PARIS, July 28, 2007 (LPAC)--While France, with full endorsement of the British, is rushing to send a military intervention into Chad and Central African Republic, (separately from the force Sudan agreed to with the UN), purportedly to fight the effects of massacres purportedly organized by the Sudan government against rebel groups and populations in Darfur, it is most interesting to discover who has been financing those rebels.

According to a June 3 article by Richard Labevière, the editor in chief of Defense, Prince Bandar bin Sultan went to Sudan in April to meet with his old friend Mahamat Nouri, the head of the UFDD, the main opposition organization against Chad President Idriss Déby, as well as other rebel leaders involved in Darfur. Defense is the publication of the UNION-IHEDN, the grouping of 39 associations of those who received training at the Institute of Advanced National Defense Studies (IHEDN).

According to Defense, Prince Bandar is trying to constitute a "united Arab front, a Sunni front in this part of Africa," states an Egyptian diplomat based in Khartoum, quoted by Labevière. Bandar gave 80 all-terrain vehicles and four small suitcases full of greenbacks for more than $1 million to the UFDD head. The transactions were apparently facilitated by the subsidiary of a large Saudi bank, with large presence in Khartoum.

In this context, continues Labevière, Saudi NGOs have just created two important subsidiaries in Khartoum, with the official aim of "opening Koranic schools, building mosques, and health clinics in the border areas of western Sudan, all these being covert organizations for military assistance to the various armed organizations of Darfur."

The effects of this intervention on Chad, who had been trying to collaborate with the Sudan government to reduce the violence in the area where the two countries share a border (eastern Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan) are shown by a statement by Chadian president Idriss Deby this week. He said talks by the Chad government with the Chadian opposition are deadlocked because Sudan is backing the rebels in their position. "The Sudanese authorities are preventing us from reaching a compromise to solve the crisis." Idriss Deby told the Paris based Africa No 1 radio.

Noting that Bandar is coordinating with the Bush-Cheney Administration, Labevière says that this entire policy will not only "add deadly confusion to the situation in Central Africa but could extend to the whole of the Sahel, and also spring up in Maghreb, where last April 10th-11th murderous attacks bloodied Casablanca and Algiers."