From Texas to Chad: why one rebel fights

"Darfur is like a forest full of cowboys. It's just the justice of the gun out here," Outman says. But it is not just any forest. "Power comes from the East" is a common saying in Chad. It is also a fact. In modern Chad's history every president has either been installed by or forced out of office by rebellions based in Darfur, on Chad's eastern edge. Deby himself launched his 1990 rebellion from Darfur.

The kindest thing Outman can muster up about Chad's president is a Star Wars analogy: "When Deby was a kid he wanted to do the right thing, to help people. But when he got power he went to the Dark Side."

When asked how they plan to avoid the trap of the Dark Side - the corruption of power that so many other idealistic African revolutionaries have fallen prey to - the responses of the rebel leadership were familiar: We're different, we're fighting for justice and democracy.

The FUCD's top leader, 35-year-old Mohammad Nour, envisions the coup will be followed by an Afghan-style loya jirga forum, including traditional leaders from across Chad, to determine the nature of a transitional government, which in turn will develop a timetable for holding democratic elections.

The difference between Mr. Nour and Outman, besides the 10-year age gap and the fact that Outman is educated and has not spent his life in the military, is that Outman has seen what happens in a place like America, where lofty ideals and the democratic experiment are allowed to flourish.

"It's difficult," Outman says while taking a midday break in the shade of a mango tree (at the time of the interview these rebels' immediate concern was not getting hit by hard, green, mango projectiles chucked by monkeys living above).

"But if you think what we can do if we get to the capital ...," he says, listing the ways life in N'djamena would improve, including big highways and Wal-Mart-style shopping centers. "Even if it means eating once a day or whatever - it's the price we have to pay," he says.

Accompanying Outman through the rebel camp was like walking the corridors of a high school with the star quarterback, except in this case, some of the admirers prone to saluting him were in their fifties. Outman joked around with young soldiers assigned the most menial tasks and talks politics and said his prayers with the upper echelons of the rebel leadership.

It's not surprising. Mohammad Nour, the rebel leader, is Outman's mother's first cousin. Nour has taken him under his wing, while including a few of his immediate family members in the leadership's hierarchy as well.

But Outman is not a born rebel, politician, or activist. If anything he is a born businessman with a free-market thinker's interest in getting government out of his life. "Most Americans don't know and don't care who is in power in Washington - Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld," he says.

"Freedom in America is the freedom to say I don't [care] about George Bush. Cause everybody has the freedom to mind his own business, right? Am I wrong? I want the same for my country."

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