With the election campaign in full-swing, the spread of Darfur’s cancer into Chad hasn’t received much attention. But for the last couple of days, there has been full-scale warfare in the Chadian capital, N’djamena, and it’s a reflection of the international community’s passivity toward Darfur.

The fighting is by Chadian rebels, and so it sometimes comes across as a civil war. And in part, it is. But it’s also a proxy invasion of Chad by Sudan, for the rebel groups operate from a base in Darfur and are armed by Sudan. The Sudanese leadership wants to overthrow the Chadian government so that it will have a pawn next door, enabling it to cut off supply lines to Darfur rebels. Sudan’s timing was also affected by plans for a European force to arrive on the Chad/Darfur border in the coming days — it wanted to overthrow Chad’s government before that happened.

This is old hat for Sudan. During the long war with South Sudan, it sponsored a similar proxy force, the Lord’s Resistance Army, to invade northern Uganda. It’s a relatively cheap tactic, for only 2,000 Chadian rebels have a real chance of overthrowing the country’s government. President Deby of Chad is corrupt and undemocratic, but he’s incomparably better than the Sudanese genocidaires trying to depose him, and I hope the French forces in Chad will use their military planes to strafe the attackers and restore order.

If Chad’s government now collapses and the country falls apart, then the Darfur madness will be spread over a far larger canvas — one more symptom of the international community’s paralysis in dealing with genocide.