Chadians stay in fear
2009-05-08 11:04
Ndjamena - "Since I heard that war is back, I've been really frightened," said Elise Mariam, a fish seller in Ndjamena, who fled the city last year like thousands of others when rebels got right into the capital.
"Memories of what happened in February 2008 come back into my head," said Mariam, who comes from Dembe, south of Ndjamena, and fled to take shelter with her family at Kousseri, on the border with Cameroon.
"I abandoned everything and lost it all. I don't want to live through that again," she added on the fourth day of a fresh offensive against Chad by rebels based in west Sudan. "The international community should act fast."
Banaye Hassan, a trader at Ndjamena's central market, said that he also "lost everything in February 2008," when rebels swept right across the south of the country and took the fight right to the presidential palace.
"My shop was looted and burned. This is war they make us endure. The rebels should leave us in peace."
Both a rebel alliance, which claims to have about 1 000 all-terrain vehicles and Ndjamena as its "final objective", and the government on Thursday reported heavy fighting near Am-Dam, a town in the east.
Fifteen months ago, after the rebels reached the capital, rescue and relief workers said that at least 1 000 civilians were injured, while tens of thousands more sought refuge in Cameroon and also in Nigeria, another country just across the border.
Cyclical state of affairs
Zakaria Issa, another trader, has painful memories of last year's clashes and said "government forces must do all they can to neutralise those people and never let them come here".
As for teacher Mafou Laurent, he has no plans to "stay in Ndjamena to relive the situation of last year. It was a surprise for me to learn that the rebels are advancing when the government has the human and material means to stand up to them".
Hassan Kuerge, a civil servant, blames Chad's politicians and the behaviour of many Chadians themselves for this cyclical state of affairs. "What's happening now is the logical outcome of a lack of opposition party politics, of justice and of dialogue in Chad."
"We sow injustice and we harvest war," Kuerge said. "The international community should put pressure on (President Idriss) Deby and his brothers (the political and armed opposition) to have them make peace."
Since Monday, several nations and international organisations have expressed their concern at the announcement of the rebel offensive, which came just a day after Chad and Sudan signed a peace deal in Doha, mediated by Qatar and Libya.
As a security measure, relief organisations have temporarily relocated the majority of their employees and cut back their activities in camps sheltering about 450 000 people in the east, including displaced Chadians and Sudanese and Central African Republic refugees.