Humanitarian intervention by one of the great countries of democracy

French troops and warplanes tell Chadian rebels to knock it off. These Chadian rebels are the ones that the Sudanese government is accused of supporting. Note that France is not really making many friends for itself in Chad by this action; Idriss Déby is pretty unpopular. He is not a tyrant, but surrounded by the usual corruption allegations and he harasses the opposition; he's a solid mid-table kind of Bolton Wanderers of African strongman. On the other hand, he's almost certainly better than becoming a secondary theatre of the West Darfur civil war, and it's not like taking a few pot-shots at the rebels is going to lead directly to Abu Ghraib, so well done France I say.

Of course, this presumably means that I am an anti-American and a hypocrite, because ... well hey it's France, and it is canonical that the EU is doing nothing about Darfur. This was all in the Economist last week by the way, so I count it frankly surprising that people are still pushing the line that the Yanks are the only ones who care, on the strength of Colin Powell having used the g-word in a speech a year ago and done nack-all since.

They are also having elections in Chad the week after next, which are obviously contributing greatly to the overall instability, but they might paint people's fingers purple, which would be nice.