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France provides airlift to eastern Chad, deploys troops to secure border

[Chad] World Food Programme (WFP) vehicle stuck in a flooded wadi in eastern Chad during the 2004 rainy season.
WFP
World Food Programme (WFP) vehicle stuck in a flooded wadi in eastern Chad during the 2004 rainy season.
France has deployed 200 of its troops based in Chad to the country's eastern border to help prevent incursions by Janjawid militia groups from Sudan's troubled Darfur region. It has also made military transport planes and helicopters available to fly relief supplies to Sudanese refugee camps in eastern Chad, which are no longer accessible by road following heavy rains, French officials in Chad told IRIN on Monday. "Since Saturday, we have been transporting supplies for humanitarian organisations by air between N’djamena and Abeche," Colonel Philippe Charles, the Commander of France's 1,000-strong garrison in Chad told IRIN by telephone on Monday. "In addition, 200 soldiers have started deploying from Abeche to the border with Sudan”, Charles said. These troops, acting with aerial support, would work closely with Chadian border guards and "should have a dissuasive effect on the Janjawid », he added. A French diplomat in N'djamena told IRIN that over the weekend, French military transport planes flew more than 48 tonnes of supplies from the Chadian capital to Abeche, the main town in eastern Chad, operating two flights per day. The two towns are linked by a 700 km dirt road, but this has become all but impassible during the current rainy season, which will last until the end of September. Officials of the UN refugee agency UNHCR, said French military helicopters were flying urgently needed supplies onwards from Abeche to camps housing most of the 180,000 refugees from conflict in Darfur, which lie closer to the Sudanese border. "The latest plane carried 10 tonnes of communications material to Abeche and then it was flown by helicopter to the refugee camps for us," Lino Bordigne, the UNHCR’s Deputy Representative in Chad, told IRIN by telephone from N’djamena. "Without the chopper, I do not know how we would have reached the camps," he added. Nearly all these refugees from Darfur are black African farmers driven from their homes by nomadic Arab herdsmen grouped in the Janjawid militia. According to aid agencies, human rights organisations and western governments, the Janjawid are armed by the Sudanese government and operate in support of the government's own security forces. The authorities in Khartoum deny this, but last Friday the UN Security Council gave the Sudanese government 30 days to disarm the militia or face unspecified punitive measures.
Map of Chad
Chad, a former French colony, has repeatedly complained about Janjawid attacks across the border. The Chadian government welcomed France's support for its own border security forces in a statement at the weekend. Tens of thousands of refugees from Darfur are still huddled in groups along the remote and normally arid frontier, where they are vulnerable to cross-border raids. Relief workers are trying to move them to the official camps at least 50 km from the border run by UNHCR. Nine camps have been established so far, but since heavy rains have caused fast-flowing torrents to gush down normally dry river beds, many of these are now unreachable by road. Refugees from Darfur have been flooding into eastern Chad in large numbers since the end of last year and many relief workers have privately criticised France for waiting this long to mobilise its military forces to help the relief effort. French President Jacques Chirac finally ordered "the mobilisation of the French military capabilities in Chad for humanitarian end" on Friday as western powers toyed with the ideas of possible military intervention to protect about 1.2 million people displaced from their homes by the conflict in Darfur. Colonel Charles defended France's decision to withhold the participation of its military forces from the relief effort until now. "The mission of the armed forces is not to undertake humanitarian transport," he told IRIN. "But we have decided to do so because the situation in Darfur is serious and the French president wished us to provide logistic support for humanitarian operations."

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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