Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno and rebel leader Mahamat Nour Abdulkerim, once seen as a major threat to the government in N’Djamena, have signed a peace deal in Libya, a government source said on Monday.
But the deal was not seen as the end of the threat to the rule of Déby from an array of rebel groups, as two of them forged an alliance.
Nour, who once led one of the strongest rebel groups opposed to Déby, the United Front for Change (FUC), was staying with his aides at a leading hotel in the Chadian capital after flying in from Tripoli overnight on the same plane as the president, the source told the media.
The peace accord, signed after talks arranged by Libyan leader Moammer Gadaffi, provides for a ceasefire, an amnesty for the rebels and a place for them in government, with the release of prisoners by both sides, participants in the Tripoli meeting said.
Chadian government sources, asking not to be named, said Nour’s force of an estimated 600 men with their 60 vehicles were currently based at Guereda, a town in the east of Chad under government control about 30km from the border with Sudan.
Minister of Infrastructure Adoum Younousmi, who was a signatory of the accord, said that Nour’s force in all totalled between 3 000 and 4 000 men, some of whom would be integrated into the Chadian army.
The FUC, set up in December 2005, launched a lightning offensive on April 13 from the east of Chad that advanced as far as the outskirts of the capital N’Djamena, only to be driven back by government forces.
Since then, the group has split up into several rival factions, and is no longer seen as so powerful militarily, though other movements have stepped up their activity in eastern Chad and, earlier this month, clashed with government forces commanded directly by Déby, who set up base in an eastern town.
One of the current rebel leaders, Timane Erdimi, dismissed the significance of the deal with Nour’s FUC, some of whose men went off to join a coalition led by the Rally of Democratic Forces (RAFD) headed by Erdimi and his twin brother Tom.
”This accord means nothing to us. We began this struggle without Mahamat Nour and we shall finish it without Mahamat Nour,” Erdimi said.
”He represents nothing today.”
Déby’s government is also up against the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), led by former defence minister Mahamat Nouri, and the Chadian National Concord movement, led by Hassan Saleh al-Djinedi.
The governments of Chad and the neighbouring Central African Republic accuse Khartoum of backing different insurgent groups that launched attacks in the two countries from late October, while Chadian villagers have been prey to brutal attacks by Arab militias, like those in Sudan’s Darfur region across the border.
The UFDD and the RAFD-National Chadian Convention (CNT) coalition on Monday signed an ”agreement of military coordination” to unite under a central command, after a month of separately intensifying attacks on Chadian troops.
The decision was a reaction to ”the military emergency on the ground,” a RAFD-CNT spokesperson said. ”We have to finish off the regime,” he added.
Early in December, Chad’s army clashed separately with the UFDD and the RAFD and then fought major engagements with both, chasing them across the border into Darfur. An anonymous source close to the government said on Monday that ”it’s men like Mahamat Nouri who are a real danger to the government today”. — Sapa-AFP