EU Prepares for Hard-core Chad Mission

Abstract

The EU has set in motion plans to send a peacekeeping force to Chad along its troubled border with Sudan, prompting international aid and humanitarian groups to call for clear rules of engagement that focus on civilian protection and human rights and the effective implementation of a ban on using children as soldiers in the region’s various conflicts. “EU soldiers must have the right to fire if they are under attack or if civilians are attacked as well,” Alain Deletroz, vice president for policy in Europe at the International Crisis Group, recently told reporters in Brussels. “The rules of engagement must be clear and robust. It would be pointless without it.” As expected during their 23–24 July meeting in Brussels, foreign ministers from the bloc’s twenty-seven member states gave the green light to the EU Military Staff (EUMS) to begin defining a crisis management concept. The concept will be premised on the deployment of several thousand European troops and police officers to Chad and possibly the northern region of the Central African Republic (CAR). EU military planners aim to finalize the concept in the coming weeks, an EU diplomat told ISN Security Watch on 23 July after the ministers’ decision. The mission’s purpose would be to protect civilian populations in Chad and contain the chaos in adjacent Sudan and its war-torn western province of Darfur, where strife has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the last four years. Many Darfurians now live in refugee camps in dire conditions just across the borders in Chad and northern CAR. Their numbers are swollen by displaced Chadians fleeing a conflict between rebel groups and the central government of President Idriss Deby. The EU soldiers would also protect UN and humanitarian personnel working in the region. The size of the EU’s mission is still uncertain, but initial indications have been that it could involve as many as 3,000 troops, though a smaller number is more likely, said the EU diplomat. “The numbers are somewhat up the air at this point, but one shouldn’t forget that Artemis was run with considerably less than 3,000 soldiers,” said the diplomat, referring to the EU’s short-term peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Artemis’ three-month deployment of 1,400 troops in June 2003 to Bunia in eastern DRC was the EU’s first autonomous mission to deploy outside Europe and a test case of its ability to run a hard-core security mission. While Artemis also had to deal with instability in Bunia, it was focused on a small area and a relatively restricted conflict scenario. By contrast, the peacekeeping challenge in Chad is more complex and dangerous, according to aid officials familiar with the setting and conditions of the region. Nearly a quarter of a million refugees from