A downed Chadian army helicopter lies in the desert sands just outside Abeche.

In Abeche now, the day was very calm. After checking with various people about the security situation, we took a drive up north to Biltin to have a chat with the governor and get his authorization to work as journalists in the area. He spoke very highly of the army and their splendid ability to purge the country of rebels, offered us food, cigarettes, water and soft drinks. He was a charming man. He told us, as did many people today, that the rebels had retreated to Sudan. “This is the Chad of today, not the Chad of yesterday,” sad the governor. “No mercenaries can ever come and take this country again.”

My colleague David and I returned to the Catholic Mission where we are staying in Abeche, sat down to share a beer and discuss the day’s work and plans for the next day. We headed out to have some dinner at a local restaurant and watched the news in Arabic, straining to understand the gist of what was being said. For no reason at all, I turned to David and said, “Let’s get out of here. I have a strange feeling.” There was no explanation for the feeling. Nothing had changed, just one of those eerie waves that goes as quickly as it comes.

We headed back to the Mission to get some work done. As I hung my laundry up to dry I could hear women yuyulating in the distance, and figured there was a wedding nearby. I walked across the way to David’s room to see if he wanted to go out to get some sound bites, so we grabbed our equipment and headed for the gate. It was long after dark and it was locked, so we jumped it and walked in the direction of the voices. But then they suddenly ceased, and we turned back, a bit dejected.

It was around 8:30 then. Everything was in order. I had just gotten off the telephone with CARE who had given us permission to stay with them in Iriba on the northeastern border where we plan to do a story on environmental issues affecting the local and refugee populations. The security situation was now under control according to all reports, and UNHCR had booked us for a flight out on Monday.

I returned to my room to edit pictures. The sound of gunfire caught my ear a few times but I didn’t think much of it. Our guest house is right next to the military compound and I figured the soldiers were drunk and firing rounds for fun. But the shots became more frequent. I walked across the way to David. “Do you hear those gunshots?” I asked. “I think those are just fireworks,” he replied. I wasn’t convinced so I asked him to step outside to listen more carefully. Then the unmistakable sound of machine guns started to ring out in the sky with increasing intensity. We had both spent some time in Afghanistan so we thought it was probably just celebration for the wedding, but the shots started to get louder, and the rounds heavier, and closer. Then it became clear: this was no wedding celebration. The sounds ripped through the sky in all directions, much closer now, just over the wall.

We decided to head into my room and get down on the ground. Then David said he was going out to have a look. I declined to join him. I didn’t think we could see anything in the night and I wouldn’t be able to make pictures anyway. A minute later he opened my door again, only it wasn’t David. A young soldier in uniform burst into my room with two kalishnakovs. I was taken aback to say the least. I’ve heard a lot of stories about the Chadian army since I’ve been here. To be honest, I would much rather meet the rebels, who have a reputation for being extremely press savvy and more or less friendly with foreigners. The army, however, is famous for being drunk and reckless theives.

David came in behind him. “Don’t worry, he’s Chadian,” he said. I couldn’t imagine what else he would be since, we are in Chad, and the guy was clearly black, but it made me laugh anyway. It was a moment colored by such absurdity that I could only take it with humor. Then David disappeared outside again.

The soldier looked very young. Too young. He motioned for me to put out the light. I was sitting on the ground in the dark all but for the light on my sound recorder, which cast a halo at my feet. I picked it up and moved it around the room to see what he was doing. He was sitting on the ground across from me. “Do you speak French, I said?” Answer: affirmative. “What’s going on?” I said. He mumbled something back, which I didn’t understand. “Is it the rebels?” I asked. “Yes.” I could hear the terror in his voice and I could see from his posture that he was crippled by fear. I wasn’t afraid of him. I knew he needed me and I could not detect an ounce of aggression in him.

The soldier started to ask me about my friend, but I couldn’t understand his words. David reappeared. The soldier started to talk to him but David doesn’t understand French so well, so I told him, “listen, this guy doesn’t speak French, so you’re going to have to talk to me. What’s going on?” “Some clothes,” he said. “Civilian clothes?” “Yes.” I told David to give him some pants and a shirt, and they went across the way. A couple minutes later, they returned, the soldier now disguised as a civilian. He motioned towards the bathroom. I couldn’t understand what he meant to say. “In there, in there.” “In there what?” I said. I thought he wanted us to get in the bathroom, but I said no way. David chimed in. Then he went in and retrieved his guns. I gathered he wanted to leave them there, leave them with us, so as not to be mistaken for a rebel. He was petrified. I felt terrible for him, but I didn’t want him staying in my room as David and I had decided to go out and have a look around. He looked so young. Really young. Fourteen? Fifteen?

There is a real child soldier problem here in Chad. They have been recruited en masse by both the Chadian army and the rebels. David and I had talked a lot about trying to do a story about it but it seemed we just wouldn’t have the time to get into something so sensitive since we have already a number of stories to cover for various agencies. But here, the story came to us. There he was, in my room, sitting less than a meter across from me, petrified and fragile, just a boy for fuck’s sake! Maybe he signed on for the money. Maybe he was forced, maybe his family sold him. Difficult to tell, but he clearly didn’t like his job anymore.

The firefights here in the last week have been intense from various first-hand accounts I have heard. “Chadians are true warriors,” said a EUFOR mission officer this afternoon, as I toured the Camp des Etoiles base just outside of town. The day we flew out of N’djamena to come here to Abeche, one of the EUFOR troops told me that the morning before, a plane with 60 wounded Chadian soldiers had arrived from two days of fighting in the East. The Chadian government has tried to paint the latest wave of rebel attacks as a minor thing, which is merely a nuisance and totally under control, but clearly that’s not the case. I have heard the same story over and over again from official government press statements…”The rebels have been crushed. The rebels have been pushed out. The rebels have retreated into Sudan now and won’t be back until after the rains,” and so on. But now it was looking as though the rebels had moved into Abeche and taken the army completely off guard. (Abeche, by the way, is the HQ city for all the NGO’s dealing with the Darfuri refugees a couple hundred kilometers from here along the border)

After the soldier disappeared into the night, David and I went out and crept along the walls of the compound to get a sense of where the shooting was coming from, but it was coming from all directions really. It seemed to quiet down after a while and David decided to head out into the night with his video camera. I decided to stay behind. I don’t like to work at night in Africa where the prospective enemy blends in with the darkness and the shooting is often blind and frenzied.

Everyone else had left the compound. I had decided to stay behind in my room, so I could write this article live, and record all the events as they happened. I heard people moving outside. I shone my torch in the courtyard. I saw figures moving in the darkness. I quickly closed all my doors and got down on the ground. The gunshots continued but seemed to be retreating south. I could hear people moving, jumping over the walls of our compound and moving quickly all around my building. I smoked one cigarette after another. I could here people trying to break into the rooms on either side of me, so I decided to cough, loud enough to make my presence known, high enough for them to know that I am a woman. It worked. No one touched my door, but the time seemed to pass so slowly, each second holding the potential for a terrible fate. I felt like I was in a horror movie, waiting, listening to every sound, wondering if the next step would be the bad guy on the threshold to my meager safe haven. But it never did, until David returned.

I jumped to the door at the sound of his voice. Outside my window there were two soldiers sitting in the dark. They said hello to me but did not move. I let David in. He threw his arms around me. His eyes were huge, pulsating with fear. “Go take a cold shower before you come and tell me what happened,” I said. When he returned, he relayed his story to me. He made it back alive and unharmed and I’ll just leave it at that.

I opened the door again and took some water to the soldiers. One of them uttered a strange sound as he took the bottle. It was a groan of relief and of pain. Relief that water was coming to him, pain that he could not bring the bottle to his lips fast enough. It’s nearly 50 degrees Celsius everyday here in eastern Chad, and intense fear has a tendency to increase the sensation of thirst. I gave him my cigarette too and figured I had probably made a friend for life, or for that evening at the very least, which is all that mattered.

One thing you have to understand about Chad is that it’s nearly impossible to get accurate information. Conflicting stories abound, and the government is always trying to cover up the reality of the security situation here. They would rather lie than suffer the embarrassment of admitting that the army is not in full control. Today, there are two versions of yesterday’s events. The first is complete bullocks, and that is that the fire fight, which lasted about one hour, caused the entire city to cower in fear, and a good portion of the army to desert, was just soldiers firing in the air to celebrate their recent victory in a town just south of here. David’s video footage of a man dying in the street was clear evidence against that, of course, but any of us who actually lived that night laughed histericaly at such a pronouncement.

What seems more likely is version number two: the soldiers, returning from their victory, began shooting in the air as they arrived in town. Since a wave of rebel attacks rocked Eastern Chad over the last ten days, tensions remained high. It was Friday night, a lot of soldiers were drunk. They feared the worst, and fired back in retaliation at what they assumed to be rebels. An intense exchange followed and no one will ever know how many people died, but basically, the story we are all sticking to is that the army engaged in battle with itself.

The problem is that it’s impossible to tell who is army and who is from the rebel faction, first because they are the same mix of ethnicities, second because they often have the same uniforms and cars, and third, because alliances switch back and forth over night. Also, the yuyulating of women, which is customary at weddings, also happens to be the rebel battle cry. It is the role the rebels’ wives often play in this interminable proxy war.

This morning, as we were heading out to meet with EUFOR’s head of public relations for lunch at the Camp des Etoiles, a teenage boy appeared at the door of the Catholic mission. It was the soldier who had burst into my room. He had come back to exchange clothes with David. He was accompanied by a boy of 14 or so years who was in full military uniform.

There is a woman next door to me who has been here working for a child soldier rehabilitation center. She is leaving soon because the center has been virtually empty for months and she has nothing to report anymore. I watched the boys walk off into the scorching heat, one in uniform, one clutching a bag with his boots and fatigues bundled up inside. The latter was smiling broadly, not the same boy I harbored in the darkness of my room just 12 hours prior. He will probably forget about us, just as he will forget about the fear that seized him in the madness of a firefight, but I won’t. War does strange things to people. It can make two adversaries into friends over a half-smoked cigarette, a pair of jeans, a cup of water, and yet, that alliance can disappear into thin air at any given moment.

Arrival in N’djamena, Chad June 17, 2008.

Things are calm in the capital after a series of rebel attacks in the east destabilized regular proceedings and raised the alert levels considerably. The rebels have apparently passed back over the border into Sudan now. Things seem to be relatively under control according to reports, but it’s still too soon to tell. One thing is certain, however, and that is that news coming out of the country is full of misinformation. Rebel deaths are more than likely overstated by the Chadian army, and the magnitude of the attacks have been largely exaggerated as well.

President Deby and his government can’t seem to agree on what statements to make, and EUFOR is caught somewhere in the middle. The French EUFOR press spokesperson rolled his eyes and laughed this morning at the circus. “Here, everything is easy,” he said, referring to the capital, but getting proper information seems rather an impossible task amid countless conflicting reports and muscle flexing.

Very few journalists are here, and several who tried to get out to the camps on the border this week were unable to complete their mission due to the security situation. It will be interesting to see how EUFOR is carrying out its duties once we get out east. Deby issued a harsh statement yesterday, accusing EUFOR of helping the rebels by doing nothing, and the spokesperson for CARE International voiced concerns during an interview this evening, saying they have been more or less ineffective at containing the security situation, and have pushed for IDP’s to return home prematurely in order to make the program look like a success story.

The French army, which has maintained a presence here since 1986, is reluctant to intervene as they feel it might jeopardize EUFOR’s mission, since the latter is more than 50 percent French, but the EUFOR presence here is seen by some as a way to sneak more troops in through the backdoor. The rebels view the Deby government as a puppet dictator propped up by the French, who many say never really left their former colony. Things seem to be deteriorating on all fronts as Deby’s government looses credibility with the people, a civil war is brewing, and an increasing number of incursions by rebels coming from Sudan continue to destabilize the humanitarian effort on the border.

Last February when rebels advanced on the capital in an attempted coup, French military intervened to help the Chadian army push them back. My fixer Ahmed told me this morning that the actual number of French troops inside Chad is kept secret, as was the number of deaths that resulted from the fighting. It is estimated, he said, that some 200 civilians and 300 rebels perished in the two days of fighting that erupted on February 2, but most press accounts only site 200.

After watching a video this evening made by some colleagues who were here in February, I was struck by the intensity of the attacks. They were trapped in the Meridian Hotel, which came heavily under direct fire. I was in Kenya at that time, and friends of mine who jumped aboard the first plane to N’djamena never made it beyond the tarmac of the airport. Virtually no press was on the ground to cover the situation up close, the dearth of images coming out in the papers was proof of that back then, and the testimony of my colleagues this evening supports my suspicions that the events were more or less kept under wraps. My colleagues told me they were reading news on the internet that the Chadian government and rebels had struck a peace accord as they crouched in their hotel room amid sounds of mortar and machines guns just outside their window; strange for a country that claims to have real freedom of press.

I will be flying east tomorrow morning with my colleague, David, to Abeche with a Spanish unit. From there we will head towards the border with Darfur to the refugee camps and go on patrol with EUFOR. Stay tuned for updates.

Next month I will be teaming up with fellow blogger David Axe over at WarIsBoring.com to head into Chad and cover the growing crisis on the border with Darfur. We will be there for one month.

Below is a map of Darfur and an area map of the region we will be travelling to inside Chad. European troops began deploying to the Chad border with Soudan this February in response to a growing number of attacks spilling over from the Darfur region. An attack two weeks ago on the capital city of Soudan by rebels alleged by Khartoum to be backed by the Chad government prompted the two governments to sever ties. In January, a similar attack on the Chad capital of N’Djamena by rebel groups accused of being backed by Khartoum, left more than 200 dead. A recent attack on May 26 in Abyei, Sudan, has raised fears that a renewed civil war could erupt between the north and south, further complicating the refugee crisis on the Chad border where aid groups are already struggling to manage the hundreds of thousands presently there.

David and I will be patrolling with the European troops, documenting the situation in the refugee camps, and assessing the environmetal elements which impact the displaced populations along the border. We will be reporting to you live on our respective blogs as often as we can. Your interest and support is much appreciated.

Here is a good place to donate for Burmese victims of Cyclone Nargis.
Friends have been streaming in with various reports from Burma. Most of us have been denied visas. The situation is not good for the Burmese, and the junta’s comportment is, in my opinion, tantamount to genocide. The world’s dumbfounded silence and the media frenzy over China have made this catastrophe all the more tragic.

Travel outside Rangoon is prohibited for all foreigners now, but my friend James Whitlow Delano managed to get in. Have a look at his haunting images from inside the Irawaddy Delta.

For those of you who have been keeping up with my regular posts, thanks for stopping in. I will be taking a break from my reporting on Kenya and shall return in a month’s time. To view the multimedia slideshow I put together about the Kenyan crisis, click here.

Nairobi, Nakuru, Naivasha, Nyieri and Eldoret were all affected by yesterday’s Mungiki demonstrations. A day after President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga named the cabinet, one would have expected Kenya to be celebrating. Instead, the capital city was completely paralyzed by road blocks set up by the Mungiki at key strategic points around town. Early in the morning they pulled up a section of the railway line in the Nairobi slum of Dandora, which caused a train to completely derail. Running gun battles went on through the morning between Mungiki and police in Dandora, dubbed the Mungiki capital city.

The surprise attacks seem to be a Mungiki trademark, and police had little explanation for why they were caught so off guard. But I found it hard to believe, since last week I was already receiving information that the Mungiki were planning attacks on the State in retaliation for the big crack down on sect members in the last few weeks. Then at the weekend, the imprisoned sect leader, Maina Njenga’s wife was found murdered, beheaded, apparently with a saw. Retaliation was sure to come, and it doesn’t place much confidence in the police force when you consider that Nairobi was paralyzed for two hours yesterday morning before they got their act together.

Last month several hundred Mungiki members descended on downtown Nairobi demanding the release of their leader, Maina Njenga. It was difficult to understand how for more than two months, gatherings of more than a few people in town were disbanded by police immediately, and yet, the country’s most feared gang members managed to invade the capital city en masse and unchecked. It certainly makes one wonder if there aren’t Mungiki sympathizers high up in the ranks of government and security.

The Mungiki sect is actually quite anti-Kibaki. Mungiki is strictly a Kikuyu sect and they expected Kibaki, also a Kikuyu, to allow them freedom to carry out their business. But in 2006 the president declared the sect illegal and began rooting them out in brutal campaigns where thousands are said to have disappeared or died. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that many Mungiki did not vote for Kibaki in the contentious December 2007 elections. But in the second wave of violence that rocked western Kenya in January and February, there is undeniable evidence that Mungiki were hired by the State to carry out attacks on rivaling tribes.

Indeed, I heard the same eye-witness accounts across the country, that first police would move in, and just behind them gangs of Mungiki would follow, armed with machetes. Some accounts even told of Mungiki being given police uniforms and guns. I spoke with a GSU officer in Mathare North in January, who wished to remain anonymous, but indicated to me the very police station where Mungiki came to get their uniforms in the night. But after the power-sharing deal was signed in February, the State immediately embarked on a series of impressive raids of Mungiki strongholds, arresting, beating and harassing scores of suspected members. It appears that the recent Mungiki uprisings are in protest of these raids, and already last week, we were hearing ruminations about possible retaliatory acts.

The Mungiki sect is a mixture of three groups: the religious movement, the political movement, and the criminal arm. It is unknown how many Mungiki members exist in Kenya today, as their practices remain largely shrouded in secrecy, but estimates range from one to two million. The group first came into prominence in the 1980’s and sprang from the Mau Mau who fought for Independence from British rule. They pushed for a return to traditional values and refused western practices. The sect has since undergone a metamorphosis and turned into the most feared gang in Kenya. They have accrued considerable wealth by extorting taxes from public minibus companies and slum residents, in exchange for security the official police forces should, but do not provide. While the machete is the traditional weapon of choice for Mungiki, more recently, they have introduced guns within the highly trained criminal ranks of the sect, and police are yet more apprehensive to deal with them now.

A young man hacks at bolts holding the railway line together in Kibera slums. © Anne Holmes

Residents of Nairobi’s Kibera slum continued to pull up the railway line late into the evening and all morning until an agreement was struck with police. Community leaders came into the slum to discuss an end to the operation, and later this afternoon opposition leader Raila Odinga asked people to be patient as he and the president came to an agreement over the cabinet.

Yesterday evening as people came home from work, an eyewitness said several thousand people gathered to join in the destruction of the train tracks. This morning, residents continued to demolish them with the aim of throwing the entire track into the river a hundred meters below. This is the second time Kibera residents uproot the line. In January they removed 2 kilometers of this route, which leads to Uganda, to decry the use of Ugandan troops in the bloody repression of opposition protesters.

Many present at the scene today explained that they were doing this in protest against President Mwai Kibaki for having promised them 500,000 jobs which he did not deliver in his first term. Unfortunately for those who do have jobs, the destruction of the train tracks has made their lives more difficult as they used this route to get to work in town. Now with major congestion problems and local buses barred from downtown, commuters will spend more time getting to and from work, and further congest traffic.

The protestors and opposition party, ODM, may have made their point clear, however, as the two leaders seem to be making moves to select a cabinet by Saturday of this week, according to press conference statements today.

A boy sits on the railway line which residents of Nairobi’s Kibera slums tore up in protest of stalled negotiations © Anne Holmes