A proxy war is now under way in Eastern Chad. On the side of the Sudanese government are the Janjaweed and the Chadean rebels, who are ethnically cleansing thousands of square miles to the east of the country. Ranged against them are the forces of the official Chadean army, such as it is, and the SLA. Areas of Chad are now under Janjaweed control. It is a common sight to pass on the road little groups of villagers heading away from the border in search of some kind of security.

They will not find it. The camps where they end up are vulnerable and unprotected. Claire Bourgeois, the senior United Nations official in Eastern Chad, warns there is a heavy risk that the camps will be attacked by the Janjaweed, repeating the pattern of atrocity that has already occurred inside Darfur — a threat made worse, she says, because the SLA uses the camps as recruitment centres. She is pressing for a well-armed and effective protection force inside Chad, but so far without success. ~Peter Oborne, The Spectator

The spread of conflict into Chad over the last year is one of the least noticed aspects of the war in Darfur. The ease with which the conflict has inflamed internal Chadian politics points up the great weakness of the state in Africa, an extreme form of the weakening of the state around the world (which somehow has not generated “spontaneous order,” but more brutality and violence), and the return or, more accurately, reaffirmation of primary loyalties to tribe and the tribe’s allies.