Darfur conflict spills into Chad

They came from the east without warning, spraying bullets into huts and burning and pillaging everything in sight.

But this attack – and hundreds like it – happened here in Chad, across Sudan's western border, last fall. And the victims weren't black tribes. They were Arabs.

"Blacks have heard about their brothers in Sudan being killed by janjaweed so they are angry and attacked us Arabs here," says a Chad village chief Asair Salman, who says he saw his grandson and nephew die in the attack last November.

The violence spawned in Darfur has spread deeper into Chad and the Central African Republic. That's why the UN Security Council in New York is expected to vote Tuesday to send a new UN-European force of up to 4,000 peacekeepers here for one year. Many in Chad are concerned that with the end of the rainy season, making roads passable again, fresh fighting could erupt.

When Chad's Arabs launched reprisal attacks against black militias last fall, with the help of janjaweed from Sudan, they killed thousands of people, according to UN officials, and caused more than 170,000 Chadians to flee to camps here in eastern Chad. Nearby are other camps, already brimming with more than 300,000 Sudanese refugees.

"Interethnic clashes were the main reason Chadians were displaced, and the day [they] go back to their villages, it will be the beginning of more interethnic conflict" says Musonda Shinkindi, head of the UN refugee mission here where most Chadian refugee camps are based. "Everyone sees the dry season as a sign [of the potential for more violence], because people can move around freely," he says. But he doesn't expect most refugees to risk going back to their villages until there is more security on the ground.

EU-UN troops, led by France, could be in Chad and the Central African Republic as soon as next month. A draft of the UN mandate submitted by France calls for UN troops to work alongside Chadian police and security forces. But many question whether that's enough manpower to quell any violence that breaks out.

"Four thousand troops is not sufficient, because we have a very long border," says Abdullaye Ahmadaye Bakhit, the representative to the traditional head of all the black tribes in Darsilla, the province hit hardest by the clashes. "The janjaweed launch cross-border raids with 6,000 to 7,000 [men] at a time."

Others question whether the international troops will be enough help.

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