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Government Responses to Militia Attacks

The government of Chad has often responded to escalating communal violence and recurrent cross-border militia attacks in Dar Sila by accusing the Sudanese government of orchestrating the attacks.¹⁷⁵ The state, however, has a responsibility to take reasonable measures to provide security and protection to it citizens. Only in some instances has this been discharged, with Chadian officials ordering combat troops to protect civilians in conflict areas.

Given Chad’s poverty, immense size¹⁷⁶ and the constant threat presented by Chadian rebel groups, it is no small task for the Chadian government to guarantee the safety of its citizens in the rural southeast. However, ANT forces were able to maintain some order along the border before they were redeployed outside the area to Adré and Abécehé in late 2005. In August 2005 the incidence of banditry and cattle theft diminished to a significant extent along the Adré-Adé-Tissi axis after the ANT deployed “anti-terror” brigades to search for and seize weapons.¹⁷⁷ In September 2005, ANT forces pursued an Arab militia after a bloody cross-border raid on Modoyna, east of Adé, and engaged the militia in a running gun battle, killing and capturing some of its members.¹⁷⁸

With the late 2005 border redeployments, however, ANT forces have had much less capacity to respond to civilian protection needs. After the October 4 Arab militia raid on Djimeze, it took five days for the ANT to dispatch a force to the area from the garrison at Daguessa, only 15 kilometers away. In the interim, militias attacked nearly a dozen villages.¹⁷⁹ When violence exploded in Kerfi and Bandikao in early November 2006, the Chadian government responded by immediately dispatching a high-level ministerial delegation to Goz Beida, but the elite anti-terrorist ANT force that accompanied the delegation¹⁸⁰ was not so quick to take action to protect civilians. Dozens of villages were under militia attack and local hospitals were overflowing with wounded civilians, but the ANT did not venture far into the countryside for nearly a week. On November 13, under intense pressure from local authorities, six car-loads of heavily-armed ANT soldiers reached Bandikao, 40 kilometers south of Kerfi, where 41 people who had been wounded in a militia attack on November 4 were still awaiting medical care due to insecurity on the roads. Other, more effective, deployments by ANT took place following the attacks on Tiero in October and on Habile in December.

However, such action by Chadian security forces to provide protection is far from the norm.¹⁸¹ On November 13, 2006 the government declared a state of emergency in Dar Sila and elsewhere, but this was not accompanied by any measures that would specifically safeguard the well-being of civilians.

“The government of Chad does not fight the Janjaweed; they fight to stay in power, but not for the people,” said a Dajo leader in the area. “The ANT is numerous, but they don’t want to hear about the Janjaweed. They say it’s a problem between agriculturalists and pastoralists.”¹⁸²

Community leaders in eastern Chad report having solicited security assistance from Chadian military units and gendarmes, but rarely, if ever, receiving any.

“The ANT is afraid to go more than a few kilometers outside their bases,” said a community leader in Koukou-Angarana. “Adé is full of soldiers, but for what? We ask for soldiers to be sent to our area, but we get nothing. The Janjaweed have us surrounded, but what can we do? The state is not coming.”¹⁸³

The inadequacy of government engagement, however, is locally perceived to be deeper than just failure to provide protection. Chadian Arabs concerned about Tora Boro attacks against their communities believe that state intervention is biased.

“The Tora Boro attack the fariks, but the government of Chad says, ‘No, they didn’t attack a farik, they were only defending themselves against the Janjaweed,’” said one Salamat Arab community leader in Kerfi.¹⁸⁴

The role of Darfur rebel movements

Faced with security challenges it has been either unwilling or unable to meet, Chadian officials have effectively subcontracted some aspects of civilian protection in Dar Sila to Sudanese rebel movements, which have helped arm and organize self-defense groups in the area. Testimony from Sudanese rebel leaders and other sources indicates that Chadian officials have requested some degree of security assistance from at least some of the Sudanese rebel groups active in this area,¹⁸⁵ but it is apparent that Sudanese rebels operate in the area with a high degree of autonomy, and likely that not all Sudanese rebel activities are carried out under Chadian government direction. JEM political leaders claim that the effort to organize self-defense forces in Dar Sila was born out of a sense of loyalty to the Dajo, some of whom fight with the Darfur rebels in Darfur, and a desire to protect Chadian civilians from attack by Arab militias.¹⁸⁶ According to an SLA militant who has also been in contact with the self-defense forces in Dar Sila, JEM’s interest in the Dajo is not quite so altruistic.

“The JEM has lots of weapons, but it doesn’t have so many soldiers in the field, so they just need to get some soldiers from the Dajo,” he said. ¹⁸⁷

Regardless of the motivation, the increasing role played by both JEM and the SLA in the region appears to be exacerbating, rather than easing tensions and attacks. It has led to the militarization of civilian communities, and allegations have also been made that self defense groups have been responsible for attacks on civilians. In creating and arming such self-defense groups the responsibility of the JEM and SLA is engaged should the self defense groups commit violations of human rights or humanitarian law such as attacks on civilians.

According to one self-defense force chief, the first Sudanese rebel to make contact with Dajo communities was a G-19 commander, Bechir Djabir,¹⁸⁸ who convened meetings in villages in the Dogdoré area in April and May 2006.

“Bechir would call together the people of the village, and tell them that he needed men, and that they would help defend against the Janjaweed,” he said. “He came to Djimeze, to Tiero, and talked to the people.”

Djabir also helped impose taxes. Each member of the community was obliged to contribute toward the purchase of small-arms, ammunition and other supplies for the local self-defense forces, which would come to be characterized locally as Tora Boro. In Tiero, the tax amounted to a one-time fee of 1,000 CFA (about $2) per family. In Dogdoré it was higher: 500 CFA per woman and 1,000 CFA per man. In case of financial hardship, a family could pay the tax in an equivalent amount of grain. Any member of the community that had a regular income, such as, for example, from working for an international humanitarian aid agency, would very likely be obliged to forfeit a portion of his or her salary for the war effort.¹⁸⁹ One humanitarian aid worker familiar with the situation expressed concern that this fact might be regarded as evidence of collaboration, or of affiliation with a Tora Boro militia, and might put a Chadian worker for a humanitarian organization at risk of violent attack.

“They’re getting paid, but that money could be dangerous,” he said.¹⁹⁰

By the time Bechir Djabir arrived in Tiero, the village self-defense force there was already regarded as one of the strongest in the area, if only for the fact that it was led by Hassan Yunis Isaak, a Dajo militant locally famous both for his skill on the battlefield and his ability to escape injury, often attributed to powerful gri-gri.¹⁹¹ Born in Djimeze, Yunis was the head of the self-defense force that defended Djawara, a village along the Dogdoré-Koukou axis that was brutally attacked by Arab militias in April 2006.¹⁹² In Tiero, Yunis commands a Tora Boro unit comprised of approximately ten men, all armed with automatic weapons that he says he purchased with tax money he collected locally. Yunis has a satellite phone he says he was given by Nourene Minawi, a Darfur rebel leader who claims to be in charge of JEM operations in Dar Sila department.¹⁹³

JEM rebels were operating in Dar Sila department by the beginning of the rainy season in June 2006, opening training camps in Koloy, Adé, Tiero, Kerfi, Djorlo and Am Kharouba (15 kilometers east of Koukou-Angarana, near the UN-supervised Goz Amir refugee camp).¹⁹⁴ Significantly, many of these localities host large populations of displaced persons, which are sought-after recruits for Tora Boro groups and Sudanese rebels. Sources closely linked with Sudanese rebel groups in Goz Beida reported that a Dajo Tora Boro group maintains a presence in Gouroukoum to recruit displaced persons. Dogdoré, home to nearly 10,000 displaced persons, is a major area of Sudanese rebel activity, with significant armed forces appearing there periodically to recruit displaced persons and collect taxes.¹⁹⁵ Sudanese rebels reportedly stoked recruitment in Dogdoré by promising to supply local leaders with weapons in return for recruits.¹⁹⁶

Human Rights Watch has not been able to establish the degree to which the government of Chad is providing direct support to self-defense forces in Dar Sila. The government of Chad is known to be directly supporting a militia locally characterized as Tora Boro that is under the command of Hisseine Bechir Hisseine, a member of the Garde Nationale et Nomade du Tchad (Nomad and National Guard of Chad, GNNT). According to one of Hisseine’s associates, the Chadian military provided Hisseine with material support including small arms, ammunition and ten Toyota pickup trucks, four of them mounted with heavy weapons, including a 106mm recoilless rifle, a DShK heavy machine gun, a 107mm Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL), all of which were inspected by Human Rights Watch in Dogdoré.¹⁹⁷ Hisseine’s mission was to engage Arab militias responsible for attacks along the Ade-Koloy-Modoyna axis. Sources close to Hisseine say that he has shared ammunition with self-defense forces, and Hassan Yunis confirms this, saying that Bechir gave some ammunition to him from supplies received from the Chadian government, though a paltry amount, wholly inadequate to his needs.

Yunis is alleged to have been responsible for unprovoked attacks against Arab villages in the area.¹⁹⁸ Though these attacks could not be confirmed by Human Rights Watch researchers, UNHCR reported mounting tension in the Dogdoré area in early September, with Tora Boro and Dajo militias threatening people of Arab descent outside of Dogdoré, prompting some civilians to displace to Koukou-Angarana on August 14.¹⁹⁹ While Human Rights Watch is not aware of any source of external sponsorship for the self-defense force from Djorlo that was responsible for the attack on the Arab village of Amchamgari, JEM forces have acknowledged running a training camp there.²⁰⁰