A Crisis-Complex, Not Complex Crises: Conflict Dynamics in the Sudan, Chad, and Central African Republic Tri-Border Area 1 PATRICK BERG T he Darfur conflict in western Sudan, with its millions of refugees, hun­dreds of thousands of fatalities, and continuous violence against the civilian population has been a matter of concern to the general public since its escalation in autumn 2003. Refugee movements and cross-border raids have also drawn attention to neighboring areas in eastern Chad and the north of the Central African Republic. There has been a dramatic de­terioration in the security situation there since the end of 2005, which most observers consider as a territorial spill over of the Darfur conflict. But this account falls short as an explanation of the crises in the neigh­boring countries, which were far from peaceful before the outbreak of the Darfur crisis. Both Chad and the Central African Republic have been in a state of crisis almost incessantly since gaining their independence from French colonial rule in the 1960s. What may now be observed in the border areas of the three countries, therefore, is not the extension of one conflict, but rather the increasing intertwining of three individual con­flicts, each with its own causes and history, into a highly complex crisis system. 1 Chad: A Ruinous Struggle for the State Apparatus Chad has been in permanent crisis since independence from the French colonial power in 1960. A whole series of authoritarian regimes have suc­ceeded one another, with change generally being effected by a military coup. Every one of these regimes was characterized by an absolute con­centration of power in the person of the president and a small – mostly ethnically homogenous – leadership clique. This exclusion of other 1. This article is an abridged and updated version of the study»The Dynamics of Con­flict in the Tri-Border Region of the Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic,« Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung(2008). 72 Berg, Central African Conflict Dynamics ipg 4/2008