It's the biggest adventure in the aid world—and by far the toughest. JOSHUA HAMMER takes a hard look at the relief effort in the war-torn nation of Chad, where rebels stage their raids on neighboring Darfur and the humanitarian fallout has become the worst show on earth.
The road to hell begins in N'djamena, a Third World backwater that seems to cram all of Africa's problems—corruption, neglect, war, stagnation, tribal rivalry, disease—into a few dusty, desperate square miles. The temperature pushed 120 on a June afternoon as photographer Marco Di Lauro and I weaved through the streets of Chad's capital, following Idriss, a jellabiya-clad rebel from the Justice and Equality Movement, the biggest of at least half a dozen factions waging war with government forces across the border in the Sudanese province of Darfur.
We were on our way to an interview with JEM's head of intelligence, who happened to be in town that week. After leaving the Pekin Hotel, our Chinese-run bed-and-breakfast, we skirted the Chari River, a murky stream populated by hippopotami and by smugglers who wade across the shallow water from neighboring Cameroon, delivering electronics and other goods to far more impoverished Chad. Blocks from the river,
Newly arrived refugees wait outside the UN's Oure Cassoni camp, near Bahai, Chad (Photograph by Marco Di Lauro)
red-bereted members of the Presidential Guard patrolled grim-faced in front of the concrete Palais Rose, the official residence of unofficial president-for-life Idriss Déby Itno. Next to the palace stood Chad's national museum, scarred by a February 2008 rebel attack that left gaping holes in the roof and the bones of an elephant visible through a perforated wall. Vendors loitered on sidewalks in front of pastel-painted, arched colonial buildings, hawking Viagra, fake Swiss Army knives, and Celtel mobile-phone cards. This forlorn center of N'Djamena's commercial life consisted of two banks, a French bakery, the Air France and Ethiopian Airlines ticket offices, and a handful of expat-friendly restaurants.
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