“We respect you enormously,” Mr. [Bogdan] Klich [the Polish defense minister] told the Chadians. “We are here to help alleviate your problems.” He hinted at potential civic and reconstruction projects that EUFOR might undertake once it has fully deployed to Iriba [in Chad].

[Polish] Col. [Marc] Gryga has made similar promises in the past, but stresses that his own construction resources are limited. The entire yearlong EUFOR mission is budgeted at just $185 million.

In return for the promised projects, Mr. Klich said, his troops need water.

Mr. Abdaraman [the local sultan] shook his head. The water simply wasn’t there. The only way to boost the local supply is to drill new wells. EUFOR has tried that once, without much luck. The new well delivered only a trickle.

Abdoulay Dramon, a Chadian engineer working for aid group CARE International, said that eastern Chad’s underground reservoirs have been shrinking as eastern Chad’s population has swelled with hundreds of thousands of refugees. The EUFOR troops only increase the strain.

Read the rest at The Washington Times.

(Photo: me)

Click the thumb, please.

Click on the thumb.

For a journalist, the upside of being shot at is that you know you’re onto a worthwhile story. Of course, that was small comfort back in June as I fled gunfire in the town of Abeche in desolate eastern Chad. Elements of the Chadian army had mistaken each other – and me – for rebels and for two hours chased each other – and me – around Abeche, killing at least one person. Sure, it was fairly silly as far as battles go. But after I’d recovered from the shock, I was grateful for the rare perspective on Chad’s (in)security situation.

And I’m grateful to my readers who contributed more than $1,500 to help defray the cost of traveling to and working in Chad. You helped me reach the battlefield. In a month of reporting I filed more than dozen stories with a wide range of news outlets including The Washington Times, C-SPAN, World Politics Review, Wired News, Inter Press Service and more. Without your support, this would have been impossible.

I’m off to Nicaragua this week aboard the USS Kearsarge. Before I shift gears, I’d like to take a look back at Chad. So what did I learn?

Chad is a country on the brink, surrounded and infiltrated by enemies real and imagined. Rebels based in Sudan cross the border to challenge Chad’s corrupt president Idriss Deby. Gunmen from Central African Republic chase their foes across the border into U.N-run refugee camps. The fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of Chadians. They join around 300,000 refugees from Darfur and Central African Republic in making Chad host to one of the world’s biggest refugee populations.

But Chad’s no innocent victim. The country harbors rebels groups fighting to topple the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum. Rebels are said to operate out of the dozen large Darfuri refugee camps in eastern Chad near the border with Sudan. It’s hard to pity a refugee population that, under the cover of darkness, welcomes armed parties into their homes.

And it’s hard to pity refugees who are wealthier than the natives of their host country. That’s right: many of Chad’s refugees are more well off than the average Chadian, thanks to billions of dollars in foreign aid. The abundance of donated aid, plus the stress that refugees place on scarce water and wood resources, has resulted in growing conflict between Chadians and foreign refugees.

In the south of Chad, Central African refugees till fields next door to native Chadian farmers. The refugees’ land is donated by the government. The U.N. gave the refugees seeds and tools and access to tractors. The U.N. and aid groups also help refugee farmers sell surplus crops for profit. Native farmers, by contrast, usually grow just enough to feed their families. The disparity has grown so severe that the U.N. recently has begun providing some aid to native, non-refugee Chadians. It’s the only way to alleviate the tension.

See the problem here? Chadians are so poor that for the U.N. to help refugees, it must also help the native population. The implications for the aid industry are enormous. And the benefit to a corrupt, negligent host government such as Chad’s are just as huge. Every dollar that the U.N. spends providing basic services to everyday Chadians is a dollar that Deby’s regime doesn’t have to spend on its own people. At the same time, the E.U. has deployed a peacekeeping force tasked with protecting the civilian population of eastern Chad, another function that really should be the responsibility of Deby’s regime.

In Chad this summer, I witnessed what I believe is the beginning of a permanently dependent “international welfare” state. And with the region’s armed conflicts only getting worse, and natural resources growing scarcer, this dependency will only deepen.

Is there hope? In the short term, no. In the long term, yes, of course – but only if the region’s leaders can settle long-standing conflicts, return refugees to their homes and focus on the kinds of long-term capacity building that are necessary to eke a measure of prosperity out of an unforgiving land.

(Photo: me)

They usually come at night, to the sprawling refugee camps in eastern Chad along the border with Sudan. Recruiters for Chad-based rebel groups, which are locked in bloody combat with Khartoum and its militia proxies in Sudan’s Darfur region, sometimes simply show up at the camps and new recruits, many of them still boys, come to them voluntarily.

But when there’s a shortage of volunteers, the recruiters might resort to force, according to aid workers in eastern Chad. The aid workers, who spoke to World Politics Review on conditions of anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the subject, said the recruiters also have been known to use drums, like real-life pied pipers, to lure curious boys outside, where they’re kidnapped. Destitute families have even sold their male children to armed groups, according to the sources.

The rebel recruiting tactics have fueled a continuing crisis in Chad. All sides in the country’s conflicts, including rebels and government forces, count children as young as 10 years old among their ranks. Christiane Nikobamye, from aid group CARE International, told World Politics Review that there are at least 7,000 child soldiers in Chad.

Nikobamye runs CARE’s residential school for former child soldiers out of a tidy compound in Chad’s capital of N’Djamena. Today, the school has 72 boys between the ages of 10 and 19; at times enrollment has reached 100. CARE is coy about how it takes custody of the young soldiers and from which armies, but Nikobamye said her students represent “Chad’s various armed groups.”

Read the rest at World Politics Review.

(Photo: me)

When Web 2.0 startup Qik offered me a free Nokia N95 camera phone plus their new video-streaming software for my trip to Chad, I jumped. Here was a chance to try out the latest technology in one of the world’s most remote war-zones. The Qik-N95 combo promised to condense the basic capabilities of bulky and expensive professional-grade satellite communications gear into one compact, easy-to-use package. In theory, it was perfect for the solo freelance war journalist.

In practice, it’s far too fragile a system for remote field work. Qik needs some major fixes before it’s a useful tool for war correspondents.

Qik works like this: you activate the software on your N95 or other high-end camera phone, point and shoot a short video, and it streams automatically to the Qik website via wireless internet, multimedia message or your phone’s data network. The Qik website can then relay the video to website widgets. What this means, in theory, is that you can stream short, medium-quality videos, with sound, cheaply to your blog. The most recent video plays in a loop on the widget until you send another.

Imagine the possibilities. You stumble upon some fantastic interview subject out in a public market. He’s on his way to a meeting and there’s no time for a formal interview. It’s now or never. So you whip out your N95, activate Qik, point it at your man and fire off a few questions. Qik picks the best method for streaming the video – ah, there just happens to be a wireless network! – and seconds later your impromptu interview is live on your blog.

Or you’re on some hours-long road patrol with the military. You’ve long ago given up hope that anything’s going to happen, so you’ve tucked away your cameras to protect them from the sand and heat. Then the rebels fire a few shots at your vehicles and the troops fly into action, accelerating, dodging, shouting at each other, shooting back. It’s all over in seconds – but what seconds they were! You had just enough time to grab your N95, shoot some shaky video with Qik and send it, via GSM multimedia message, to your blog, where all the world can see just how sudden and chaotic war can be.

But Qik’s limitations mean these scenarios are still months or years away. The hardware aspect of my system – the N95 – worked flawlessly as both a camera and a phone during my month in war-weary Chad. But the Qik software placed demands on Chad’s networks that the networks just couldn’t meet. The results were highly disappointing. In a month of reporting from all over Chad, I managed just one minute-long Qik interview … with myself.

(more…)

The U.N. High Commission for Refugees says that in the five years since camps were established in Southern Chad for Central African refugees, U.N.-administered agriculture programs have reduced external food assistance to a minimum.

Since 2006, Boubacar Amadou, a 62-year-old Chad native, has overseen a portfolio of food self-sufficiency programs for more than 20,000 Central African refugees in Gore. The refugees here are among 60,000 who fled fighting in the Central African Republic beginning in 2003.

But the refugees compete with local residents for access to limited land for farming and grazing cattle.

IPS reporter David Axe spoke to Amadou at the UNHCR office in Gore about his work and his hopes for the area’s refugees.

IPS: What does “food self-sufficiency” mean in the context of a refugee camp?

Boubacar Amadou: Right now the World Food Program gives refugees in Gore some of their food – around 90 kilograms per person, per year, on average. (Overall, WFP meets around half of the Gore refugees’ food needs.) But it’s necessary, in the long term, that they produce what they need on their own. Thus we sponsor agricultural, animal husbandry and other income-generating activities, so they can feed themselves. We want to help lead them there.

What we do is prepare the people for a degree of integration into the local economy. It’s a durable solution to their food needs. Obviously, the best solution to a refugee’s needs is repatriation. But the next best thing is integration.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service.

(Photo: me)

The U.N.’s main refugee agency is expanding its work in southern Chad, adding programs for impoverished local villagers in order to head off conflict between locals and a growing population of Central African refugees.

The programs, administered by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and partner aid groups, include aid to farmers and herders. The idea, according to Serge Male, UNHCR’s representative to Chad, is to ensure that the local population never have less than the refugees they host. “We cannot provide more to refugees if the local population does not benefit to some extent,” Male told World Politics Review.

But the need to care for both refugees and host populations means more demands placed on cash-strapped agencies — and belies deep inadequacies in Chad’s government and economy that might curtail efforts to reduce the U.N.’s role in Chad.

Read the rest at World Politics Review.

(Photo: me)

“There’s a small Royal Netherlands Marine Corps detachment over there [in Chad] which does recce ops for the Irish battalion,” my friend Hans de Vriej, a reporter for Radio Netherlands Worldwide, writes in:

They brought their own “Viking,” a.k.a. the “Armoured All Terrain Vehicle Protected BsV10.” Pic attached. Made in Sweden.

They made an interesting claim before departing: they predict that when the rainy season is at full swing, their Vikings will be the ONLY vehicles able to move — they are fully amphibious and can “swim” (albeit at 5 km/hr as opposed to 80 km/h on a road).

Maybe you could organize an international “vehicles-thru-the-mud contest” over there;-)

(Photo: via Hans)

My official authorizations from the Chadian government permit me to travel and report on most subjects in most of the country. As well they should – getting these permits cost me hundreds of dollars in “unofficial fees.”

But some things are off-limits. According to my “Authorization to Photograph and Film,” I am prohibited from taking pictures of military bases, federal buildings and … wildlife.

Wildlife?

After a month of carjackings, kidnappings, gunfights, sweltering heat, driving sandstorms, paralyzing rain, mosquitoes, bad food and unsightly facial-hair growth (pictured), I’m finally leaving Chad.

In parting, I’d like to present this humble middle finger to the Chadian government and its cronies. Here are all the pictures I took of top-secret wildlife during my all-too-long stay in this miserable little country.

In reviewing the photos, it occurs to me perhaps why the government doesn’t want me taking pictures of animals. The lizards here are more numerous, and far more energetic, than the people. With a little organizing and some charismatic leadership, the reptiles would own this place. I think President Idriss Deby knows it … and doesn’t want the world to see just how fragile his human regime is.

I for one welcome Chad’s future lizard overlords. They can’t possibly do any worse than the people.

(Photos: me)

Clarisse Larlombaye was nearly ruined when a herd of cows got into her rice field one night. The tiny 900-square-meter plot, outside the U.N.-run Gondje refugee camp in lush southern Chad is the sole source of income for Larlombaye and the two other Central African refugees she shares it with.

In recent years, Larlombaye and her co-farmers each have gotten an average of 225 kilogrammes of rice per year from their small plot. Larlombaye said she and her family usually eat two-thirds; the other third she sells for around $.75 per kilo at local markets. But the marauding cows left her with just 70 kilos last year, barely enough to feed her and her family.

Larlombaye’s brush with catastrophe is all too common in southern Chad, where 60,000 Central African refugees compete with local residents, and with each other, for land. The growing crisis parallels escalating tensions in eastern Chad between 250,000 Darfuri refugees and local residents over scarce water and firewood. Ravenous cattle intruding on farmland is not a new problem in Chad.

But incidents are becoming more frequent and contentious, especially in and around the southern refugee camps.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service.

(Photo: me)

I’m back in the U.S. after a month in Central Africa. I’ve got another week’s worth of Chad posts lined up for you. In the meantime, I’m going to find a dark corner and slip into a deep depression for a while. See you on the other end.