and militias, has brought a 
concomitant rise in the phenomenon of child soldiers along 
the porous border.  For some time, UNICEF has suspected that 
the Chadian army also recruited under-age soldiers, without 
being able to quantify the problem.  The December 2006 
reconciliation between the government and the Chadian rebel 
group FUC (United Front for Change) put the army in the 
position of inheriting a major child-soldier problem.  FUC, 
like other rebel groups in the eastern Chad/Darfur zone, 
actively recruited child soldiers; its forces have been 
ostensibly absorbed by the Chadian army; and its leader 
Mahamat Nour has become Chad's Minister of Defense. 
 
¶3.  In close succession in mid-July, Human Rights Watch and 
the UN issued reports on child soldiers in Chad, the latter 
in more measured tones than the former, with resultant 
international media attention.  On July 17, the government 
issued a communique reacting to press accusations based on 
the Human Rights Watch report.  The communique noted that 
most of the child soldiers in the Chadian army were former 
rebels, that demobilization and reinsertion were 
time-consuming and expensive, and that determining the age of 
soldiers was difficult.  It expressed surprise that 
international organizations (read UNICEF) and civil-society 
organizations engaged in demobilizing child soldiers in Chad 
had remained silent rather than praising Chad's efforts to 
fulfill its commitments under the Convention on the Rights of 
the Child.  (Chad has signed several commitments, including 
most recently, on May 9, an agreement with UNICEF on 
demobilization of child soldiers throughout the country.) 
Meanwhile, UNICEF/Chad has issued an emergency funding 
request for 2.7 million dollars to pay for demobilization and 
reintegration of thousands of child soldiers in the period 
August 2007 to December 2008. 
 
¶4.  On July 14-16, poloff traveled to Mongo, the principal 
city in the Guera region of central Chad, to meet with 
officials and view child soldiers.  After the reconciliatiion 
with FUC, the Chadian army had turned over the old caserne in 
Mongo to FUC, which now effectively controls the entire 
Guera.  Of the approximately 2000 FUC soldiers in Mongo (out 
of some 9000 in the country), the Ministry of Defense 
identified 193 as under the age of 18, the first significant 
group of child soldiers in Chad designated for 
demobilization.  When UNICEF arrived in the Guera to 
investigate, the number of children rose to 430.  At the time 
of poloff's trip, UNICEF had already transferred 159 from 
Mongo in June and early July to reintegration centers run by 
Jesuit Relief Services and Christian Children's Fund in 
Abeche and Ndjamena.  Poloff observed that the remaining 271, 
temporarily in the care of the Chadian Red Cross in a cramped 
facility, for the most part were unquestionably under 18, in 
some cases substantially so.  The FUC commander claimed that 
all 430 were orphans who had been "camp followers" and never 
been used as soldiers. 
 
¶5.  In a meeting with Charge in Ndjamena July 12, the 
Governor of Guera, Amadou Ahidjou (a former leader in the 
rebel group MDJT), said that these children had been used as 
soldiers and did not have the mentality of children.  They 
were interested in learning a trade but if treated "like 
children" (i.e., sent to school) had a tendency to run away. 
Many, he said, came from Darfur.  He criticized UNICEF for 
calling for demobilization while being unprepared to carry 
out reintegration.  (He noted as well that the FUC presence 
posed a continuing security challenge not only in Mongo but 
throughout eastern Chad.  He said that he had had to defuse a 
near outbreak of fighting between the army and FUC in March.) 
 
¶6.  On July 12 and 25 poloff met Jean-Francois Basse, UNICEF 
protection officer in charge of child-trafficking issues in 
 
NDJAMENA 00000623  002 OF 003 
 
 
Chad.  Basse said that the government of Chad had been 
cooperative in child-soldier discussions, except for a 
break-down in the dialogue in mid-July.  It had signed the 
May 9 agreement; a coordinating committee had been 
established with wide representation from the government, UN 
agencies, and non-governmental organizations; and the 
committee had conducted regular weekly meetings.  The May 9 
agreement stipulated that UNICEF was to have access to all 
military sites.  So far the Minister of Defense had only 
given UNICEF access to Mongo.  After the removal of the first 
159 child-soldiers from Mongo, the next tranche of 100 had 
been scheduled to be transferred on July 14, but the Minister 
of Defense had then insisted that the child-soldiers' former 
commanders accompany the youngsters to the reintegration 
centers.  UNICEF could not accept this condition, and the 
transfer of the remaining child soldiers in Mongo was 
temporarily at an impasse.  At the July 17 regular meeting of 
the coordinating committee, the issue remained unresolved, 
and the Ministry of Defense representative, General Bashir 
Haggar (not from the FUC, but a Zaghawan), insisted that 
there were no child soldiers in the Chadian army, except for 
FUC. 
 
¶7.  However, on July 18 Minister of Defense Mahamat Nour 
changed his mind about requiring FUC commanders to travel and 
remain with the child soldiers being demobilized in Mongo, 
and another 100 were transferred to a center run by CARE in 
Ndjamena.  A further 75 were transferred to Ndjamena 
(Christian Children's Fund) on July 23, and Basse expected 
that the final 25 would be out of Mongo by the end of July. 
 
¶8.  At the weekly coordinating committee meeting on July 24, 
General Bashir reversed himiself on child soldiers in the 
army.  He said that the Ministry of Defense would now conduct 
a survey of child soldiers in three areas, Goz Beida, Abeche, 
and Ndjamena, to include army elements guarding the 
presidential compound in Ndjamena, and he undertook to 
provide this survey as soon as possible to UNICEF.  He 
expressed regret at the tonality of the government communique 
of July 17.  He said that the communique had not been 
coordinated within the government (including with the 
Ministry of Defense).  He also expressed regret that the 
military (FUC) had shown up earlier in the week at the Red 
Cross holding center in Mongo, in contravention of the 
ministry's undertaking with UNICEF. 
 
¶9.  Basse said that General Bashir's admission of the 
existence of child soldiers in the Chadian army was a signal 
development, changing the previous position that child 
soldiers in the army were only a FUC problem.  A survey of 
Goz Beida (where UNICEF experts had, in the autumn of 2006, 
identified 50 cases of recruitment of child soldiers by the 
army), Abeche, and Ndjamena did not represent the entire 
country but these three areas were a good place to start and 
adequate for the time being.  An effective dialogue appeared 
to have been reestablished with the military command.  It was 
to be expected that it would take some time for the army's 
central command adequately to sensitize local commanders in 
the field. 
 
¶10.  Basse said that UNICEF would be working hard to build 
capacity to receive demobilized child soldiers.  It was 
necessary to proceed quickly but step by step.  The three 
nongovernmental organizations now receiving children did not 
have the capacity to handle the anticipated thousands.  Basse 
had communicated with UN headquarters to recommend that Save 
the Children and International Rescue Committee, both large 
organizations with substantial experience in eastern Chad and 
in demobilizing child soldiers globally, be invited to 
participate.  As for pledges of financial support, France, 
which chairs the UN working group on child soldiers in Chad 
(but does not have a track record for ponying up on such 
issues), had made a pledge so far, and he expected Norway to 
come forward. 
 
¶11.  Basse said he agreed with the Governor of Mongo's 
characterization of these child soldiers.  They were 
physically children but could not be treated as children, so 
they presented a "very tough" challenge for reintegration. 
Basse acknowledged the governor's frustration with the 
 
NDJAMENA 00000623  003 OF 003 
 
 
reintegration process.  As challenging as monitoring 
recruitment was, he said, the much greater challenge was 
reintegration.  Basse noted that most areas of UNICEF's 
concern, children's health for example, did not tend to 
entail potential confrontation with the government, but child 
soldiers were a highly sensitive issue.  UNICEF had weathered 
this first potential crisis, apparently with a strengthened 
hand, as government of Chad appeared eager to avoid adverse 
international media attention. 
 
¶12.  Comment:  Chad is an impoverished, largely illiterate 
country in whose vast rural expanse boys and girls are deemed 
to have grown up by the age of thirteen.  It is also a 
country with a deeply-ingrained martial tradition.  In 
addition to the widespread practice of children working as 
herders, agricultural laborers, and household help, there is 
therefore an equally deeply-ingrained tradition (especially 
in the north and east) of adolescent males being trained as 
fighters, although on nothing like the scale of, for example, 
Sierra Leone or Liberia.  Given this tradition, it is 
encouraging that the Ministry of Defense appears so quickly 
to have distanced itself from the government spokesman's 
initial outrage. 
TAMLYN