MINURCAT TRANSITION -- IMPACT OF PKO DRAWDOWN ON

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 NDJAMENA 000099 SIPDIS SENSITIVE STATE FOR AF/C STATE ALSO FOR S/USSES STATE ALSO FOR PRM/AFR NSC FOR GAVIN GENEVA FOR RMA LONDON FOR POL - LORD PARIS FOR POL - BAIN AND KANEDA ADDIS ABABA FOR AU E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREF ASEC PREL PHUM SU CD SUBJECT: MINURCAT TRANSITION -- IMPACT OF PKO DRAWDOWN ON HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE IN EASTERN CHAD REF: N'DJAMENA 0096 -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (SBU) The GOC's objection to the renewal of MINURCAT's mandate in Chad has caused deep concern within the international community as to the impact the departure of the PKO's military and UNPOL actors will have on the provision of humanitarian services to the 420,000 refugees and IDPs in eastern Chad. Discussion centers on whether MINURCAT's only partially-deployed military forces have facilitated humanitarian access, improved security for aid workers, and might eventually create an environment that would allow IDPs to return to their areas of origin. The future contribution of the DIS, the Chadian police force created to provide security in the camps and IDP sites, and its UNPOL mentors is debated as well. ¶2. (SBU) Post believes that MINURCAT's departure will have a direct impact on humanitarian and NGO mobility in the field, to the extent that armed escorts have been at least somewhat effective in deterring carjacking and kidnapping. The removal of air and tactical ground transport assets implies that aid workers deployed deep in the field will lose a key means for evacuation should wide-spread violence require departure from field bases. The withdrawal of UNPOL mentoring and financial support to the DIS could derail this increasingly useful initiative. The dominant impact of the departure of MINURCAT will likely be a "vacuum effect" in humanitarian space. The sum of these effects would be the need for humanitarian agencies to reduce their staff exposure in the field, with the likely impact of ensuring only critical life-saving services to vulnerable populations. End Summary. -------------- BACKGROUND AND ASSUMPTIONS: PROTECT WHOM FROM WHICH THREAT? -------------- ¶3. (SBU) The GOC's objection to the renewal of MINURCAT's mandate in Chad has caused deep concern within the humanitarian community. Discussion centers on whether MINURCAT's only partially-deployed military forces have facilitated humanitarian access, improved security for aid workers, and might eventually create an environment that would allow IDPs to return to their areas of origin. ¶4. (SBU) The complexities of the Chadian security context have largely been lost in this discussion, in preference to a simplified set of questions: Does MINURCAT provide security to humanitarians? Is that security critical to humanitarian activities? Will humanitarians be safe if MINURCAT leaves? Such simplification does not allow one to consider other questions: Security from WQMv?d" their activities, not on whether the beneficiaries have benefitted from MINURCAT, the biggest single humanitarian project in the country. ¶6. (SBU) Given the level of insecurity in eastern Chad, a withdrawal of MINURCAT is assumed to not bode well for the humanitarian community remaining behind. The conditions that have produced rampant criminality in eastern Chad - weakness of judicial structures and resulting impunity, lack of societal consensus as to the utility of humanitarian interventions that exclude host populations, idle rebel groups, extreme poverty and poor harvests, etc - are not within the control of MINURCAT. It is however routinely assumed that a fully-deployed UN mission could mitigate the effects of these conditions on humanitarian operations. NDJAMENA 00000099 002 OF 004 ¶7. (SBU) MINURCAT as designed was created to confront threats other than those now of concern. The original threats were inter-ethnic violence, and somewhat later, combat operations between Chadian and armed opposition forces. The threat of current concern is violent criminality. The threat down the road may be instability in Sudan following elections in April -- or for that matter, the same in Chad in November. Full deployment of peacekeeping troops, as opposed to the partial deployment that is now on the ground, will arguably have only a limited effect on criminality, but MINURCAT and the DIS serve a deterrent purpose and could well help to deal with a renewal of spillover instability and violence from Sudan, should the situation there deteriorate. Should the GoC insist on military withdrawal, as it says it will, the immediate humanitarian situation would be affected more by the "vacuum effect" than by a loss of an appropriate security response to the violent criminal threat now faced. -------------- FIELD MOBILITY -------------- ¶8. (SBU) MINURCAT's presence - along with the Chadian Detachement Integre de Securite (DIS) with its UNPOL mentors - has provided a simple instrument in the service of humanitarian work: armed escorts from field offices to camps and sites, and back. Such escorts have been developed during the course of MINURCAT's existence in response to the threat to aid workers of violent criminal attacks and kidnappings. Escorts with tactical vehicles in close quarters with humanitarian convoys have almost never been attacked, though the resources required to service all humanitarian needs in this manner would exceed even full MINURCAT deployment -- and should there ever be even one attack, it would undermine this security tactic. "Road-running", where MINURCAT or DIS units patrol a road ahead of humanitarians, has had less success, with criminals understanding that the civilian convoy is vulnerable once the security element passes through the attack zone. ¶9. (SBU) Unfortunately, the militarization of humanitarian activities has already generated the most feared consequence, that of increasingly militarized attacks on vehicle convoys targeted by criminal gangs, including those escorted by DIS units, as distinct from convoys under MINURCAT military protection. DIS units are seen as increasingly responsive in breaking up acts of criminality and responding to attacks after the fact, though less as a deterrent force -- they are also subject to direct attack, on the road and in their bases. Chad has very few essential elements of judicial process after the moment of arrest, with impunity the usual result. -------------- MASS EVACUATION AND QRF -------------- ¶10. (SBU) In the past, when attacks into Chad by armed opposition groups were seen as the primary threat, MINURCAT's air and ground transport assets and large, secure base compounds were seen as the foundation for mass evacuation of humanitarian staffs. It has been assumed that in the likelihood of such a need, MINURCAT would make good somehow on its repeated assertions that it would ensure the safety and ultimate evacuation of exposed staffs. Assumed, because no MINURCAT or UNDSS officials have provided NGOs with a defined evacuation plan from deep field locations -- in fact no plan has been forthcoming from UN DPKO in New York either. UN POL, a civilian element of MINURCAT's overall presence, has refused deployment to any area where MINURCAT Quick Reaction Forces (QRF) were more than two hours distant. NGOs were especially keen to believe that they would receive sanctuary and air lift in an outbreak of combat; departure of the MINURCAT forces would leave humanitarian agencies with few effective options for evacuation over great distances. -------------- SECURING THE HUMANITARIAN SPACE -------------- NDJAMENA 00000099 003 OF 004 ¶11. (SBU) Criminal activity targeting humanitarian workers has been on the rise in eastern Chad since the apparent withering of Chadian armed opposition groups after the failed attacks of mid-2009. No force, including a fully-deployed MINURCAT, can impose an end to the many forms of crime facing the humanitarian community. Criminal activity is already having a direct impact on freedom of movement in "humanitarian space" and access to refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs),and other conflict-affected persons. ¶12. (SBU) For example, in some areas humanitarian organizations have reduced their geographic coverage or pulled out entirely when the unwillingness of their host communities or GoC security services to provide security-through-acceptance has resulted in staff murders and kidnappings. These decisions had nothing to do with MINURCAT, however -- neither MINURCAT nor the DIS had access to the specific areas where NGOs have closed operations. ¶13. (SBU) The early withdrawal of MINURCAT nonetheless appears likely to create a vacuum in the response to the threat of violent criminal activity. MINURCAT's footprint, even at half-deployment, seems to have had a partial deterrent effect, especially against crimes committed by GoC security elements. The withdrawal of both deterrence and convoy escorts could mean that killings and kidnappings could spread to areas with larger NGO populations, resulting in additional reductions in humanitarian coverage. ¶14. (SBU) In the last weeks of 2009, MINURCAT appeared ready to consider greater coordination of activities with those of humanitarians, primarily through links with UN agencies like the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),although less so with NGOs. Specific MINURCAT activities that have become facilitative elements of the humanitarian operation include transport and security of food and non-food item freight shipments for remotely located humanitarian operations like those benefiting the new CAR refugees in Daha, and security in camps for large exercises like refugee registrations, in addition to escorts. As per its mandate, MINURCAT is currently assisting the GoC and UNHCR in preparing the relocation of Oure Cassoni refugee camp away from the Chad-Sudan border. -------------- DO IDPS WANT TO RETURN? -------------- ¶15. (SBU) The impetus for the deployment of MINURCAT and its predecessor, EUFOR, was violent inter-communal conflict (including Darfur spillover) that was happening in eastern Chad, primarily in the Sila and Assoungha Departments. This violence peaked in late 2006/early 2007, causing the IDP numbers to treble from about 60,000 to 180,000. Most violence had ended by the time the first EUFOR troops arrived. ¶16. (SBU) Although MINURCAT has no track record in this area, a possible future role for international military forces, should they be allowed to stay, would be in facilitating the return of IDPs. As in Darfur, IDPs in Chad cite security as the biggest factor preventing their return home. Without a national government (or UN Mission) that can provide the necessary security umbrella in Sila and Assoungha, the many steps to facilitating returns (supporting reconciliation, addressing land occupation, providing assistance in villages of origin, etc.) will be extremely difficult and slow. ¶17. (SBU) Beyond security concerns, factors militating against IDP returns include socio-economic factors in their current sites. There, IDPs are benefitting from a kind of accelerated urbanization, where they receive clean water and primary health care services they could never have dreamed of having before, and which will not be available to them in the areas they fled through the agency of the Chadian authorities. Life in IDP sites also provides a much more highly monetized economy, more freedom and rights for women and youth, and the possibility of education for children. The impact on all this should MINURCAT leave would be hard to predict, but the assumption that MINURCAT's staying, and building up to full troop strength, would naturally encourage IDPs to return home strikes us NDJAMENA 00000099 004 OF 004 as having complications. -------------- THE DIS AND JUDICIAL SECTOR REFORM -------------- ¶18. (SBU) The international community spent nearly $22 million on the DIS in 2008/2009 and has pledged or contributed another $17.9 million in 2010. The DIS after one year in operation has begun to have a positive impact on security within the refugee camps, and has the potential to improve the ability of NGOs to travel securely between towns and the camps. It can be hoped that, through UN-sponsored training and mentorship, the DIS can one day be a vehicle for exposing Chadian police forces and gendarmes to higher standards of professionalism and ethics. For the first time, refugees and IDPs have begun to access this focal point through which criminal acts can be reported and investigated. This has been especially evident in the DIS's increased capacity to respond to the widespread issue of gender-based violence through its cadre of female officers. Of great concern is the possibility that, should the international community's interest in the DIS end, the protective force could quickly fall apart. Programs through UNDP and MINURCAT's civilian elements are also making an effort to build the capacity of Chad's judiciary and to combat gender-based violence, but these will founder also if MINURCAT leaves. BREMNER