Word: djamena
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...only surprise about this month's battle for Chad's capital city N'Djamena is that it was so long in coming. Every Chadian political dispute in the last 40 years has been settled by force of arms, and the latest conflict is running true to form. A coalition of Chadian rebels, backed by Sudan, made a lightning dash westward across the country from Darfur and assaulted the capital city. Hundreds of soldiers and civilians died in two days of bloody street fighting before Chad's President, Idriss Déby, with help from the French, rallied and pushed back...
...standoff in N'Djamena, however, represents something of a dilemma for the international community, especially so in France, whose new government has expressed a desire to move away from a long and notorious policy of propping up friendly despots. Déby's regime has been widely accused of corruption and a violent authoritarianism, and human rights campaigners have reported that the regime has used the rebel attack as a pretext to round up leaders of the political opposition. But Déby is also an important regional ally in the U.S. "war on terror," and his cooperation is essential...
...initial hours and days of the rebel push into N'Djamena, Paris remained in close phone contact with Déby - at one point offering him asylum in France. But French public statements about the conflict were confined to assurances that French troops in Chad were involved only in protecting foreign civilians and evacuating expatriates, and that bilateral security accords between the two countries did not require France to intervene to save an embattled regime...
...Rebel forces, however, accused the French airlift of expatriates of providing cover for Chadian army attack helicopters operating out of the same base. By firing rockets at rebel formations, those helicopters allowed Déby loyalists to drive insurgent troops to the outskirts of N'Djamena on Monday. Regrouping outside the capital, rebel leaders began blaming the hundreds of dead and wounded civilians discovered in their wake by aid groups on alleged bombing raids by French warplanes on insurgent positions. France flatly denied those charges, and insisted that French troops had confined themselves to protecting foreign nationals...
...military intervention after Russia objected. Still, Sarkozy used that vote as a basis for his warning to rebels on Tuesday. Though France would clearly need U.N. approval to intervene, Sarkozy suggests that Monday's vote made such clearance only logical should the rebels launch a new assault on N'Djamena. "The French Army isn't there to confront anyone with arms, but now a unanimous legal decision has been made by the Security Council," Sarkozy said, indicating his belief that the U.N. would favor its enforcement if defied...