African Affairs Advance Access published online on March 13, 2008
African Affairs, doi:10.1093/afraf/adn004
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Fluid Loyalties in a Regional Crisis: Chadian ‘Ex-Liberators’ in the Central African Republic
Marielle Debos (marielle.debos{at}sciences-po.org) is a PhD candidate at Sciences Po/CERI (France)
This article examines a neglected pattern of the regional crisis in Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic: the cross-border activities of combatants with fluid loyalties. The trajectories of Chadian ‘ex-liberators’ in CAR, which have been little documented, are used to illustrate the regional movements of armed men. The article explains how unemployed Chadian soldiers were recruited to fight with François Bozizé in CAR and why many of them joined other armed groups after Bozizé's takeover. The reconversions of armed combatants, who may easily shift allegiance and cross borders to carry on with their ‘politico-military careers’, is thus a structural characteristic of the current conflict, which has major implications both at the local and transnational levels. The article concludes that freelance military entrepreneurs’ trajectories are crucial in understanding the unfolding of this regional crisis.
She lectures in Political Science at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. This article is an updated version of a research paper commissioned by the Social Science Research Council (Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum) in February 2007. It is a contribution to a research programme on the transformations of war sponsored by the French National Agency for Research. This analysis is based on ten months of fieldwork in Chad carried out between September 2004 and September 2006. The author would like to thank Roland Marchal and the anonymous reviewer of African Affairs for their useful comments, as well as COOPI and Pierre Romba for their precious assistance during her fieldwork at the Chad–CAR border.