A budding romance is really a marriage of convenience, posits Gamal Nkrumah Chadian President Idriss Deby's visit this week to the Sudanese capital Khartoum was hailed as "historic" by his hosts. This is the first time in six years that the Chadian leader ventured anywhere near Khartoum. Indeed, not so long ago, Deby warned that if his Sudanese counterpart President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir so much as flew over Chadian air space, that his plane would be interjected and forced to land on Chadian territory. Furthermore, Deby added that the Sudanese president would be promptly arrested and dispatched to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, where he is to stand trial for war crimes in Darfur. It is, therefore, rather surprising that Deby flew to Khartoum in the first place, and received the red carpet treatment by his Sudanese counterpart. This is a clear win for Khartoum. It is still not clear precisely what the Deby administration intends to do. But it appears that the administration's aims are far narrower than at first anticipated. Deby is a shrewd politician who has ruled his unruly oil-rich, land-locked people with an iron rod. A bone of contention between the two neighbouring states has been the accusation that their respective governments support insurgent groups in each other's territory. Chad has accused Sudan of supporting the Union of Forces for Resistance, a formidable foe of Deby that has twice in the past three years attempted almost successfully to overrun the Chadian capital. The last of these incursions was in February 2008 when the insurgents held Ndjamena for two days. In retaliation, the Chadian government airforce jets bombarded UFR positions along the Chadian- Sudanese border. The Chadian government claims that the UFR militias have taken refuge in adjacent regions of Darfur well within the territory of Sudan. Khartoum, on the other hand, accuses the Chadian government of President Deby of sheltering armed Darfur opposition groups and in particular the most powerful militias of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Deby has repeatedly denied backing JEM or any other Darfur armed opposition group. That said, even in the most rocketed part of Darfur, the ethnic affinities between several Darfur and Chadian groups are strong. The Zaghawa people, for instance, who inhabit huge swathes of territory encompassing both Chad and Darfur, have close links with their kith and kin across the artificially created border that was arbitrarily drawn last century by the former French and British colonial authorities. The ethnic Zaghawa people and other groups habitually disregard the contemporary borders between Chad and Sudan much to the chagrin of Ndjamena and Khartoum. It is for this reason that the two governments have decided to deploy a joint force. The two sides agreed this week that for the first six months, the Sudanese side would lead the joint force. Both countries are determined that they will not become potential bases of operations for their respective armed opposition groups. Such parochialism may be linked to interference by regional and Western powers. Libya, France and the United States have their favourites. They likewise have vested interests in the booming oil industry in both Chad and Sudan. The Chinese, too, are interested in the fortunes of the two African nations. The tasks facing the two leaders of Chad and Sudan are thus immense. Chadian motives are a mix of idealism and political ambition. The two countries are scheduled to hold requisite presidential and parliamentary elections this year. The adverse side-effects of the growing dominance of Ndjamena in the domestic affairs of Sudan add to a sense of unease in Khartoum. Ndjamena is enjoying its burgeoning political power, while its nemesis Khartoum is treading carefully over the implications of the newfound friendship between the two countries. Today Ndjamena has pot-holes, where formerly it didn't have roads. Khartoum, too, is fast fulfilling a facelift. Pot-holed roads, power shortages, devastating droughts, frightful floods, maleficent mismanagement and other calamities plague both capitals. Both countries have immense oil wealth which, if used even marginally to the benefit of their peoples, could pave many roads in their budding friendship.
