the snap of a feather quill pen

The last few years have been exceptionally tough ones for the media in Chad. While never a heavyweight in terms of press freedom, Chad was once considered a relative success story compared to its neighbours.

War has undone most of the hard fought gains made by journalists in Chad. In last several years, an increasingly insecure and paranoid government has turned on the media, arresting and detaining editors of various radios and newspapers.

Early this year, the government booted Sonia Rolley, the RFI correspondent, from the country. She was essentially the only foreign journalist that was based in Chad and the only knowledgeable international source of information during the February 2-3 attacks on N’Djamena. BBC had left in January on its own accord.

The lack of foreign correspondents matters for at least three reasons. First, and most obvious, the world won’t hear about it. Second, they enjoy a greater degree of mobility and freedom in the country since the government fears an international outcry if they face any harm. Third, they can serve as an avenue for national journalists who have a greater understanding of the context but face more serious risks in publishing their stories.

After the February attacks, most Chadian journalists fled to Cameroon fearing for their lives. Some returned after the state of emergency was lifted in March but others have not. It took months before the papers resumed circulation - except for Le Progres, the state-run rag - and some of the more biting satirical papers, like Le Moustique, have yet to appear.

Sadly, the quality of some of the journalism in the country is dismal. Many of the journalists are poorly educated and all of them are viciously underpaid. Bribing journalists for coverage is common practice even among the UN agencies and major NGOs who harp about anti-corruption. The questions put toward politicians are often half-baked and the good ones, which politicians dance around, are almost never followed up. In fact, I’ve only seen one journalist openly challenge a politician to actually answer the question. It was impressive and encouraging but fleeting as well.

And what incentive is there to ask hard-hitting questions if the next day you’re likely to get a stern text message from an unlisted number. Or a call from a government official. The Minister of the Interior and Public Security, a particularly abrasive and combative man, has often dropped veiled threats about ’snapping their feather quill pens in half’.

Journalism really isn’t a profession in Chad, it’s a way to solicit bribes in exchange for coverage in the short term while they look to pole-vault into a government or NGO job with a higher pay grade. “Each morning the editors go over the day’s list of press conferences and events and decides which journalists will go where. Cheap agencies, like UNHCR, never get the best journalists because they never pay the journalists as much as others ($20-30),” explains Innocent, and ex-print journalist. “Since so few people stay in journalism for very long, there isn’t much emphasis put on investigative journalism in Chad, either.”

And it’s true, most of my initial contacts in the media are no longer working in media. Some of them don’t even answer their phones when I call, which I find to be a rather ominous sign considering all that’s happened in 2008. It’s been an intimidating year and it’s hardly surprising that so many journalists have chosen to put down their feather quills rather than have them snapped in two.

savage treatment

A few weeks ago, when Chad seemed to be gliding through a rare bout of stability, I kept a promise to my guard, Harmon. I had told him over a month ago that I would gladly accompany him to his home village in southern Chad while he pays his dowry and begins his wedding preparations.

With all the logistical arrangements nailed down (save the UN security clearance to leave the city) we load up the car with gifts for the father of the bride, for Harmon’s own father, for his brother etc… The shiny RAV-4 was riding low under the weight of the television and other assorted garb which very likely belonged to some poor schmucks who got caught on the losing end of Pillage Party 2008.

After picking up as many friends that Harmon could squeeze into the car we set off toward Moundou, Chad’s southern capital and home of the stalwart Gala brewery. On our way out, Harmon directed me toward the first bridge leading over the River Chari which was a single lane set up packed with ox-carts, donkeys and weaving motorcyclists.

“You sure this is the bridge we want, Harmon?”

“Yes, yes Mr. Bryn, it’s one way in the morning and the other in the afternoon,” he replied with just convincingly enough for me to believe it.

Turning from the roundabout toward the bridge we came to a roll as I considered how I could potentially maneuver through this ungodly clusterfuck. Unfortunately, the decision was made for me in the form of three rapid taps on the driver side window.

“License,” barked a man in ratty, market-variety camo pants and a t-shirt.

Who the hell was this? Even in Chad, the police wear something that distinguishes them from the rest. I passed my license and followed him over to the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Bryn, I’ll handle this,” said Harmon, this time with a little less conviction. He followed the man down the embankment and into a mud hut with “posTe de Police” scrawled in charcoal above the door. A minute later I followed to see just to what extent these bandits were going to push it.

17,000 francs apparently ($35).

That’s complete and utter robbery considering the infraction (none) and the fact that these clowns weren’t police at all, just some bridge trolls with an ethnic connection. Harmon handled the negotiation in Arabic (as unsuccessful as it was) and left after paying $25. Post-extortion rage was beginning to set in.

After driving away, Harmon, a well-educated but poor southerner, launched into Chad itself. I always take it with a strange mix of awkwardness and optimism when I hear Chadians thrash the living shit out of their own country. Harmon doesn’t have his eyes closed to the greased palms in government and big business nor is he deaf to that flushing sound that results from national oil revenue heading straight down the tube.

“In 2005, Chad was the most corrupt country in the world,” he remarks near the end of his monologue, “And we’re always top ten in the failed states list. Chad really is a savage country,” he adds heavily, shaking his head.

That’s a loaded word - savage. It’s also one that gets good ‘n stuck in your craw, all those sharp, pointy colonial connotations make it pretty tough to swallow. But watching the goings on in Chad for a year - and only a year - it’s tough to find another word for it. The village-on-village skirmishes, tribal infighting, rebels alliances and fissures, general and widespread violence and corruption.

The obvious question with the much less obvious answer, is how and the hell can it improve? The world vilifies the government and Deby - and unsurprisingly so - but in Chad, the result seems to be the creation of hopeless, resigned attitudes apmong citizens and a ‘fuck you, world’ attitude among those in charge. The thing a lot of people forget is that Deby, for all his faults, actually wants to see the image of Chad improve, as well as his own. He’s clear about that in his speeches and in discussions with various representatives of international organizations and embassies. Most of these people, who meet him, believe it as well.

I can imagine he’s rather tired of high level missions and envoys coming, shaking his hand, chastizing him on human rights, corruption, child soldiers etc… and then returning to write a new report whose subtitle is generally a clever variant of “Chad - You BLOW.” For the average Chadian, if enough people tell you that your country is a basketcase-lost cause, it might wear away at your can-do attitude and sense of civic responsibility.

Harmon’s use of the word ’savage’, and other such comments I’ve heard from Chadians, certainly underlines this kind of civic malaise.

But all of this isn’t to say, of course, that simply being ‘positive’ or ‘nice’ on an international level will right the wrongs that exist in Chad. But if the desire to ‘look good’ is there at the presidential level, the question becomes more how can it be leveraged by the international community? How can Deby’s legacy-lust be used to some productive end or incremental change?

Perhaps by starting to embrace Chad as something other than a global outcast, inviting their opinions and speeches at respectable forums, publicly praising their positive steps and, in general, take a softer approach. Of course, it has to be made clear that facilitating a Chadian return from the hinterlands of global shame and ridicule requires they do more than simply discuss-sign-renege on their commitments.

Throwing more money at the problem is certainly not the solution and in fact it even causes more friction since Chadians find that their own people are rarely the beneficiaries of the relief flows – Sudanese refugees are. Imagine if the new refugees accepted into Canada slid directly into the upper class simply by virtue of them being refugees? Though certainly a near-callous and exaggerated comparison, you can imagine why Chadians in the rural east see it as a little unfair.

Getting Chad to better use the aid it receives and encouraging their work, their progress, and their decisions as a step along their homegrown development path would certainly be a step toward a healthier spirit of partnership with the international community rather than the adversarial, anti-foreigner set up that pervades the civil service and beyond.

Then you might start hearing savage used a lot less frequently, in Chad and abroad.

alphabet soup and some good bedtime reading

Just weeks ahead of its mid-term evaluation, the 3,700-strong European Union Force’s (EUFOR) raison d’etre has come under fire in eastern Chad and north eastern Central African Republic. President Deby, while fretting over the rebel movements frolicking through Goz Beida, Oum Hadjer, Biltine and Am Zoer this past week, blasted EUFOR for sitting idly by while humanitarian warehouse were looted in Goz Beida (more than likely by poor Chadians than by rebels). For good measure, Deby threw in a little rhetoric about it being an “international conspiracy to plunge Chad back into civil war” without elaborating any further than that.

Even before the first French EUFOR soldier was killed along the Chad-Sudan border earlier this year or before Goz Beida was passed through by the rebel alliance last weekend, people were questioning exactly what this force was here to do and what they plan to leave behind at the end of their one-year mandate.

“EUFOR isn’t appropriate for the Chadian context. In the East, we need a good sheriff and a good judge more than we need an army. We need someone who can arrest [bandits and criminals] and someone who can judge them and put them in a good prison, so that we can stop the impunity,”

- Christophe Droeven, Representative, Catholic Relief Services Chad

This is the line you get from pretty much any humanitarian or development worker on the ground in Chad. In fact, it was the same line that EUFOR heard back in October from the humanitarian community as well. The threats in Eastern Chad - to the refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), the host population and humanitarians - are not, by and large, rebel groups or the national army who tend to clash in the dried riverbeds (wadis) outside of populated areas.

It’s banditry that’s the real, day-to-day problem. Stolen vehicles. Rape. Murder. All of it goes entirely unpunished and uncontrolled in the eastern region, which President Deby admitted in 2005 that he could no longer secure.

Journalists, outside observers, politicians and even the humanitarians themselves seem to forget that EUFOR was never the intervention force sought from the outset. In the earliest days, when discussions about stabilizing the eastern refugee camps and IDP sites began, all the talk was about a UNPOL/CIVPOL-type police intervention that would work toward security sector reform.

In short – rebuild the police, rebuild the judicial system.

The result of the discussions was the United Nations Mission in the Central Africa Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) but from the point of view of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) there was no way they were going to send police to Chad until there was some sort of military force to protect them.

In theory, MINURCAT is to put police in the camps and sites to protect the civilian populations and humanitarians and EUFOR is to secure the ‘humanitarian space’ around these areas. The two combined are meant to be a complementary force to the UN/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) which has experienced even greater delays thanks in large part to the Sudanese government.

Initially EUFOR was, at best, received with a deeply skeptical wait-and-see attitude by the humanitarian community and at worst, with a total cold shoulder. To this day, many NGOs refuse to even speak with EUFOR civil-military coordination personnel since they believe any contact with the force goes against their highly-principled policies regarding the distinction between humanitarian relief and humanitarian intervention.

Not too long ago, the EUFOR Commander in Chad, General Ganascia, pointed out that it’s time to rethink the role of EUFOR in Chad. Since MINURCAT has yet to train and deploy a single gendarme in the east, the force is being asked to perform the law and order role in the interim which, as Ganascia has pointed out “is like trying to kill a fly with a hammer” given the equipment and training of his military force. On top of that, they are becoming impatient with the various levels of cooperation with the NGO community and the snide criticisms from humanitarians (including many within the UN agencies who must, officially, be seen as supportive team players).

But really, if there’s a finger to point here, it’s not at EUFOR but rather at MINURCAT and the Chadian government for their miserable failures to-date. Finally, after more than six months of haggling with the government over silly questions like ‘what to name the Chadian gendarmes unit that will be trained by MINURCAT?,’ the first 70 police commanders graduated from training. The process for selecting and training the true, on the ground police, has only just begun and many within MINURCAT suggest that if the force is operational by the end of the year it will be astounding.

EUFOR’s mandate and 119m euro budget expires on March 15, 2009 meaning there may be an operational overlap of just three months – a quarter of what had been planned from the outset.

The reality is that EUFOR is being completely hung out to dry by nearly everyone except those paid to support its work. It stresses that its mandate is not a policing mandate. It points out the constraints on a geographical, logistical and operational plane imposed by the politicians in Brussels, N’Djamena as well as the harsh environment of eastern Chad.

It underlines. It highlights. It reminds. It urges.

But almost no one can seem to get it. The failure to stabilize the east isn’t actually a failure at all, because it’s not their mandate.

In a speech this week, the tough-talking Chadian Minister of the Interior and Public Security, Ahmat Mahamat Béchir, was forced to defend President Deby’s earlier criticisms of EUFOR. He pointed out that since the force arrived, rapes continue in the camps. Thefts continue. Security in the region has not markedly improved. On top of that, they’re allowing rebel groups to circulate freely. What’s the point, he asked rhetorically.

All of his points are, of course, bogus misunderstandings and self-interested comment underlying what Chad really wants – outside help in putting an end to rebel activity in the east. EUFOR beats it head against the wall trying to make clear they aren’t getting in the middle of the Chadian civil war (though their presence undoubtedly has an indirect effect).

For violence in the camps, EUFOR is not permitted to enter the camps to quell internal violence, since maintaining a civilian and humanitarian character in these areas is important to curb armed recruitment – particularly among children – and the circulation of arms. Rapes, for instance, continue in the camps because the Government of Chad, first and foremost, and MINURCAT secondly, are not functional.

But EUFOR takes the fall and will likely continue to take the fall for the failure of others right up until the day their mandate expires. Afterward, either the EU renews the mission, the DPKO brings in a traditional blue beret mission, or some other broader mission replaces it.

This transition, which is currently being discussed, is the most important question hanging in the air since to leave Chad now is hardly an option. In a sense, it’s been ten months and they’re still only just arriving.

Numbers Behind the Hybrid EU/UN Force

EUFOR

STRENGTH – 3,700 soldiers from 14 European countries (presently around 2,700 in Chad)

BUDGET – 119 million Euros

MANDATE – March 15, 2008 – March 15, 2009

MINURCAT

STRENGTH – 300 International Police, 800 Chadian Gendarmes/Trainees, 50 International liaison officers, ‘appropriate number of support staff’. (Presently, 340 staff in N’Djamena, 7 in Abeche)

BUDGET – USD 182 million

MANDATE – September 2007 – September 2008 (Undoubtedly will be renewed by Security Council)

now or next fall

I sat in my office, contented, cutting out 400 point font letters from paper printouts for a billboard we’re planning to put up in N’Djamena for World Refugee Day.

R, É, F, U

To break from the boredom of cutting, I’d switch to email and news to follow what was ostensibly the beginning of a new rebel offensive.

G, I, É, S

All the typical details came spilling out from both the reliable and unreliable media. “There are 500 vehicles on their way to Goz Beida” says a rebel media flak.

“No, no, no everything is fine! I haven’t seen the rebels lately, check with Sudan,” says the government counterpart.

“Were in Goz Beida engaging government forces. Please ask France to go away for us.”

“No, I AM in Goz Beida. It’s quite warm, a nice breeze, but no rebels.”

The back and forth continues to the point that if you ever did stumble on the truth - in the media or in the rumours - you’d never know it after plodding through the deluges and bong-smoke theories from the amateur military strategists that suddenly appear following an AFP report.

It seems, though, that the rebel groups have made it to Oum Hadjer, the same town they passed through on the main road to N’Djamena. It seems evacuation, round deux, is just around the corner and we’re being told to prepare our bags tonite and keep our radios close.

On the upside, my paper cutting project is on hold for the time being.

——-

Also found while surfing:

Yahoo! Suggests : Danger in the Bathroom

la pays des droits de l’homme

I’ve always had mixed opinions about travel days. On one hand, you’re stuck in all manner of metal containers for up to thirty straight hours and on the other, everything feels so different. The airports smell a particular way, people buzz around you in the terminals and I always seem to revert to my Mother’s patented people watching mode.

Back to the wall. Decoy book on the table.

While sitting in Paris Orly Airport, sipping an absurdly expensive instant cappuccino and poking at a day-old croissant (for cliché purposes only), I settled comfortably into another table’s conversation. A mother and her two children, maybe 12 and 10 years old, began talking about a pilot they knew who was now off globe-trotting around South Africa.

The mom began quizzing her children - “And what’s the capital of South Africa?” she asked.

“Cap”, “Johanessbourg?”… Pretoria…

The mom, clearly impressed at the test’s pedagogical potential, keeps going.

“Japan?”

“Toyok,” responds the son, beaming with pride.

“It’s Tokyo, you moron,” snaps the older sister in an impressively spiteful tone.

“C’est pas gentil, ca” scolds mom in a offhandish kind of way, eager to continue the game. “Mali?”

“Bamo… Bama… BAMAKO,” shrieks the daughter, clearly worried her little brothers about to buzz in first.

“Très bien!” applauds Mom, “and Cameroon?”

“….” A deafening silence from all sides. I take another sip of my powdery cappuccino and wait, at least, for mom to bail them out.

“…” (Brows become furrowed)

“…” (Eyes flip awkwardly from the ceiling, to the floor)

Apparently this has stumped them all. “We have troubles with Africa,” remarks mom with not the slightest sense of irony. “Particularly in black Africa.” And so dies the geography game.

It was all I could do to avoid breaking the cardinal rule of eavesdropping - Thou Shalt Not Interject - since this quaint French family, like many French families, is undoubtedly a staunch critic of everything North American. One of the favourite little examples of American ignorance that they like to trot out during their anti-US rants is, 47% of Americans confused Iraq and Australia when a mis-labeled map was placed in front of them.

The French holier-than-thou crap is often a mix of simplistic/predictable (the war in Iraq is très neo-colonial), at times creative (US toothpick flags in dog shit on the streets of Toulouse) and occasionally pathetic (The International Baguette Competition was won by an Américaine… c’est pas normale ça!).

But this was a new low - in Orly airport - French families blissfully unaware of their own hypocrisy, unable to cite the capital cities of the countries they’ve colonised.

Ca ce n’est pas normale.

greetings from afar

Chadian culture (and undoubtedly much of African culture) is really big on greetings. I know Canadians have a reputation for being brisk in greetings - a hello, quick handshake and boom it’s all good - but the Chadian version can actually drag on for minutes, depending on factors that entirely escape my comprehension. It begins innocently enough :

Friend one: Hamdulilah!

Friend two: Mashallah!

Friend one: Kikef?

Friend two: Barak.

Friend one: And the family?

Friend two: They’re well.

Friend one: And your health?

Friend two: Kikef.

Friend one: And the heat?

Friend two: Not good at all.

Friend one: And business?

Friend two: It’s going well. Mashallah.

Friend one: Hamdulilah.

Friend two: Hamdulilah.

Friend one: Barak.

Friend two: Mashallah.

And this is just an abbreviated version. The roles obviously reverse at a given point in the conversation and the same questions of health, heat, family, business, etc.. continue. If the friends are rather close, the standard handshake finishing with a snapping of the middle fingers (shake n’ snap) can be insert gratuitously throughout the process. After a question, sometimes in the middle of select syllables, and at least several times before the two part company.

For people passing at a distance or while in moving vehicles, the greetings will begin quickly and continue even after the other person is out of earshot and potentially out of sight. The mashallahs and kikefs are mumbled under their breath.

The French have their own peculiar greeting traits, too. Most notably, the ‘bisous’ double-cheek kiss. Never a problem when in small groups, but a formidable undertaking if you approach a dinner table of 20-30 and have to make the round, kissing and shaking until you’re parched and blistered. Worse still, if you throw in some Swiss or Southern French, you can count on around a 33-50% increase in kisses.

Once is warm. Twice is cosmopolitan. Thrice is over doing it. Four, well, I guess some people are lonely.

And despite what might to seem to be a reasonable exit strategy, waving hello to such a dinner table collective would be akin to pissing on their grandmothers grave and you’d be swiftly ex-communicated. In one of my recurrent nightmares, I am approaching a table of French and Swiss ‘friends’ that appears to stretch over the horizon. As I move behind the guests from chair to chair, lips pursed and eyes glazed, the sensation most closely resembles a hamster on a wheel. It’s usually then that I wake up thirsty in a puddle of my own drool.

the roads are hell and paved with bad intentions

It was titillating, actually, to see the road graters out in force and I said as much to the driver as we came up behind them.

“Sweet baby Jesus they’re doing something about the roads in this country!”

“Mashallah!” exclaimed my driver.

The 700m strip of road leading from the office to Mobutu Blvd has been in terrible condition for who knows how long.

As we got closer to the piles, I started to realize it wasn’t actually gravel being pushed around but rather crushed bricks. On top of one of the rubble piles lay a sandal. A torn blanket was wound through another pile and flapped along in the wind.

Over the course of the 30 day state of emergency following the combat in the city, the Mayor jumped on the opportunity to tear down 1,000 homes throughout the city. The bulldozers that tore down the homes have now simply begun to repair the roads with the walls, roofs and even personal belongings of some of the poorest N’Djamenois.

The destruction was premised on the fact that the homes were unregistered and the lots upon which they stood were destined to become schools, markets, libraries, bus stations, hospitals. Who knows, perhaps in the not too distant future it will be launch pads for the Chadian Space programme, observatories, aquariums, museums and arboretums.

For now, all it has done is forced more families into the streets or across the border.

The Mayor was pretty clear when asked about it; “We are in a period of immunity. The Head of State has made this decision. When we are told this, we cannot argue. I have nothing more to say.”

two thumbs way up

Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kenyan author with just the right amount of piss and vinegar.

Aid workers struggle to deal with influx from Central African Republic

http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/47d94bba4.html

let loose the rumours of war

Here we go again. Apparently some rebels have crossed into Chad from Sudan, which in and of itself, is hardly news. As one rebel leader pointed out, they’re Chadian rebels - of course they’d be in Chad from time to time. But given the events of Groundhog Day 2008, it’s a pretty fair concern that they might have their eye on the prize.

Since getting back to N’Djamena, I’ve seen some cellphone video footage of the rebel’s entry into the city and it’s true, they were met like liberators. People in the streets cheering and celebrating. No one in N’Djamena wants a war, but alot of people want to see Deby deposed.

I could feel it today in town as I went to buy my water and non-perishables in the event of unspeakables. The town was tense - people were milling around as usual but the air was seriously charged as people tried to carry on as though nothing had changed. The whispering and nervous looks, it was something else. They’d been just starting to calm down a bit since the last attacks but there hasn’t been a ‘vie quotidien’ feel to the place since January.

Deby, for his part, has fanned the flames by unabashedly fortifying the city in preparation for the sequel. First was the moat, next were the trees around De Gaulle Ave. and now he’s putting sand-filled concrete blocks around the Palace to protect the walls and provide some protection for their own soldiers if/when the fight comes to his front door. These aren’t the most reassuring gestures.

It’s a bit interesting that this should come down the pipe at the same time that Basher and Debby are in Dakar to sign their sixth peace accord, mediated by the Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. I wonder if that’s a record for peace deals signed and reneged upon between any two presidents?

Regardless, it’s only been rumours to this point. For now it’s clench the radio, stock up on water and pack the 15kg suitcases again.