{"id":156282,"date":"2018-03-13T02:55:24","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T06:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=156282"},"modified":"2018-03-13T02:55:24","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T06:55:24","slug":"tillerson-visits-chad-and-gets-an-earful-about-us-travel-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/03\/13\/tillerson-visits-chad-and-gets-an-earful-about-us-travel-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Tillerson visits Chad and gets an earful about US travel ban"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tillerson's<\/a>
Tillerson’s message of growing U.S. co-operation with Chad, a key counterterrorism partner, was overshadowed by palpable hurt and resentment over Chad’s position on an inglorious list that includes North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. Tillerson, who became the most senior U.S. official to set foot in Chad, expressed hope the restrictions will be lifted. (Shutterstock)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

N’DJAMENA,\u00a0Chad\u00a0– On an unlikely visit to dusty and desolate\u00a0Chad, Secretary of State Rex\u00a0Tillerson\u00a0on Monday told the African nation’s citizens they’re welcome in the United States. It wasn’t enough to overcome a Trump administration travel ban that\u00a0Chad’s top diplomat declared an injustice.<\/p>\n

Tillerson’s message of growing U.S. co-operation with\u00a0Chad, a key counterterrorism partner, was overshadowed by palpable hurt and resentment over\u00a0Chad’s position on an inglorious list that includes North Korea, Iran and Venezuela.\u00a0Tillerson, who became the most senior U.S. official to set foot in\u00a0Chad, expressed hope the restrictions will be lifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe placement of\u00a0Chad\u00a0in this list was an injustice done to\u00a0Chad,\u201d Foreign Minister Mahamat Zene Cherif said. He said Chadian President Idriss Deby had \u201cexpressed his incomprehension\u201d to\u00a0Tillerson\u00a0about the restrictions.<\/p>\n

In Trump’s most recent set of travel restrictions issued in September,\u00a0Chad\u00a0landed on the visa ban list thanks to an office supply glitch that prevented the country from supplying Homeland Security officials with recent samples of its passports, The Associated Press has reported. There were other technicalities, too, including\u00a0Chad’s inability to adequately share public safety and terrorism-related information with U.S. officials who screen foreigners seeking visas to enter the U.S.<\/p>\n

At the time, Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster said\u00a0Chad\u00a0could be off the list \u201cmaybe in a couple of months.\u201d In December, a U.S. team travelled to\u00a0Chad\u00a0to work with local officials on outstanding problems. And in the months since, the U.S. has repeatedly praised\u00a0Chad’s efforts to improve its compliance with U.S. requirements.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court is expected to decide the legality of Trump’s travel bans in the coming months. In December, the high court said the latest version of ban could be fully enforced while appeals make their way through the courts.<\/p>\n

Questioned repeatedly by the local Chadian media about why it remains on the list,\u00a0Tillerson\u00a0said the visa restrictions were necessary \u201cbecause of all the conflict that exists on\u00a0Chad’s borders,\u201d even as he gave the country credit for \u201cmany, many important positive steps\u201d to comply. He said the United States later this month would prepare a report on\u00a0Chad’s progress that Trump would review in April.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese steps I think are going to allow us to begin to normalize the travel relationship with\u00a0Chad,\u201d\u00a0Tillerson\u00a0said. But, he added, \u201cWe have to wait for the final report.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, that’s no reason why the two countries can’t continue working closely together to fight growing threats to Africa’s Sahel region posed by al-Qaida affiliates like Boko Haram and the newly designated West Africa wing of the Islamic State group,\u00a0Tillerson\u00a0and\u00a0Chad’s foreign minister said.<\/p>\n

As the U.S. and its partners near a defeat of IS in Iraq and Syria, concern is mounting about the extremist group’s spread to other parts of the world, including Africa and Southeast Asia.\u00a0Chad, with its long border with Libya and proximity to Nigeria and Mali, is particularly affected by the threat of instability and extremism in the region.<\/p>\n

In October, shortly after the U.S. slapped the visa restrictions in\u00a0Chad,\u00a0Tillerson’s State Department announced a $60 million pledge to a newly formed \u201cG5 Sahel\u201d regional security force that aims to counter IS and other extremist groups. The United States has also sought to assist another regional campaign, the Multinational Joint Task Force, that includes\u00a0Chad, Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon and Niger.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has been vocal in its praise for\u00a0Chad’s efforts on counterterrorism. The country is known to have one of the strongest and most effective militaries in Africa and has been a driving force behind the new G5 Sahel unit.<\/p>\n

So\u00a0Chad’s leaders felt blindsided when Trump added their citizens to the travel restrictions list, lumping\u00a0Chad\u00a0together with U.S. enemies like North Korea. Especially bruising was that Trump’s reasoning relied on a strict and literal interpretation of new Homeland Security requirements that seemed to elevate form over the substance of the U.S.-Chad\u00a0relationship.<\/p>\n

A key reason\u00a0Chad\u00a0landed on the list: It ran out of passport paper, and couldn’t provide the U.S. Homeland Security Department with a recent sample of its passports. Although\u00a0Chad\u00a0offered pre-existing samples of its passports, it wasn’t good enough for the U.S., Trump administration officials said at the time.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Chad\u00a0issue has emerged as a sore point between the State Department and Homeland Security, exposing fault lines within Trump’s administration. Emphasizing the strategic U.S. interest in maintaining close ties, the State Department and the Pentagon didn’t want\u00a0Chad\u00a0on the list in the first place and have argued for its removal. Homeland Security has insisted nothing can be done until the review of\u00a0Chad’s progress is complete.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

N’DJAMENA,\u00a0Chad\u00a0– On an unlikely visit to dusty and desolate\u00a0Chad, Secretary of State Rex\u00a0Tillerson\u00a0on Monday told the African nation’s citizens they’re …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":140398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[48114,48115,13441,14328],"class_list":["post-156282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","tag-foreign-minister-mahamat-zene-cherif","tag-multinational-joint-task-force","tag-rex-tillerson","tag-trump-administration","mauthors-josh-lederman","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}