8 May, 2006 1:46 PM

Newsletter No. 243
April 20, 2006

 

John Edward Philips (Shingetsu Member No. 1) has been kind enough to provide us an essay analyzing the crisis in Chad, and suggestions about the Japanese interest in the country.

JAPAN SHOULD NOT IGNORE THE CRISIS IN CHAD
By John Edward Philips

The situation in Chad, and its proximity to the Darfur region of the Sudan, has focused attention on a country that even most Africanists pay little attention to. The country was originally a province of French Equatorial Africa, stuck at the far north of that colony, hopelessly landlocked and generally inaccessible from the outside. It is one of the most extremely artificial countries in Africa, a distinction which is difficult to match. The population of perhaps 10 million is about half Muslim, half non-Muslim (concentrated in the south) and comprises dozens of ethnic groups speaking over a hundred different languages, including perhaps a million speakers of the Chadian dialect of Arabic. Because Arabic literacy is included in the official statistics, the official literacy rate is nearly 50%, unusually high for a Francophone African country, where usually only the small minority who can read and write excellent French are counted in the literacy statistics.

During the 1970s there was much intrigue and jockeying for power, which inevitably involved Libya, which borders Chad to the north. This inevitably involved the United States, which for many years had knee-jerk reactions against any initiatives Libya undertook, and of course it also involved a unilateral declaration of "unity" declared by Libya at one point. Such declarations seem to have involved every country bordering Libya at some time or other. Some of the northern Saharan nomad groups also declared themselves a "National Liberation Front" at one point in a transparent attempt to get arms from Maoist China. I well remember one African student I knew at UCLA shaking his head and complaining that the fighting no longer involved even tribalism, it was simply naked self-interest and ambition on the part of the leaders.

Chad seemed to settle down in the 1990s after Idriss Deby took control of the capital and promised democracy. A national conference was held in 1993, as in many Francophone African countries, and established a transitional government with Deby as interim president. Free elections were supposed to be held within a year, but, as in many African countries, the internationally recognized government in the capital had incomplete control of the territory, and found that an excuse to postpone the elections. Presidential and legislative elections were finally held in 1996 and 1997 respectively, returning Deby and his followers to office. Transparency International often lists Chad as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

The Chad government has been making a virtue out of a necessity by hosting refugees from Darfur, whom it probably does not have the power to effectively expel anyway, although it could certainly make trouble for them. The government of Chad has blamed unrest in the country on the Sudan, as Sudan has blamed unrest in Darfur on Chad. It has threatened to expel refugees if Sudan did not stop supporting rebels. I am not sure how Sudan would oppose the refugees being expelled back to its territory, since it seems to be supporting those who are trying to kill them, but the threat seems to have been addressed not so much to the Sudanese government as to the UN and the African Union, which Deby insisted should do something to stop the turmoil in Darfur. He has since backed down, as neither the UN nor the AU seems to have the means, or perhaps even the will, to do anything about the ongoing genocide, much less the erosion of both states which seems to be spreading from their common border. Deby is Zaghawa, a group which is also found in Darfur, and used Darfur as a base for his takeover of Chad, but personal ambition probably has more to do with his policies than ethnic loyalties.

How does this affect Japan? One billion barrels of oil have been discovered in southern Chad and exports began in 2004. The World Bank helped build a pipeline on condition that Chad use the proceeds for socially useful purposes. The government is using the fighting to demand that it be allowed to spend more of the proceeds from oil exports on arms. The US is now trying to mediate between Chad and the World Bank.

Japan has an interest in Chad's oil, if not directly then at least in having Chad's oil enter the market to exert downward pressure on prices. It therefore has an interest in peace, at least in the oil producing regions. The collapse of the government would be in few other countries' interests. Sudan might move against the refugee camps across the border, and Libya might declare another union, but in the long run, a vacuum in Chad would probably not even be in their interests either.

States, all states, are essentially armed bodies that monopolize violence in a territory and use that violence to exact a surplus to perpetuate themselves. The government of Chad needs sufficient armed force to maintain itself, but the amount of force necessary would be less if its people viewed it as more legitimate. If people feel their government is acting in their interest, that government will need less force to get them to obey its dictates. Thus the struggle for stability in Africa cannot be separated from the struggle for democracy. The difficulty many states find in supporting themselves suggests that it cannot be separated from the struggle for African unity.

Whether Japanese people, and the bureaucracy, know it or not, their economic and even physical security is coming to depend more and more on their ability to get accurate information about, and carefully interact with, places as remote as Chad. That will probably require not only an expansion but also a complete overhaul of area studies in Japan.

For more information about Chad:

languages: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Chad

answers.com: http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=9qe7kc3nbwgk?tname=chad-1&method=6&sbid=lc06b
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