The crisis in Darfur, Sudan, which has been trickling into Chad for the better part of three years, is now bleeding freely across the border, says a report from Human Rights Watch. A counterinsurgency carried out by the Sudanese government and its militias against rebel groups in Darfur, characterized by war crimes and “ethnic cleansing,” has forcibly displaced almost two million civilians in Darfur and another 220,000 people who have fled across the border into Chad. The same ethnic “Janjaweed” militias that have committed systematic abuses in Darfur have staged cross-border raids into Chad, attacking Darfurian refugees and Chadian villagers alike, seizing their livestock and killing those who resist.

The rhetoric may be flying, with outbursts over "a fool's agreement" and "neo-colonialist and imperialist behaviour," but most observers believe the oil row between the Chadian government and the World Bank will end in a face-saving compromise. The stand-off began in December when Chad's parliament passed an amendment to the law governing how oil revenues can be spent, prompting the World Bank to suspend $124 million in loans and cut the flow of petrodollars to the landlocked, impoverished country.