CIAO DATE: 03/2011
February 2011
For more than five years, public attention relative to Chad has been focused on the armed rebellion in the east and the crisis in the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan, while totally neglecting the country’s North West. However, there are serious risks that the rise of trans-Sahara drug trafficking and terrorism, emergence of radical Muslim movements in neighbouring countries, development of inter-communal violence, decline of local traditional justice systems and lack of state governance will destabilise that ignored region. The authorities in N’Djamena need to move to change the governance system there and defuse the multiple roots of potential conflict before a crisis explodes. Historically, the North West has played an ambivalent but pivotal role between the Arab-Islamic culture of North Africa and the sub-Saharan African cultures. Presently, its strategic position makes it increasingly the target of infiltration attempts by armed groups and criminal networks that take advantage of the no-man’s-land areas of the Sahara Desert to expand their activities. Islamic terrorist groups from Northern Nigeria (the Boko Haram sect) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) operating in the Sahel region are making their diffuse but real influence felt. Up to now, this dangerous neighbourhood has not produced instability, but greater vigilance is definitely needed.
Resource link: Le Nord-ouest du Tchad: la prochaine zone à haut risque ? [PDF] - 2.0M