Rebels in Chad have declared war on the French and U.N. peacekeeping forces that are being dispatched into the region to protect refugees from both Chad and Sudan.

Yves Sorokobi, spokesman for the U.N., said the rebellion in the eastern part of the country borders the Darfur region of Sudan, and the area has been a “theater of repeated rebellion.”

A source from the State Department, who asked to remain anonymous because of department regulations, said there are currently two rebel groups fighting in the eastern region of the country, near Abeche. The two groups, the Rally of Forces for Change and the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development, participated in a peace accord Oct. 25, and both groups were supposed to integrate into the Chadian army. However, the source said, the peace accords broke down, and the rebels have said that they “consider themselves to be at war and they consider themselves to be protecting the region that they occupy.”

The UFDD released a statement to the press stating that it would attack any French or other foreign U.N. peacekeepers that entered the region.

The State Department source said the European Union began planning to deploy peacekeepers around the same time that the accords broke down.

Sorokobi said that it is not unusual for peacekeepers to be threatened when they are deployed, but that the situation was complicated by the several thousand internally displaced refugees from other parts of Chad and other refugees that have come across the border from the Darfur conflict.

“[The] conflict was bad enough on its own, but it has become intertwined with the conflict in Darfur, as eastern Chad borders the Darfur region of Sudan, and many of the ethnic groups in Darfur are similar to eastern Chad,” wrote David Cunningham, assistant professor of political science, in an e-mail.

“The country has essentially been in continual civil war since about 1965.”

About two months ago, the U.N. Security Council decided that, in order for their discipline deployment to the region to be effective, there would also need to be a peacekeeping presence on the northeastern side of Chad, Sorokobi said.

“Their main mandate is to protect civilians,” Sorokobi said. “They must ensure the safety of the refugee camps and facilitate humanitarian work.”

Additionally, he said, they will be there to “ensure the stability of the whole region by protecting supply roads” and protecting humanitarian workers that are there to aid refugees.

Large camps house many of the refugees from Darfur, and smaller camps house the Chadian refugees. A great deal of unmonitored border crossing and skirmishes also take place due to that activity, the State Department source said.

Cunningham wrote in an e-mail that there has been a long history between the Chadian rebels and France.

“Chad was a French colony and, particularly in the early stages of the war, France provided military support to the government in [the] N’djamena [region] against various rebel forces,” Cunningham wrote in an e-mail.

“The French have actually put out a statement saying, of course, that they do not [support Chad President Idriss Deby], that their military presence has nothing to do with the conflict,” the source from the State Department said.

There has not, as of yet, been any conflict between the rebels and the U.N. forces, Sorokobi said, and the peacekeeping force that was authorized to enter the country is not a solely French force.

“There is absolutely no restriction of the citizenship of the soldiers, as long as they are from the EU,” Sorokobi said.

He did acknowledge France, having historical colonial ties, may be spotlighted because France has had a prominent presence in Chad.