Roundup on African Conflicts

Chad/Sudan

Chad broke off diplomatic relations with Sudan on Friday and threatened to expel 200,000 Sudanese refugees, blaming its neighbor for a rebel attack a Cabinet official said killed 350 in the capital.

President Idriss Deby said he would expel the refugees who fled Sudan’s troubled Darfur region by June 30 if the U.N. and the African Union did not help stop what he said were Sudan’s attempts to destabilize his government.

Gen. Mahamet Ali Abdullah said he did not have a breakdown of the 350 people killed during Thursday’s assault on N’Djamena, but he said the toll included government troops, rebel forces and civilians.

Nigeria

Just as things seemed to be calming down in the delta region of Nigeria after a spate of kidnappings and insurgent attacks, the militant group calling itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta - MEND - announced last week to all who would listen that it was planning new violence against oil facilities in the region. Apparently unconcerned about tipping its hand to the authorities, MEND even gave a date for the start of its new campaign: April 25.

MEND has also given "peace demands."

The largest ethnic group in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta region on Sunday laid down conditions for peace and demanded that the impoverished area produce the next president in 2007.

"The Ijaws can no longer be mere spectators but would want to be effective participants in the Nigerian national project, including the issue of producing the next president of Nigeria," said a statement from the Ijaw National Congress, representing Nigeria's fourth largest ethnic group.

Congo (DRC)

The United Nations (UN) says more than 167,000 people have fled fighting between the Army and militias in the Katanga province in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since mid-November.

"The number of displaced people continues to rise because several thousand of them, who had stayed hidden in the bush because they were afraid to take the roads, are starting to reach villages where aid is dispatched," Alfred Gondo, the head of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA), said.

The wave of newly-displaced comes in addition to 121,000 others who had fled the war-torn region of the vast central African state in 2005 following continued unrest.

Guinea

A report from the International Crisis Group looks at the future of this country.

For too long, public figures within and outside Africa have been timid about discussing Guinea’s deep-rooted problems. Its strong anti-imperialist stance in the 1960s and beyond earned it respect among pan-Africanists, but the hands-off attitude that grew out of that respect has long since degraded into indifference and cynicism. The probability is now high that President Conté’s term will end in a military takeover, which some seem prepared to accept before the fact, as if it were a means of preserving Guinea’s sovereignty. But parts of Guinea’s civilian elite are finally beginning to treat the country’s future as their own collective concern, one not to be resolved by a third party, whether the army or foreign diplomats. They should be given every encouragement, including by relevant international actors, to do so.

The melodramatic events of 4-5 April 2006 are yet to be fully explained. A major cabinet shake-up was announced initially on national radio, then stopped in mid-broadcast by soldiers during a second announcement; this led within hours to the relevant presidential decree being rescinded and the prime minister sacked.

Guinea Bissau

Guinea Bissau troops will continue their offensive in the north until all the Senegalese rebel bases established there in the last month have been "destroyed", President Joao Bernardo Vieira told IRIN.

Clashes between Guinea Bissau soldiers and a faction of the Senegalese secessionist group, the Movement for the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) from the region that borders Guinea Bissau, erupted in mid-March with MFDC fighters taking positions in northern Guinea Bissau.

"The Guinea Bissau military will remain at the border until the total destruction of all the rebels in Guinea Bissau territory," President Vieira told IRIN on Thursday. "If the rebels are from the Casamance then they must base their cause in the Casamance and not in Guinea Bissau territory."