Chad: 22 dead in a new conflict between herders and farmers

At least 22 people were killed earlier this week in southern Chad in new clashes between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers, according to authorities who on Wednesday accused “rebels” from the Central African Republic of having started them.

On Monday, farmers from the Kodo community attacked Fulani Fulani herders’ camps in the Monts de Lam department, more than 600 km south of N’Djamena, Governor General Ahmat Dari Bazine told AFP. of the province of Logone Oriental, reached by telephone. He assures that the Kodos are Chadian “rebels” based in the Central African Republic, whose border is very close.

“The Kodos killed two Fulani herders on Monday in their camp and injured six others, and they lost two of their own” in the Foulatas’ response, the governor continued.

“Then they attacked another village where they killed four indigenous inhabitants before being pursued by gendarmes. The latter succeeded, on Tuesday, in shooting down 14 of them”, details the general, who deplores “at least 22 dead” in total.

These attacks and their toll were confirmed to AFP by Hassan Khalil, first deputy public prosecutor of Baïbokoum, capital of the Monts de Lam.

Clashes, often very deadly, between nomadic Muslim herders and sedentary indigenous farmers, mostly Christians or animists, are very frequent in this region but also in these fertile areas on the borders of Chad, Cameroon and the Central African Republic.

The latter notably accuse the former of ransacking their fields by grazing their animals, or even settling on what they consider to be their land.

But this time, without it being possible to verify it from an independent source, the governor accuses the Kodos of being Chadian “rebels” entrenched in the Central African Republic, to stir up these ancestral conflicts. “This new strategy is knowingly maintained by the Kodos in order to create problems between herders and farmers, Muslims and Christians,” assures General Dari Bazine.

The authorities in Chad and the Central African Republic regularly accuse each other of maintaining the bases of their respective rebels on their territories, who go to fight the armed forces on the other side of a very porous border and which the different communities do not take into account. in their travels.

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