Darfur and the Chad insurgency

Chad has been providing refuge to refugees and rebels from Darfur in Sudan, probably less from sympathy than from inability to do anything about it. Wadai in Chad is right over the border from Darfur. Wadai and Darfur used to be neighboring kingdoms. The capital of Chad is all the way across the country, near Cameroon. Chad itself has never had a democratic government and is one of the most artificial, unviable and ungovernable states in Africa.

The government in Chad has accused the government in Sudan of supporting the rebels in Chad, as Sudan has accused Chad of supporting the rebels in Sudan. Maybe they have, maybe they don't have enough control of, or enough concern with, the area to do anything about it. Modern states in Africa are often more a way to get money from the International Community (OECD? G8+? what does that term mean?) in foreign aid, especially in French Africa where La France pays for the government expenses in order to maintain French as the official language.

The Chad rebels are promising a national conference, which has worked in many other Francophone countries, but as long as French is the official language, and as long as literacy rates (measured in French of course) are miniscule, there is not much hope for democracy.