Mali crisis: Chad pledges 2 000 troops
2013-01-23 10:20
N'Djamena - In pledging 2 000 desert-trained soldiers to
fight Islamic extremists in Mali, Chad's president Idriss Deby looks set to
carve out a role as a force for regional stability, analysts say.
Deby's commitment to send the largest African contingent of
soldiers to Mali comes just weeks after he ordered troops into the Central
African Republic, to act as a buffer force halting the progress of a rebel
alliance towards the capital Bangui.
Highly trained, well-equipped and experienced in desert
warfare, the Chadian troops will not officially become part of the
International Support Mission for Mali (MISMA), which will consist of more than
4 000 soldiers pledged by West African nations, a source in the Chadian general
staff said.
However, the troops under Chadian command will "serve
on the ground" in close cooperation with the MISMA, commanded by a Nigerian
general, and with French troops who have intervened in Mali to fight forces
linked to al-Qaeda and to prevent the establishment of a terrorist safe haven
in the occupied north, the source said.
Chad's troops "are seasoned soldiers in the desert, contrary
to the armies of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas)",
said Philippe Hugon, research director for Africa at France's Institute of
International and Strategic Relations.
"They support extreme heat well, they know that the
enemy is very mobile, because this is a war of pick-up trucks, in which the
jihadists move around all the time," Hugon added.
For Roland Marchal, a research director at France's National
Centre for Scientific Research, "the Chadians have also understood that
the more troops you deploy in international operations, the harder you are to
attack on issues of domestic politics. Even if criteria for good governance are
not really fulfilled, France and the United States will show greater restraint
in criticising the Deby regime".
Negative ideology
Though France has a military base in Chad's capital
N'Djamena - from where fighter aircraft take off for Mali - "it's not
France that pressed Deby to send men, it was rather the United States,"
Marchal added.
Washington "wants the problem in Mali to be settled,
and after training more than 1 000 men among Chad's elite troops in the past
few years, this is a way of making good on that investment", he said.
However, in Chadian political circles, the aim of going to
Mali is above all to prevent the spread of a jihadist threat, since several
countries in the region are prone to violence by armed Islamic extremists,
notably including the Boko Haram sect in Nigeria, where brutal attacks and the
response by the security forces have claimed about 3 000 lives since 2009.
"This [Islamist] danger threatens us as well. And
that's why we offer willing support to the sending of Chadian troops to Mali.
To go to Mali today is to defend oneself by eliminating the evil at a
distance," Chad's main opposition figure and lawmaker Saleh Kebzabo said.
"We should consider the situation in Mali as being our
own, because none of the countries in the Sahel can today claim to escape [the
threat] and act on their own to wipe it out. To go to Mali is the fight of the
Chadian people," he added.
Former prime minister Kassire Koumakwe took a similar
approach. "If tomorrow these criminals take [Mali's capital] Bamako, they
will spread their negative ideology throughout the Sahel. And the Sahel will be
ungovernable," he said.
Chad's role in Mali "is a way of anticipating the fight
against the jihadists on its own territory", Hugon concluded.
