The Libyan president, Muammar Gadafy, has sent troops to the volatile border between Chad and Sudan as a regional alternative to UN peacekeepers, but their presence has failed to prevent clashes.
The troops slipped into Chad a month ago and are policing the border, while Eritrea has established a token army presence on the Sudanese side, diplomatic sources in Chad said. The move appears to have been orchestrated by Colonel Gadafy to weaken the argument for a UN mission.
Despite the deployment up to 400 villagers were killed on the Chad side of the border a fortnight ago, and Chadian and Sudanese troops clashed on Monday when Chad's troops pursued a group accused of the massacre across the border.
The region around Abeche city in Chad is braced for Sudanese reprisals amid signs the four-year crisis in Darfur, western Sudan, could become a regional conflagration. More than 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million driven from their homes, including upwards of 120,000 Chadians in the past year.
The deployment of observers was part of the Tripoli accord agreed by Libya, Chad and Sudan in February 2006. It is only being implemented now, as Chad and Sudan come under intense pressure to accept UN forces. Tony Blair has proposed a no-fly zone over Darfur, enforced by air strikes on Sudan if necessary, if Khartoum does not agree to let in the UN.
John Negroponte, the US deputy secretary of state, is on a week-long visit to the region to put pressure on both Chad and Sudan. Khartoum is reportedly close to agreement on a UN force but President Omar al-Bashir made an agreement last year, only to renege on it within months.
Foreign observers in the region believe Col Gadafy has been encouraging Chadian and Sudanese resistance. "Gadafy doesn't want a western footprint in the region, because he thinks he'll be the next Saddam Hussein," said one western observer, adding that the Libyan-Eritrean observers seemed intended as a "spoiler" to proposals for a UN force. "They are here to drink tea and do nothing much more."
The Libyans and Eritreans have joined a substantial Chadian government force in the region that concentrates on fighting rebel factions, and a garrison of 1,200 French soldiers who rarely venture beyond their fortifications in Abeche. None of these national forces have seen protection of civilians as their role.
The brutal raids on the two Chadian border villages, Tiero and Marena - carried out on March 31 by Arab Janjaweed militia, possibly with the help of a Chadian rebel faction - killed between 200 and 400, and added 10,000 to the ranks of homeless. They are sheltering under trees in daytime temperatures of 45C (113F), with meagre supplies of food and water trucked in each day by humanitarian agencies.
Matthew Conway, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Abeche, who visited the villages a few days after the attack, said: "We've never seen an attack on this scale with this number of dead. The goal here was to kill. The victims were pursued far outside the village and shot down."
Survivors said one group of attackers were Arab herdsmen on horse and camel. Some seemed to be from Sudan but others were recognised as locals. It confirms suspicions that the Janjaweed pattern of herdsmen pillaging villages, backed by Khartoum, has spread across the border.