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RR RUEHBC RUEHBZ RUEHDH RUEHDU RUEHKUK RUEHMR RUEHPA RUEHRN RUEHROV
RUEHTRO
DE RUEHNJ #0048/01 0261308
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 261308Z JAN 10
FM AMEMBASSY NDJAMENA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 7621
INFO RUEHZO/AFRICAN UNION COLLECTIVE
RUEHEE/ARAB LEAGUE COLLECTIVE
RUCNFUR/DARFUR COLLECTIVE
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RHMFISS/HQ USAFRICOM STUTTGART GE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 NDJAMENA 000048 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR AF/C, S/USSES, PRM/AFR 
NSC FOR GAVIN 
LONDON FOR POL - LORD 
PARIS FOR POL - BAIN AND KANEDA 
ADDIS ABABA ALSO FOR AU 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/25/2020 
TAGS: EAID PGOV PHUM SOCI PREL PREF CD SU
SUBJECT: HUMANITARIAN UPDATE: NGO REACTIONS TO MINURCAT 
MANDATE SITUATION AND SECURITY CONDITIONS IN EASTERN CHAD 
 
REF: A. N'DJAMENA 43 
     ¶B. N'DJAMENA 35 
 
Classified By: AMB LOUIS J. NIGRO, JR. FOR REASONS 1.4 (b) and (d). 
 
-------- 
SUMMARY 
-------- 
 
¶1. (C) Humanitarian NGOs are speculating about the concrete 
impact of the ongoing GOC-UN debate regarding MINURCAT's 
future after 15 March 2010 (See Ref A).  If the UN and Chad 
do not arrive at a modus operandi that permits MINURCAT to 
continue activities pursuant to its mandate under UNSC 1861 
until at least March 2011, the NGOs are seeking clarity on 
how the the winding down and eventual departure of the 
MINURCAT PKO from eastern Chad will affect the massive 
humanitarian response to the needs of some 350,000 refugees 
and IDPs.  When all is taken into consideration, most appear 
to feel that -- in the event of an early withdrawal or 
drawdown of MINURCAT PKO resources and activities -- the only 
practical impact would be the loss of MINURCAT's role in 
planning and implementing mass evacuation in the event of 
combat in the area of humanitarian operations. 
 
2 . (C) The NGOs indicate that MINURCAT's military assets are 
already inappropriate and unsuitable as tools to confront 
entrenched violent criminality, but note that the loss of 
"escort service" will bring uncertainty to the planning of 
movements in the deep field - not because  MINURCAT escorts 
were the appropriate solution to the insecurity they are 
confronting, but because they have configured their 
operations to that solution, and are  confused as to how they 
might re-organize themselves.  They do not see any functional 
element within the GoC's existing security and administrative 
and structures that can take on the government's 
responsibility to ensure the safety of the international 
community in Chadian territory.  The NGOs say that the only 
real sources of security are the local Chadian communities 
which are  themselves both victims and well-springs of the 
criminality which operates throughout the east -- and that 
there is little hope that dramatic shifts in the application 
in these communities of customary law away from a 
conflict-and-compensation cycle toward the national judicial 
code can be expected in the near future. Humanitarian 
organizations are therefore carefully re-assessing their 
operations and exposure in eastern Chad, in expectation of 
some kind of "security vacuum" -- and they, like Nature, 
abhor a vacuum.  END SUMMARY. 
 
---------------------- 
MINURCAT MANDATE 
SOURCE OF SPECULATION 
---------------------- 
 
¶3. (C) Partner NGOs have been exchanging theories regarding 
the news that the GoC is contemplating non-renewal of the 
MINURCAT mandate when the UNSC discusses it in the weeks to 
come.  Rumors of the GoC's 05 January demarche to the SRSG 
that non-renewal was an option under consideration had been 
slowly leaking into the humanitarian community, with no 
direct confirmation until the recent public announcement of a 
J15 January GoC note verbale to the UNSC on the subject.  NGO 
heads complain that MINURCAT leadership has not briefed the 
broad NGO humanitarian community, leading to considerable 
speculation as to what the future holds for the PKO in 
eastern Chad. 
 
4.(C) RefCoord has listened to views from a range of major 
partner international NGOs.  NGOs start from the point of 
view that the primary threat currently confronted in the 
region is that of violent criminality against attractive 
international targets for theft or kidnapping, deeply 
entrenched in the eastern Chadian communities and enjoying 
considerable if not total impunity.  They stress that 
security from such attacks must come from within the affected 
communities themselves, since that is the source of the 
criminality.  They note in particular that without active 
community rejection of the criminals, no police or military 
force, whatever the source, can confront such a threat short 
of the establishment of an equally violent and repressive 
police state.  They point out that many unrealistic demands 
 
NDJAMENA 00000048  002 OF 004 
 
 
for provision of security have been placed on MINURCAT, and 
MINURCAT has perhaps unrealistically encouraged these 
expectations. 
 
¶5. (C) When closely questioned, NGOs have made clear that 
they are reassessing their security and personnel postures in 
eastern Chad, while trying to sort out which instances of 
authority must realistically be assigned responsibility for 
different aspects of security.  They believe that armed 
MINURCAT and DIS escorts between deep field bases and refugee 
and IDP camps have always been an unsustainable solution to 
the problem of violent criminal attacks, and one that is more 
likely to engender even greater violence from the criminals. 
The humanitarians are wedded to the principle that the host 
government and authorities are in all cases responsible for 
the security of humanitarian actors in their territory. 
Those responsibilities include not only guarding the borders 
against rebel incursion, a task the GoC's forces do 
increasingly well, but the provision of essential policing 
and judicial investigation, as well as the prosecution of 
cases and eventual punishment of the guilty. 
 
------------------- 
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE 
FOR SECURITY? 
------------------- 
 
¶6. (C) NGOs are unanimous in their agreement that the 
instances of authority in Chad, as currently conceived and 
functioning as various instruments of the formal judicial 
system, are not now and will not for a generation or more be 
capable of running a functioning judiciary that provides 
predictable and consistent recourse to the law for all 
concerned.  This leaves the humanitarians to consider seeking 
protection under less formal judicial systems, such as 
customary and traditional law and conflict resolution 
mechanisms.  Traditional authorities -- Sultans, canton and 
village chiefs, ethnically and/or regionally based -- along 
with Governors, Prefects and Sub-Prefects appointed by the 
central government, are all ill-defined centers of power, 
often claiming informal conflict resolution responsibilities. 
 The humanitarian NGOs routinely describe interactions with 
these individuals in attempts to develop links to the 
leadership of the communities within which they work, and to 
seek resolution to conflicts with which they are confronted 
in those communities.  There were some indications in 
December 2009 and January 2010 that some of these leaders are 
seeking to influence the deployment of ANT and Gendarme 
forces within their communities to confront criminals - this 
in particular in the areas around Iriba and Farchana in the 
northern and central sectors of the country. 
 
------------------------ 
WHAT WAS MINURCAT'S JOB? 
------------------------ 
 
¶7. (C) Humanitarian NGOs are beginning to express the opinion 
that they may have mistakenly bought into the idea that 
MINURCAT and the DIS were somehow conceiFa~$^DQpbiQombat between Chadian armed 
opposition groups and the ANT. 
In particular, they see MINURCAT's role as having been to 
design and prepare for implementation of mass evacuation 
plans, in which the PKO would ensure the safety of assembly 
points for the IOs and NGOs in the midst of on-going combat 
operations, and to provide the necessary tactical ground 
transport and airlift to move the humanitarian staffs out of 
danger -- airlift which, unlike the WFP-run Humanitarian Air 
Service (UN HAS), would be expected to continue flying into 
the crisis. 
 
¶8. (C) NGOs in particular are extremely critical of MINURCAT 
and the UN Department for Safety and Security (UNDSS) for its 
non-performance of this crucial and limited task.  The NGO's 
Coordinating Committee (Comite de Coordination des ONGs - 
CCO), has sought since August 2009 to participate in the 
design of an evacuation plan, in the hopes of avoiding the 
 
NDJAMENA 00000048  003 OF 004 
 
 
possibility that staff might be left behind in a rapid 
clearing of the east of humanitarian workers.  In particular, 
NGOs wanted to carefully consider the cut-off point for the 
evacuation of staff, in order to safeguard to the maximum 
extent their locally-hired Chadian staff from abandonment. 
They express extreme frustration with the UN agencies as 
being unforthcoming with responses, to the extent that the 
CCO has sent its request for coordination to the UN's 
headquarters for both DPKO and UNDSS. 
 
--------------------------- 
WHERE DOES THE DIS FIT IN? 
--------------------------- 
 
¶9. (C) NGOs are cautiously positive in recent assessments of 
the special force created to provide policing in refugee and 
IDP camps, the Detachement Integree de Securite, or DIS.  The 
DIS has been on the ground for a year, and has been receiving 
higher marks for responsiveness since around September 2009. 
Vulnerable populations in the camps have viewed favorably the 
significant number of female officers within the DIS, noting 
their greater effectiveness in talking to women victims of 
violence.  NGOs have stated that on the occasion of several 
recent residential break-ins, the DIS were the only force to 
respond to calls for help.  An attack on a DIS-escorted 
convoy in mid-December, which began with the perpetrators 
opening fire without first trying to stop the convoy, 
resulted in a surprisingly robust response from the DIS 
escorts that allowed the convoy to successfully remove itself 
from the zone of attack.  Though such an incident highlights 
NGO conviction that armed escorts engender armed attacks, the 
fact that the DIS responded well was positively noted. 
 
¶10. (C) That said, NGOs stress that the DIS is becoming more 
competent at their core mandate -- the policing of vulnerable 
populations in camps -- and cannot be sustainable at current 
levels and equipment as an escort service.  Pulling them off 
the day-to-day camp community policing duties will de-police 
precisely the populations they were created to protect. 
 
------------------------ 
WHAT IF MINURCAT LEAVES? 
------------------------ 
 
¶11. (C) NGOs are beginning to conclude that they may have 
deployed into the deep field in eastern Chad, and developed 
overly ambitious activities, based on a misunderstanding of 
the tools for security at their disposal.  They are 
concluding that MINURCAT and the DIS were and are unsuitable 
and inappropriate to replace the authorities in carrying out 
responsibilities for securing the east against entrenched 
violent criminality.  They see no instance of legitimate 
force in the GoC inventory that will be capable of imposing 
security on the communities which are both the victims, and 
well-springs, of this criminality.  The communities 
themselves are not able to impose their will on the various 
elements within their membership, these being the source of 
some interethnic conflict that threatens to break out as long 
as serious resource constraints continue to challenge all in 
their attempts to survive in the harsh environment of eastern 
Chad. 
 
¶12. (C) This context leaves the NGOs in particular wondering 
what, if any, impact the departure of MINURCAT might have. 
Change brings uncertainty, and the NGOs express considerable 
discomfort with this uncertainty.  Some have stated that the 
most concrete direct loss would be the air assets, both 
fixed-and rotary-wing, that might rescue them from a 
situation of outright warfare between the ANT and armed 
opposition groups - but note that the environment seems to 
have calmed considerably in this regard in recent months. 
Many express the opinion that the non-renewal of the MINURCAT 
mandate would accentuate the continuing feeling of 
uncertainty in eastern Chad; the grounding of air assets and 
cantonment of MINURCAT forces that would precede the actual 
physical departure of the forces would leave a difficult to 
define vacuum in the international presence in the east. 
What that vacuum would realistically entail, the NGOs are 
challenged to explain, since they for the most part did not 
find the force that practically useful.  A number of 
organizations that have thrown their lot in with 
MINURCAT-escorted convoys to and from work are uncertain how 
 
NDJAMENA 00000048  004 OF 004 
 
 
they would continue with activities.  Many suggest that 
returning to the mechanisms some had utilized in the past, 
providing direct payment to gendarmes to provide convoy 
security, may have to be considered.  But for the most part, 
NGOs express a fear of the vacuum itself, without being able 
to visualize just what might seek to fill it. 
NIGRO