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CHAD, a country study
Federal Research Division
Library of Congress
Edited by Thomas Collelo
Research Completed December 1988
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Foreword
This volume is one in a continuing series of books prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program sponsored by the Department of the Army...
Most books in the series deal with a particular foreign country, describing and analyzing its political, economic, social, and national security systems and institutions, and examining the interrelationships of those systems and the ways they are shaped by cultural factors. The authors seek to provide a basic understanding of the observed society, striving for a dynamic rather than a static portrayal. Particular attention is devoted to the people who make up the society, their origins, dominant beliefs and values, their common interests and the issues on which they are divided, the nature and extent of their involvement with national institutions, and their attitudes toward each other and toward their social system and political order.
The books represent the analysis of the authors and should not be construed as an expression of an official United States government position, policy, or decision. The authors have sought to adhere to accepted standards of scholarly objectivity. Corrections, additions, and suggestions for changes from readers will be welcomed for use in future editions.
Louis R. Mortimer
Chief
Federal Research Division
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C. 20540-5220
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank individuals and private institutions who gave their time, research materials, and expertise to the production of this book. The authors are also grateful to members of the Federal Research Division staff who contributed directly to the preparation of the manuscript. These people include Richard F. Nyrop, who reviewed all drafts and served as liaison with the sponsoring agency; Martha E. Hopkins, who managed editing and production; Barbara Edgerton and Izella Watson, who provided wordprocessing support; and Helen C. Metz, who reviewed the text's French terminology.
Marilyn L. Majeska, Sharon Costello, Richard Kollodge, Lea Knott, and Michael Pleasants edited the manuscript; prepublication editorial review was performed by Beverly Wolpert; Shirley Kessell compiled the index. Diann J. Johnson of the Library of Congress Composing Unit prepared the camara-ready copy, under the supervision of Peggy Pixley.
Inestimable graphics support was provided by David P. Cabitto, assisted by Sandra K. Cotugno and Kimberly A. Lord; Ms. Lord also designed the cover artwork and the illustrations on the title page of each chapter. In addition, thanks are owed to Carolina E. Forrester, who reviewed the map drafts, and Harriett R. Blood, who prepared the topography and drainage map.
Finally, the authors acknowledge the generosity of the many individuals and public and private agencies who allowed their photographs to be used in this study. They are indebted especially to those who contributed original work not previously published.
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Table of Contents
* CHAD
* Foreword
* ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* PREFACE
* COUNTRY PROFILE
o COUNTRY
o GEOGRAPHY
o SOCIETY
o ECONOMY
o TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
o GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
o NATIONAL SECURITY
* INTRODUCTION
* Chapter 1. Historical Setting
o PREHISTORY
o ERA OF EMPIRES, A.D. 900-1900
* Kanem-Borno
* Bagirmi and Wadai
o ARRIVAL OF THE FRENCH AND COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION
o DECOLONIZATION POLITICS
o TOMBALBAYE ERA, 1960-75
* Tombalbaye's Governance: Policies and Methods
* Rebellion in Eastern and Northern Chad
* Fall of the Tombalbaye Government
o CIVIL WAR AND NORTHERN DOMINANCE, 1975-82
* Malloum's Military Government, 1975-78
* Civil War and Multilateral Mediation, 1979-82
* Chapter 2. The Society and Its Environment
o PHYSICAL SETTING
* The Land
* Water Systems
* Climate
* Saharan Region
* Sahelian Region
* Soudanian Region
o POPULATION
o LANGUAGES AND ETHNIC GROUPS
* Nilo-Saharan Languages
* Central Saharan Languages
* Ouaddaïan Languages
* Mabang Languages
* Sara-Bongo-Baguirmi Languages
* Boua
* Afro-Asiatic Languages
* Chadic Languages
* Arabic
* Congo-Kordofanian Languages
* Moundang-Toupouri-Mboum
* Fulani
* Banda-Ngbaka
o SOCIAL STRUCTURE
* Toubou and Daza: Nomads of the Sahara
* Arabs: Semisedentary Peoples of the Sahel
* Sara: Sedentary Peoples of the Soudanian Zone
o RELIGION
* Classical African Religions
* Islam
* Tenets of Islam
* Islam in Chad
* Christianity
* Protestantism in Chad
* Roman Catholicism in Chad
o EDUCATION
* Primary Education
* Secondary Education
* Higher Education
* Vocational Education
o HEALTH AND MEDICAL SERVICES
* Chapter 3. The Economy
o GROWTH AND STRUCTURE OF THE ECONOMY
o ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
o AGRICULTURE
* Cotton
* Background of Cotton Cultivation
* Production Factors
* Administrative Structure
* Pricing Mechanisms
* Restructuring the System
* Subsistence Farming
* Sorghum and Millet
* Wheat
* Rice and Corn
* Peanuts
* Tubers
* Livestock
* Fishing
* Forestry
o MANUFACTURING, MINING, AND UTILITIES
* Manufacturing
* Mining
* Water and Electricity
o TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
* Land Transport
* Air Transport
* Communications
o TRADE AND COMMERCE
* Exports
* Imports
* Direction of Trade
o BALANCE OF PAYMENTS AND FINANCE
* Balance of Payments
* Banking and Finance
* Government Finances
o THE NATIONAL DEBT AND FOREIGN ASSISTANCE
* National Debt
* Foreign Assistance
* Chapter 4. Government and Politics
o POLITICAL BACKGROUND
* Preindependence Factions
* Southern Dominance, 1960-1978
* Transition to Northern Rule
o STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT
* Constitutional System
* President
* Council of Ministers
* National Advisory Council
* Regional Government
* Judicial System
o POLITICAL DYNAMICS
* Factionalism
* National Union for Independence and Revolution
* Political Style
* Mass Media
o FOREIGN RELATIONS
* Relations with France
* Relations with Libya
* Relations with Nigeria and Sudan
* Relations with Other African States
* Relations with the United States
* Relations with Arab States
* Chapter 5. National Security
o EXTERNAL AND DOMESTIC SECURITY CONCERNS
o THE ARMED FORCES
* Origins and Early Development
* Organization of the National Security Establishment
* The Chadian National Armed Forces
* Training
* Equipment
* The Air Force
* Defense Expenditures
o CIVIL CONFLICT AND LIBYAN INTERVENTION
* The FROLINAT Rebellion, 1965-79
* First Libyan Intervention, 1980-81
* Habré's Return to Power and Second Libyan Intervention, 1982-84
* Repelling Libya's Occupying Force, 1985-87
o FOREIGN MILITARY COOPERATION
* The French Military Role in Chad
* United States Military Aid
o INTERNAL SECURITY AND PUBLIC ORDER
* Police Services
* The Criminal Justice System
* Internal Security Conditions
* Appendices
o Appendix A. Tables
o Appendix B. Principal Armed Factions, 1975-87
* Bibliography
* Glossary
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PREFACE
Since the publication of the Area Handbook for Chad in 1972, Chadian society has experienced almost uninterrupted turmoil. The government in power in 1972, which was dominated by southern ethnic groups, fell to a military coup d'état in 1975. By 1978 an insurgent group, composed mostly of northerners, had displaced the military regime, and in 1982 a different rebel organization came to power. These years also saw the coming and going of foreign troops, most notably those of France and Libya. Adding to these politicomilitary machinations was a several-year-long drought that produced famine and a flow of refugees and rendered the economy dependent on the generosity of France and the international donor community.
Although Chad: A Country Study contains some material from the 1972 edition, it is basically a new book. Like its predecessor, this volume is an attempt to treat in a concise and objective manner the dominant social, political, economic, and military aspects of contemporary Chadian society. Sources of information included scholarly journals and monographs, official reports of governments and international organizations, foreign and domestic newspapers, and numerous periodicals. The authors have emphasized the use of foreign-language sources to a greater extent than in the past. Nevertheless, as a result of the warfare during the 1980s, up-to-date information on social and economic issues was scarce; little fieldwork had been done, and few government reports had been published.
Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book, and a brief annotated bibliographic note on sources recommended for further reading appears at the end of each chapter. Measurements are given in the metric system; a conversion table is provided to assist readers unfamiliar with metric measurements (see table 1, Appendix A). A glossary is included, and, to help readers identify numerous armies and militias, Appendix B, Principal Armed Factions, 1975-87, is provided.
To the extent possible, place-names follow the system adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names; often these vary from conventional French usage. Because there is no standard to guide the spelling of proper names, the most common journalistic usages have been followed.
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Country Profile
COUNTRY
Formal Name: Republic of Chad.
Short Form: Chad.
Term for Citizens: Chadian(s).
Capital: N'Djamena.
Independence: August 11, 1960 (from France).
GEOGRAPHY
Size: Approximately 1,284,000 square kilometers.
Topography: Northern third desert, with mountains in north and plateaus in northeast; central third broad, arid savanna with Lake Chad in west, massif in center, and highlands in east; southern third wooded and humid lowlands, intersected by rivers.
Climate: Northern Saharan zone generally hot and dry; central sahelian zone mostly dry with rainy season from June to early September; southern soudanian zone tropical with rainy season lasting from April to October.
SOCIETY
Population: Estimated at 5 million to 5.2 million in 1985, most of which concentrated in capital and southern third of country.
Education and Literacy: Education compulsory until age twelve, but only about 40 percent of primary-school-aged children attended in late 1980s. Overall literacy rate about 15 percent in 1982.
Health and Welfare: Years of civil strife, drought, and overall impoverishment have kept health care at low level. Few existing medical facilities concentrated in capital and major cities in south. Life expectancy in late 1970s about forty-three years for women and thirty-nine years for men.
Languages: French and Arabic official languages, Sara common in south, more than 100 others spoken.
Ethnic Groups: More than 200 distinct ethnic groups; Toubou common in north, Arabs in sahelian zone, Sara in soudanian zone.
Religion: More than half of population Muslim; rest adhere to traditional African religions or Christianity.
ECONOMY
Gross Domestic Product (GDP): About US$817 million in 1986; US$160 per capita. In mid-1980s war, drought, famine, and low prices for cotton made Chad one of five poorest countries in world.
Agriculture: Contributed about 46 percent of GDP in 1986. Dominated by cotton grown in south. Approximately 83 percent of economically active population farmers or herders. Sorghum and millet major food crops.
Industry: Not well developed but contributed almost 18 percent of GDP in 1986. Employed only 5 percent of work force. Sector dominated by agribusiness. Mining, especially oil extraction, held some promise of development.
Imports: US$206.1 million in 1986, mainly manufactured goods and food, mostly from France and United States.
Exports: US$98.6 million in 1986, of which cotton constituted 43 percent. Remainder meat, fish, and animal products. Most exports went to other parts of Africa and Western Europe.
Fiscal Year: Calendar year.
Currency: African Financial Community (Communauté Financière Africaine) franc (CFA F), used by fourteen nations and freely convertible to French francs (FF). In December 1988, CFA F298 equaled US$1.
TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
Railroads: None. Closest rail terminals Ngaoundéré (Cameroon) and Maiduguri (Nigeria).
Roads: About 7,300 kilometers of partially maintained roads, of which 1,260 kilometers considered all-weather roads; no paved roads in 1987. About 24,000 kilometers of unimproved tracks.
Inland Waterways: Chari and Logone rivers principal branches of approximately 2,000-kilometer-long navigable system.
Ports: None. Closest port at Douala, Cameroon.
Airports: International airport at N'Djamena; smaller airfields at Abéché, Moundou, and Sarh; small dirt strips scattered throughout country.
Telecommunications: One of least developed systems in Africa. All telecommunications passed through Paris.
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Government: Governmental system based on Fundamental Law of October 18, 1982, which served as interim constitution. Fundamental Law promulgated after Armed Forces of the North (Forces Armées du Nord--FAN) wrested control from incumbent government; in late 1980s, former FAN leaders still held many important positions. Fundamental Law gives president overriding authority for controlling all aspects of government. New constitution being drafted in 1989. In 1988 presidentially appointed Council of Ministers served as cabinet. No elected legislative body, but thirty-member National Advisory Council provided forum for limited debate. Judicial system based on French civil law but modified to include variety of customary and Islamic legal interpretations. In late 1980s, civil and military courts sometimes had overlapping jurisdictions.
Politics: Chadian Civil War and factionalism have dominated political events since mid-1960s. After its victory in 1982, Command Council of the Armed Forces of the North (Conseil de Commandement des Forces Armées du Nord--CCFAN) was dissolved and in June 1984 replaced by sole political party, National Union for Independence and Revolution (Union Nationale pour l'Indépendance et la Révolution--UNIR). UNIR, led by president, had fourteen-member Executive Bureau and eighty-member Central Committee. Party used mainly to integrate former government opponents into new regime. No elections planned as of late 1988.
Foreign Affairs: Since independence, external affairs governed by France, Chad's colonizer, and Libya, aggressive neighbor to north. Relations with France have wavered, but in late 1980s France provided some of Chad's air defense and other security needs, and French financial interests helped sustain economy. Libya has claimed and occupied Aozou Strip (see Glossary), aided several antigovernment rebel factions, and intervened militarily. In late 1988, relations with Libya were restored, so that Chad had amicable relations with all its neighbors. United States supported government and provided military and humanitarian assistance.
International Organizations: Member of African Development Bank, West African Economic Community, Conference of East and Central African States, European Community, Group of 77, World Bank, International Cotton Advisory Committee, Islamic Development Bank, International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, Interpol, Lake Chad Basin Commission, Nonaligned Movement, Organization of African Unity, Afro-Malagasy and Mauritian Common Organization, Organization of the Islamic Conference, United Nations.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Armed Forces: In 1987 consisted of army of 28,000, air force of fewer than 200, and Presidential Guard of 3,600. Conscription for periods of one year or longer imposed erratically.
Military Units: Main army units included 3 operational infantry battalions and 127 infantry companies, with roughly 400 soldiers in each battalion and 100 to 150 in each company. Armored fighting vehicles organized into separate squadrons. Air force had no combat aircraft. Small inventory of aircraft provided marginal transport, reconnaissance, and counterinsurgency capabilities. Country divided into twelve military zones, plus separate military region in north.
Foreign Military Assistance: France traditional supplier of arms, matériel, and training. Since 1983 French aid supplemented by matériel and equipment from United States. Vast quantities of Libyan weaponry, aircraft, and vehicles--mostly of Soviet manufacture--captured in battle during 1987, some of which incorporated into Chadian stocks.
Defense Expenditures: According to Chadian government figures, defense costs were CFA F8.4 billion in 1986, or about 35 percent of annual government budget. Actual spending believed to be much higher, and official figure did not include all French contributions toward military expenses.
Internal Security Forces: National Security Police, known as Sûreté, served as national police force and municipal police in major towns. Security in rural areas performed by Territorial Military Police. Regular military police functions and rear area and route security carried out by National Military Police. Presidential Guard also assumed many internal security responsibilities.
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INTRODUCTION
AN ARRAY OF MISFORTUNES have visited African states since the beginnings of the independence movement in the late 1950s. Of the many political ills, a few of the most traumatic have been neocolonialism, coups d'état, civil wars, governmental instability, and large-scale armed invasions. Some of the most egregious social afflictions have been poverty, illiteracy, ethnic and regional animosities, high mortality rates, and imbalanced population distribution. Dominant economic woes have included famine, drought, economic dependency, and overreliance on a single crop. Many African nations have experienced more than one of these troubles periodically. Few countries, however, have undergone all of them as extensively or as often as has Chad. In spite of its misfortunes, by the late 1980s Chad was exhibiting signs of stability that provided hope for some form of political, social, and economic recovery.
Landlocked in Africa's center, Chad has been simultaneously at the core of the region's evolution and in a zone dividing two geographic areas and cultural heritages. On the one hand, a great inland sea, of which Lake Chad is but a remnant, once supported a diversity of animal life and vegetation. In ancient times, people speaking three of Africa's four major language groups lived near its shores; some migrated to other regions of the continent while others remained. In more recent times, Chad has become a transition zone dividing the arid north from the tropical south. This geographic division coincides with social and cultural dichotomies.
As a result of years of voluntary or forced migrations, the people of Chad speak more than 100 distinct languages and comprise many different ethnic groups. Such diversity has enriched Chad's culture, permitting the admixture of traditions and life-styles. At the same time, it has promoted inter- and intraethnic strife, resulting in levels of violence ranging from clan feuds to full- scale civil war. Factionalism has become a keynote of Chad's recent history and has unquestionably impeded nation building.
Because of the area's centrality, Chad's history has been heavily influenced by the influx of foreigners. Some came for economic reasons, for example, to travel the trans-Saharan trade routes or to search for natural resources. Others came teaching the religion of Muhammad or of Christ. But some had more nefarious goals and invaded the region to capture slaves or to plunder weaker states.
Little is known about Chad before the beginning of the second millennium A.D. At about that time, the region gave birth to one of the great societies of Central Africa--the Kanem Empire, formed from a confederation of nomadic peoples. During the tenth century, Islam penetrated the empire, and later the king, or mai, became a Muslim. Kanem benefited from the rule of several effective mais. The most significant of these was Mai Dunama Dabbalemi, who reigned from about 1221 to 1259. By the end of the fourteenth century, internal struggles and external attacks had weakened the empire and forced it to uproot and move to Borno, an area to the southwest. The combined Kanem-Borno Empire peaked during the reign of Mai Idris Aluma, who ruled from about 1571 to 1603 and who is noted for his diplomatic, military, and administrative skills. By the early nineteenth century, unable to defend against Fulani invaders, Kanem-Borno was in decline, and by the end of the century it was overtaken by Arab invaders.
Another great empire was the kingdom of Bagirmi, which arose to the southeast of Kanem-Borno in the sixteenth century. This Islamic kingdom experienced periods of strength and weakness; when strong it aggressively expanded its territory, but when weak it was subjugated temporarily by neighboring states.
Wadai was a non-Muslim sultanate (or kingdom) that emerged to the northeast of Bagirmi in the sixteenth century as an offshoot of Darfur (Darfur Province in present-day Sudan). By the seventeenth century, it had converted to Islam, and around 1800 it began to expand under its sultan, Sabun. A later ruler, Muhammad Sharif, attacked Borno and eventually established Wadai's hegemony over Bagirmi. By the end of the nineteenth century, most of the great empires had been destroyed or were in eclipse.
The arrival of the French in the late 1800s had benefits and disadvantages for the indigenous population. By the early twentieth century, the French had stopped northern groups from slave raiding in the south, established a few schools, and initiated some development projects. The colonial administration, however, also dislocated villages and instituted mandatory cotton production quotas for farmers. Moreover, the French administration of Chad was conducted from faraway Brazzaville (in present-day Congo), and its efforts were concentrated in the south; throughout the colonial period, France's control of the central and northern areas was nominal.
This north-south distinction created a preindependence political system dominated by southerners, who were exposed more to French education and culture than were northerners. Following independence in 1960, this dominance persisted and created considerable resentment among central and northern groups, who felt that their interests were not adequately represented by the new government.
In the late 1980s, social differences based on region persisted. The sparsely populated, desert north was peopled mainly by Toubou, many of whom were nomadic. Semisedentary groups, several of which were of Arab descent, inhabited the semiarid central areas (called the Sahel--see Glossary). Islam was the major religion in these areas. The tropical south, also called the soudanian zone, was the most densely populated region and was home to darker skinned peoples, especially the Sara ethnic group. Here, agriculture was the principal means of livelihood, particularly the cultivation of cotton, although there was also some small-scale industry. Traditional African religions were prevalent in the south, but, because of earlier missionary efforts, so too were several Christian denominations. Termed Le Tchad Utile (Useful Chad) by the French, the south contained a disproportionate share of the educational and health facilities, as well as the majority of the development projects.
Throughout the colonial era and after independence, the Chadian economy has been based on agriculture. As such, it has been driven by the south, the only region with a climate suitable for the wide- scale production of cotton and foodstuffs (although livestock raising in the Sahel has also had some importance). At independence France left the colony with an economy retarded by exploitative policies. It was marked by insufficient development of infrastructure, overreliance on cotton and the whims of the international markets, and dependence on imports for industrial and consumer goods. By the late 1980s, warfare, drought, and famine had combined to keep the economy depressed, and international development organizations generally maintained that Chad was one of the poorest nations in the world. Indicative of this impoverishment was the fact that in 1988 Chad had a gross national product (GNP-- see Glossary) per capita of only US$160 and no paved roads. According to some observers, Chad had become a ward of the international donor community.
The nation has been subjected to the machinations of a vast number of groups and organizations. Politically, Chadians have endured a series of authoritarian regimes, none of which has successfully limited factionalism. From 1960 until 1975, François Tombalbaye, a civilian, led the nation. His regime was characterized by southern domination of the administrative structure, although he made modest attempts at placating northern and central interests. As disaffection in these regions increased, in the late 1960s dissident groups formed an antigovernment coalition, the National Liberation Front of Chad (Front de Libération Nationale du Tchad--FROLINAT). Although never fully unified, this group or associated elements of it led the fight for greater northern and central representation in government.
By the early 1970s, Tombalbaye had alienated not only these groups but also even much of the south. Although he was wary of a French military presence after independence, the president readily embraced France's support in stemming violent discontent. Nonetheless, opposition grew, and in 1975 Tombalaye was killed in a military coup d'état. Another southerner, Félix Malloum, assumed power, but he had no more success than his predecessor in suppressing the burgeoning insurgencies and demands for greater regional participation. International intervention resulted in a peace accord between the government and the rebels and the formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity (Gouvernement d'Union Nationale de Transition--GUNT). For many observers, the establishment of GUNT was a watershed, marking the end of southern political domination. It did not, however, bring an end to strife.
The traditional north-and-central versus south split was transformed into an internecine argument among former opposition factions. GUNT's most important leaders were northerners Goukouni Oueddei and Hissein Habré, erstwhile allies in FROLINAT's Second Liberation Army. In command of separate factions, they battled one another for control of the capital, N'Djamena (see Civil Conflict and Libyan Intervention , ch. 5). With Libyan armed support, Goukouni evicted Habré's forces at the end of 1980. Under pressure from the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and other nations, in 1981 Goukouni asked the Libyan troops to leave; in their place, security was to be maintained by an OAU peacekeeping unit, the Inter-African Force (IAF). Seizing the initiative, Habré's regrouped and resupplied forces attacked from the northeast, and by 1982 his Armed Forces of the North (Forces Armées du Nord--FAN) had entered the capital, without any IAF interference, and sent Goukouni into exile.
Goukouni's defeat was only temporary. With massive Libyan military aid, by mid-1983 he was attacking from northern strongholds Habré's newly formed Chadian National Armed Forces (Forces Armées Nationales Tchadiennes--FANT). Concerned about Libyan leader Muammar al Qadhaafi's intentions, France responded by dispatching a large force of troops and advisers. It also began a round-the-clock airlift of military supplies and established forward positions roughly along 16° north latitude. As a result of negotiations with Libya that required a mutual withdrawal of forces, French units were recalled in November 1984. Libya, however, failed to comply with these terms and reinforced its presence, especially in the Aozou Strip (see Glossary).
In 1986 the French redeployed to Chad. Habré's forces, which had also benefited since 1983 from weaponry provided by the United States, launched an offensive against the Libyan positions in late 1986 and early 1987 that resulted in the routing of Libyan troops and the capture of large amounts of Libyan military equipment.
By late 1988, a measure of calm had been restored to Chadian political life. Habré was attempting to consolidate his authority, but at the same time, he was mending some of the divisiveness that has hampered nation building (see Political Dynamics , ch. 4). He weathered a rebellion in the south in the late 1980s and brought many former opponents into high-ranking governmental positions. He sought to extend his regime through the National Union for Independence and Revolution (Union Nationale pour l'Indépendance et la Révolution--UNIR) and hoped to mobilize Chadians in rural areas.
These good intentions notwithstanding, the overwhelming majority of Chadians did not participate in the political process. The Fundamental Law of 1982, an interim constitution, vested paramount power in the president, who ruled almost without challenge. Although a committee was appointed to draft a permanent constitution, as of late 1988 there were no elected bodies, nor were any elections planned.
The evolution of Chad's armed forces mirrors the country's political transformation. Like the governmental structure of the 1960s, the army that was created after independence was dominated by southern groups. This fledgling force relied heavily on French matériel and--until Tombalbaye reconsidered this dependence--French military advisers. But neither the southern-dominated Chadian Armed Forces (Forces Armées Tchadiennes--FAT) nor the French units could deter the determined insurgents from the northern and central regions, most of whom fought under the FROLINAT banner. By 1978 FAT was in disarray, and it eventually splintered into minor factions.
Habré's FANT, formed in 1983, continued to provide national security in 1988, along with several French units. FANT was a conglomeration of FAN and smaller rebel armies that rallied to Habré's side in the 1980s (see The Armed Forces , ch. 5). Many former opposition leaders held positions of authority in the FANT organizational structure. In addition to 3 operational battalions and 127 infantry companies, FANT had a small air force.
Chad's internal security requirements were provided by the well-trained Presidential Guard and by several national and territorial police forces (see Internal Security and Public Order , ch. 5). Following the defection of many of Goukouni's followers to FANT in the late 1980s, the group that presented the most serious threat to Chad's security was the Democratic Revolutionary Council (Conseil Démocratique Révolutionnaire--CDR), which, under Libyan patronage, was active in the north. But Qadhaafi's stated desire to normalize relations with Chad, enunciated in April 1988, inspired hopes that a period of genuine peace--a circumstance that the nation had not enjoyed during the previous two decades--might finally ensue.
December 13, 1988
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After the research for this book was completed, several events occurred that greatly affected Chadian affairs. In November 1988, Habré convinced Acheikh ibn Oumar, the leader of the CDR, to join the government. In accordance with his policy of reconciliation with opponents, in March 1989 Habré appointed Oumar as minister of foreign affairs. Three high-ranking officials, reportedly members of the Zaghawa ethnic group who resented the large number of former regime opponents named to influential positions, unsuccessfully collaborated to assassinate Habré on the night of April 1, 1989. The three plotters were Minister of Interior Ibrahim Mahamat Itno, FANT commander in chief Hassane Djamouss, and Idris Deby, a high- ranking FANT officer; at one time, all of them had been very close advisers to the president.
According to one report, another grievance of the plotters was that Habré had been persecuting the Zaghawa while promoting the interests of the Daza, his own ethnic group. Indeed, a November 1988 report issued by the human rights organization Amnesty International criticized the government for arbitrary arrests and unreasonable detentions, lending credence to the plotters' claims.
In mid-June 1989, the fate of those involved in the coup attempt was unclear. Most accounts claimed that Itno had been arrested and that Djamouss and Deby had escaped capture; their whereabouts, however, were unknown, although some sources reported them to be in Sudan organizing an opposition army. Regardless of their circumstances, it was apparent in mid-1989 that Habré's policy of national reconciliation was not being carried out to the satisfaction of all of the factions in Chad, and the stability of the government remained uncertain.
June 16, 1989
Thomas Collelo
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Chapter 1. Historical Setting
THE CONTEMPORARY ATTITUDES, institutions, and problems of Chad are the outgrowth of historical traditions and tendencies that have evolved over more than 1,000 years. The country is populated by diverse, yet in many cases, interrelated peoples whose evolution was characterized by intersecting migrations, splinterings, and regroupings. Most of the country's population groups originated in areas generally north and east of Chad's present-day boundaries.
Chad's geographic position along major trans-Saharan trade routes has also affected its historical development. In early times, trade consisted of goods and slaves seized in raids on groups in the south. Consolidations of small chiefdoms led to the evolution of a series of kingdoms and empires in the central region, of which the most important were Kanem-Borno, Bagirmi, and Wadai. The kingdoms and empires based their power on, and were ultimately subjected to, raids or the payment of tribute. Although there were early communities in both northern and southern Chad, most of the country's known history is focused on the Muslim peoples of the central region.
The political fortunes of the various kingdoms and empires were constantly affected by internal factionalism and external invasion- -factors that still influenced political affairs in the 1970s and 1980s. Political disintegration was evident in both Borno and Bagirmi when the French arrived in the late nineteenth century. The rulers of Wadai resisted the French advance. The leaders of Borno and Bagirmi, however, regarded the French less as conquerors than as a counterbalance to the ascendant Wadai.
The French declared the central portion of the country officially pacified in 1924 and had begun administering much of the non-Muslim south before that. In many respects, the nomadic northern groups have never been subjugated, and turmoil in the north persisted in the 1980s.
After 1905 the central and northern areas were administered as a territory in the federation of French Equatorial Africa (Afrique Equatoriale Française--AEF; see Glossary). French interest, however, focused on other territories in the federation, and until after World War II, the French presence had little impact on the life of the average inhabitant. The French limited implementation of their administrative policy primarily to urban areas and their compulsory agricultural programs to what constitutes the south of present-day Chad. Participation by the local population in the colonial administration was marginal, and until the mid-1950s the educational opportunities prerequisite for such participation were practically nonexistent.
After World War II, representative institutions were introduced, and the growth of party politics began. Political groupings reflected domestic political developments in France and traditional ethnic factionalism in Chad. Short-lived political coalitions and party splinterings were commonplace. When Chad achieved independence in 1960, southerners--the group most exposed to the French administrators--dominated political life. These southerners were led by President François Tombalbaye, who made only halfhearted efforts at regional integration in government and who generally repressed opposition. Within five years of having taken office, Tombalbaye's heavy-handed approach had alienated a large segment of the population, especially northerners and easterners, and had spurred rebellions. The most prominent of the northern rebel groups was the National Liberation Front of Chad (Front de Libération Nationale du Tchad--FROLINAT), an umbrella organization formed in 1966. Over the years, FROLINAT went through a series of transformations and fragmentations. Nonetheless, by the mid-1970s rebel activity, in conjunction with Tombalbaye's political ineptitude, helped bring about the government's downfall. Tombalbaye was killed in 1975 during a military coup d'état led by Félix Malloum.
The new government, however, had no more success than its predecessor in halting rebel activity. In 1979 Hissein Habré, a northern rebel leader, ousted Malloum. Throughout the 1980s, the quest for political control changed from a north-south struggle to a primarily northern intraregional conflict. The turmoil of the late 1970s and 1980s had international and domestic aspects, as Libya, France, the United States, and many African nations became involved in the Chadian imbroglio. By early 1988, stability had been restored, but inter- and intraethnic differences, as well as regional divisions, continued to threaten Chad's progress toward national integration.
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PREHISTORY
The territory now known as Chad possesses some of the richest archaeological sites in Africa. During the seventh millennium B.C., the northern half of Chad was part of a broad expanse of land, stretching from the Indus River in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, in which ecological conditions favored early human settlement. Rock art of the "Round Head" style, found in the Ennedi region, has been dated to before the seventh millennium B.C. and, because of the tools with which the rocks were carved and the scenes they depict, may represent the oldest evidence in the Sahara of Neolithic industries. Many of the pottery-making and Neolithic activities in Ennedi date back further than any of those of the Nile Valley to the east.
In the prehistoric period, Chad was much wetter than it is today, as evidenced by large game animals depicted in rock paintings in the Tibesti and Borkou regions. Recent linguistic research suggests that all of Africa's languages south of the Sahara Desert (except Khoisan) originated in prehistoric times in a narrow band between Lake Chad and the Nile Valley (see Languages and Ethnic Groups , ch. 2). The origins of Chad's peoples, however, remain unclear. Several of the proven archaeological sites have been only partially studied, and other sites of great potential have yet to be mapped.
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ERA OF EMPIRES, A.D. 900-1900
Toward the end of the first millennium A.D., the formation of states began across central Chad in the sahelian zone between the desert and the savanna. For almost the next 1,000 years, these states, their relations with each other, and their effects on the peoples who lived in "stateless" societies along their peripheries dominated Chad's political history. Recent research suggests that indigenous Africans founded most of these states, not migrating Arabic-speaking groups, as was believed previously. Nonetheless, immigrants, Arabic-speaking or otherwise, played a significant role, along with Islam, in the formation and early evolution of these states (see Islam , ch. 2).
Most states began as kingdoms, in which the king was considered divine and endowed with temporal and spiritual powers. All states were militaristic (or they did not survive long), but none was able to expand far into southern Chad, where forests and the tsetse fly complicated the use of cavalry. Control over the trans-Saharan trade routes that passed through the region formed the economic basis of these kingdoms. Although many states rose and fell, the most important and durable of the empires were Kanem-Borno, Bagirmi, and Wadai, according to most written sources (mainly court chronicles and writings of Arab traders and travelers).
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Kanem-Borno
The Kanem Empire originated in the ninth century A.D. to the northeast of Lake Chad (see fig. 2). It was formed from a confederation of nomadic peoples who spoke languages of the Teda- Daza (Toubou) group (see Languages and Ethnic Groups , ch. 2). One theory, based on early Arabic sources, suggests that the dominance of the Zaghawa people bound the confederation together. But local oral traditions omit the Zaghawa and refer instead to a legendary Arab, Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan--believed by some to have been a Yemeni-- who assumed leadership of the Magoumi clan and began the Sayfawa dynastic lineage. Historians agree that the leaders of the new state were ancestors of the Kanembu people. The leaders adopted the title mai, or king, and their subjects regarded them as divine.
One factor that influenced the formation of states in Chad was the penetration of Islam during the tenth century. Arabs migrating from the north and east brought the new religion. Toward the end of the eleventh century, the Sayfawa king, Mai Humai, converted to Islam. (Some historians believe that it was Humai rather than Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan who established the Sayfawa lineage as the ruling dynasty of Kanem.) Islam offered the Sayfawa rulers the advantages of new ideas from Arabia and the Mediterranean world, as well as literacy in administration. But many people resisted the new religion in favor of traditional beliefs and practices. When Humai converted, for example, it is believed that the Zaghawa broke from the empire and moved east. This pattern of conflict and compromise with Islam occurs repeatedly in Chadian history.
Prior to the twelfth century, the nomadic Sayfawa confederation expanded southward into Kanem (the word for "south" in the Teda language). By the thirteenth century, Kanem's rule expanded. At the same time, the Kanembu people became more sedentary and established a capital at Njimi, northeast of Lake Chad. Even though the Kanembu were becoming more sedentary, Kanem's rulers continued to travel frequently throughout the kingdom to remind the herders and farmers of the government's power and to allow them to demonstrate their allegiance by paying tribute.
Kanem's expansion peaked during the long and energetic reign of Mai Dunama Dabbalemi (ca. 1221-59). Dabbalemi initiated diplomatic exchanges with sultans in North Africa and apparently arranged for the establishment of a special hostel in Cairo to facilitate pilgrimages to Mecca. During Dabbalemi's reign, the Fezzan region (in present-day Libya) fell under Kanem's authority, and the empire's influence extended westward to Kano, eastward to Wadai, and southward to the Adamawa grasslands (in present-day Cameroon). Portraying these boundaries on maps can be misleading, however, because the degree of control extended in ever-weakening gradations from the core of the empire around Njimi to remote peripheries, from which allegiance and tribute were usually only symbolic. Moreover, cartographic lines are static and misrepresent the mobility inherent in nomadism and migration, which were common. The loyalty of peoples and their leaders was more important in governance than the physical control of territory.
Dabbalemi devised a system to reward military commanders with authority over the people they conquered. This system, however, tempted military officers to pass their positions to their sons, thus transforming the office from one based on achievement and loyalty to the mai into one based on hereditary nobility. Dabbalemi was able to suppress this tendency, but after his death, dissension among his sons weakened the Sayfawa Dynasty. Dynastic feuds degenerated into civil war, and Kanem's outlying peoples soon ceased paying tribute.
By the end of the fourteenth century, internal struggles and external attacks had torn Kanem apart. Between 1376 and 1400, six mais reigned, but Bulala invaders (from the area around Lake Fitri to the east) killed five of them. This proliferation of mais resulted in numerous claimants to the throne and led to a series of internecine wars. Finally, around 1396 the Bulala forced Mai Umar Idrismi to abandon Njimi and move the Kanembu people to Borno on the western edge of Lake Chad. Over time, the intermarriage of the Kanembu and Borno peoples created a new people and language, the Kanuri.
But even in Borno, the Sayfawa Dynasty's troubles persisted. During the first three-quarters of the fifteenth century, for example, fifteen mais occupied the throne. Then, around 1472 Mai Ali Dunamami defeated his rivals and began the consolidation of Borno. He built a fortified capital at Ngazargamu, to the west of Lake Chad (in present-day Niger), the first permanent home a Sayfawa mai had enjoyed in a century. So successful was the Sayfawa rejuvenation that by the early sixteenth century the Bulala were defeated and Njimi retaken. The empire's leaders, however, remained at Ngazargamu because its lands were more productive agriculturally and better suited to the raising of cattle.
Kanem-Borno peaked during the reign of the outstanding statesman Mai Idris Aluma (ca. 1571-1603). Aluma (also spelled Alooma) is remembered for his military skills, administrative reforms, and Islamic piety. His main adversaries were the Hausa to the west, the Tuareg and Toubou to the north, and the Bulala to the east. One epic poem extols his victories in 330 wars and more than 1,000 battles. His innovations included the employment of fixed military camps (with walls); permanent sieges and "scorched earth" tactics, where soliders burned everything in their path; armored horses and riders; and the use of Berber camelry, Kotoko boatmen, and iron-helmeted musketeers trained by Turkish military advisers. His active diplomacy featured relations with Tripoli, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire, which sent a 200-member ambassadorial party across the desert to Aluma's court at Ngazargamu. Aluma also signed what was probably the first written treaty or cease-fire in Chadian history. (Like many cease-fires negotiated in the 1970s and 1980s, it was promptly broken.)
Aluma introduced a number of legal and administrative reforms based on his religious beliefs and Islamic law (sharia). He sponsored the construction of numerous mosques and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he arranged for the establishment of a hostel to be used by pilgrims from his empire. As with other dynamic politicians, Aluma's reformist goals led him to seek loyal and competent advisers and allies, and he frequently relied on slaves who had been educated in noble homes. Aluma regularly sought advice from a council composed of heads of the most important clans. He required major political figures to live at the court, and he reinforced political alliances through appropriate marriages (Aluma himself was the son of a Kanuri father and a Bulala mother).
Kanem-Borno under Aluma was strong and wealthy. Government revenue came from tribute (or booty, if the recalcitrant people had to be conquered), sales of slaves, and duties on and participation in trans-Saharan trade. Unlike West Africa, the Chadian region did not have gold. Still, it was central to one of the most convenient trans-Saharan routes. Between Lake Chad and Fezzan lay a sequence of well-spaced wells and oases, and from Fezzan there were easy connections to North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea. Many products were sent north, including natron (sodium carbonate), cotton, kola nuts, ivory, ostrich feathers, perfume, wax, and hides, but the most important of all were slaves. Imports included salt, horses, silks, glass, muskets, and copper.
Aluma took a keen interest in trade and other economic matters. He is credited with having the roads cleared, designing better boats for Lake Chad, introducing standard units of measure for grain, and moving farmers into new lands. In addition, he improved the ease and security of transit through the empire with the goal of making it so safe that "a lone woman clad in gold might walk with none to fear but God."
The administrative reforms and military brilliance of Aluma sustained the empire until the mid-1600s, when its power began to fade. By the late 1700s, Borno rule extended only westward, into the land of the Hausa. Around that time, Fulani people, invading from the west, were able to make major inroads into Borno. By the early nineteenth century, Kanem-Borno was clearly an empire in decline, and in 1808 Fulani warriors conquered Ngazargamu. Usman dan Fodio led the Fulani thrust and proclaimed a jihad (holy war) on the irreligious Muslims of the area. His campaign eventually affected Kanem-Borno and inspired a trend toward Islamic orthodoxy. But Muhammad al Kanem contested the Fulani advance. Kanem was a Muslim scholar and non-Sayfawa warlord who had put together an alliance of Shuwa Arabs, Kanembu, and other seminomadic peoples. He eventually built a capital at Kukawa (in present-day Nigeria). Sayfawa mais remained titular monarchs until 1846. In that year, the last mai, in league with Wadai tribesmen, precipitated a civil war. It was at that point that Kanem's son, Umar, became king, thus ending one of the longest dynastic reigns in regional history.
Although the dynasty ended, the kingdom of Kanem-Borno survived. But Umar, who eschewed the title mai for the simpler designation shehu (from the Arabic "shaykh"), could not match his father's vitality and gradually allowed the kingdom to be ruled by advisers (wazirs). Borno began to decline, as a result of administrative disorganization, regional particularism, and attacks by the militant Wadai Empire to the east. The decline continued under Umar's sons, and in 1893 Rabih Fadlallah, leading an invading army from eastern Sudan, conquered Borno.
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Bagirmi and Wadai
In addition to Kanem-Borno, two other states in the region, Bagirmi and Wadai, achieved historical prominence. The kingdom of Bagirmi emerged to the southeast of Kanem-Borno in the sixteenth century. Under the reign of Abdullah IV (1568-98), Islam was adopted, and the state became a sultanate, using judicial and administrative procedures. Later, a palace and court were constructed in the capital city of Massenya.
Bagirmi's political history was a function of its strength and unity in relation to its larger neighbors. Absorbed into KanemBorno during the reign of Aluma, Bagirmi broke free later in the 1600s, only to be returned to tributary status in the mid-1700s. During periods of strength, the sultanate became imperialistic. It established control over small feudal kingdoms on its peripheries and entered into alliances with nearby nomadic peoples. Early in the nineteenth century, Bagirmi fell into decay and was threatened militarily by the nearby kingdom of Wadai. Although Bagirmi resisted, it accepted tributary status in order to obtain help from Wadai in putting down internal dissension. When Rabih Fadlallah's forces burned Massenya in 1893, the twenty-fifth sultan, Abd ar Rahman Gwaranga, sought and received protectorate status from the French.
Located northeast of Bagirmi, Wadai was a non-Muslim kingdom that emerged in the sixteenth century as an offshoot of the state of Darfur (in present-day Sudan). Early in the seventeenth century, the Maba and other small groups in the region rallied to the Islamic banner of Abd al Karim, who led an invasion from the east and overthrew the ruling Tunjur group. Abd al Karim established a dynasty and sultanate that lasted until the arrival of the French. During much of the eighteenth century, Wadai resisted reincorporation into Darfur.
In about 1800, during the reign of Sabun, the sultanate of Wadai began to expand its power. A new trade route north--via Ennedi, Al Kufrah, and Benghazi--was discovered, and Sabun outfitted royal caravans to take advantage of it. He began minting his own coinage and imported chain mail, firearms, and military advisers from North Africa. Sabun's successors were less able than he, and Darfur took advantage of a disputed political succession in 1838 to put its own candidate in power in Wara, the capital of Wadai. This tactic backfired, however, when Darfur's choice, Muhammad Sharif, rejected Darfur's meddling and asserted his own authority. In doing so, he gained acceptance from Wadai's various factions and went on to become Wadai's ablest ruler.
Sharif conducted military campaigns as far west as Borno and eventually established Wadai's hegemony over Bagirmi and kingdoms as far away as the Chari River. In Mecca, Sharif had met the founder of the Sanusiyya Islamic brotherhood, a movement that was strong among the inhabitants of Cyrenaica (in present-day Libya) and that was to become a dominant political force and source of resistance to French colonization (see Islam , ch. 2). Indeed, the militaristic Wadai opposed French domination until well into the twentieth century.
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ARRIVAL OF THE FRENCH AND COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION
European interest in Africa generally grew during the nineteenth century. By 1887 France, motivated by the search for wealth, had driven inland from its settlements on central Africa's west coast to claim the territory of Ubangi-Chari (present-day Central African Republic). It claimed this area as a zone of French influence, and within two years it occupied part of what is now southern Chad. In the early 1890s, French military expeditions sent to Chad encountered the forces of Rabih Fadlallah, who had been conducting slave raids (razzias) in southern Chad throughout the 1890s and had sacked the settlements of Kanem-Borno, Bagirmi, and Wadai. After years of indecisive engagements, French forces finally defeated Rabih Fadlallah at the Battle of Kousséri in 1900.
Two fundamental themes dominated Chad's colonial experience with the French: an absence of policies designed to unify the territory and an exceptionally slow pace of modernization. In the French scale of priorities, the colony of Chad ranked near the bottom; it was less important than non-African territories, North Africa, West Africa, or even the other French possessions in Central Africa. The French came to perceive Chad primarily as a source of raw cotton and untrained labor to be used in the more productive colonies to the south. Within Chad there was neither the will nor the resources to do much more than maintain a semblance of law and order. In fact, even this basic function of governance was often neglected; throughout the colonial period, large areas of Chad were never governed effectively from N'Djamena (called FortLamy prior to September 1973).
Chad was linked in 1905 with three French colonies to the south--Ubangi-Chari, Moyen-Congo (present-day Congo), and Gabon. But Chad did not receive separate colony status or a unified administrative policy until 1920. The four colonies were administered together as French Equatorial Africa under the direction of a governor general stationed in Brazzaville. The governor general had broad administrative control over the federation, including external and internal security, economic and financial affairs, and all communications with the French minister of the colonies. Lieutenant governors, also appointed by the French government, were expected to implement in each colony the orders of the governor general. The central administration in Brazzaville tightly controlled the lieutenant governors despite reformist efforts toward decentralization between 1910 and 1946. Chad's lieutenant governor had greater autonomy because of the distance from Brazzaville and because of France's much greater interest in the other three colonies.
The lines of control from Brazzaville, feeble as they may have been, were still stronger than those from N'Djamena to its hinterland. In the huge Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti Prefecture, the handful of French military administrators soon reached a tacit agreement with the inhabitants of the desert; as long as caravan trails remained relatively secure and minimal levels of law and order were met, the military administration (headquartered in Faya Largeau) usually left the people alone (see fig. 1). In central Chad, French rule was only slightly more substantive. In Ouaddaï and Biltine prefectures, endemic resistance continued against the French and, in some cases, against any authority that attempted to suppress banditry and brigandage. The thinly staffed colonial administration provided only weak supervision over arid Kanem Prefecture and the sparsely populated areas of Guéra and Salamat prefectures. Old-fashioned razzias continued in the 1920s, and it was reported in 1923 that a group of Senegalese Muslims on their way to Mecca had been seized and sold into slavery. Unwilling to expend the resources required for effective administration, the French government responded with sporadic coercion and a growing reliance on indirect rule through the sultanates.
France managed to govern effectively only the south, but until 1946 administrative direction came from Bangui in Ubangi-Chari rather than N'Djamena. Unlike northern and central Chad, a French colonial system of direct civilian administration was set up among the Sara, a southern ethnic group, and their neighbors. Also, unlike the rest of Chad, a modest level of economic development occurred in the south because of the introduction in 1929 of largescale cotton production (see Cotton , ch. 3). Remittances and pensions to southerners who served in the French military also enhanced economic well-being.
But even the advantages of more income, schools, and roads failed to win popular support for the French in the south. In addition to earlier grievances, such as forced porterage (which claimed thousands of lives) and village relocation, southern farmers resented the mandatory quotas for the production of cotton, which France purchased at artificially low prices. Governmentprotected chiefs further abused this situation. The chiefs were resented all the more because they were generally the artificial creations of the French in a region of previously stateless societies. This commonality of treatment and the colonial organizational framework began to create during this period a sense of Sara ethnicity among persons whose collective identities had previously been limited to small kinship groups.
Although France had put forth considerable effort during the conquest of Chad, the ensuing administration of the territory was halfhearted. Officials in the French colonial service resisted assignments to Chad, so posts often went to novices or to out-of- favor officials. One historian of France's empire has concluded that it was almost impossible to be too demented or depraved to be considered unfit for duty in Chad. Still, major scandals occurred periodically, and many of the posts remained vacant. In 1928, for example, 42 percent of the Chadian subdivisions lacked official administrators.
An event occurred in 1935 that was to have far-reaching consequences throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In that year, the French colonial administration negotiated a border adjustment with Italy, Libya's colonial master. The adjustment would have relocated the Libyan-Chad boundary about 100 kilometers south across the Aozou Strip (see Glossary). Although the French legislature never ratified the agreement, the negotiations formed part of the basis of Libya's claim to the area decades later.
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DECOLONIZATION POLITICS
In 1940 Chad became internationally prominent when its lieutenant governor, Félix Eboué, led the rest of the AEF federation to support Free France under Charles de Gaulle rather than the government of Vichy France. Chad became the base for Colonel Jacques Leclerc's conquest of the Fezzan (1940-43), and the entire episode became the basis of an enduring sentimental bond between the France of de Gaulle's generation and Chad. More funds and attention flowed to Chad than ever before, and Eboué became the governor general of the entire AEF in November 1941.
Born in French Guiana of mixed African and European parentage, Eboué was keenly interested in the problems of cultural dislocation resulting from unchecked modernization in Africa. He worked to return authority to authentic traditional leaders while training them in modern administrative techniques. He recognized a place for African middle-class professionals in cities, but he opposed the migration of workers to cities, supporting instead the creation of integrated rural industries where workers could remain with their families. When Eboué died in 1944, the AEF lost a major source of progressive ideas, and Chad lost a leader with considerable influence in France.
French voters rejected many of the progressive ideas of Eboué and others after the war ended. Nevertheless, the constitution that was approved in 1946 granted Chad and other African colonies the right to elect a territorial assembly with limited powers. The Assembly in turn elected delegates to the French General Council of all the AEF (see Preindependence Factions , ch. 4). The position of governor general was redesignated high commissioner, and each territory gained the right to elect representatives to French parliamentary bodies, including the National Assembly, the Council of the Republic, and the Assembly of the French Union. The African peoples became French citizens, and the colonies were designated overseas territories of France. But the real locus of authority remained in Paris, and French personnel continued to dominate the AEF's administration. No formal attempt was made to train Chadian Africans for civil service positions before 1955.
Until the early 1950s, political forces originating in France dominated the development of politics in Chad. Local elections were won largely by members of the Chadian Democratic Union (Union Démocratique Tchadienne--UDT), which was associated with a political party in France, the Assembly of French People. The UDT represented French commercial interests and a bloc of traditional leaders composed primarily of Muslim and Ouaddaïan nobility. Chad's European community initiated the practice of using the civil service for partisan political ends; African civil servants who were identified with organizations opposed to the UDT soon found themselves dismissed or transferred to distant posts. For example, François Tombalbaye (later to become president) lost his job as a teacher and ended up making bricks by hand because of his union activities and his role in the opposition Chadian Progressive Party (Parti Progressiste Tchadien--PPT).
Nonetheless, by 1953 politics were becoming less European dominated, and the PPT was emerging as the major rival of the UDT. The leader of the PPT was Gabriel Lisette, a black colonial administrator born in Panama and posted to Chad in 1946. Elected as a deputy to the French National Assembly, Lisette was later chosen as secretary general of the African Democratic Assembly (Rassemblement Démocratique Africain--RDA), an interterritorial, Marxist-oriented party considered quite radical at the time. The PPT originated as a territorial branch of the RDA and rapidly became the political vehicle of the country's non-Muslim intellectuals. Traditional rulers perceived the PPT to be antithetical to their interests and recognized that the local territorial assembly could adversely affect their revenue and power. These factors persuaded traditional rulers to become more active in the UDT, which, because of internal divisions, had changed its name in the late 1950s to the Chadian Social Action (Action Sociale Tchadienne--AST).
Although party names changed frequently and dramatic factional schisms occurred throughout the 1950s, electoral competition was essentially between three political blocs: the UDT [AST], the PPT, and the allies of Ahmed Koulamallah from Chari-Baguirmi and Kanem prefectures. A clever politician and charismatic leader of the Tijaniyya Islamic brotherhood in Chad, Koulamallah campaigned in different times and places as a member of the Bagirmi nobility (he was an estranged son of the sultan), a radical socialist leader, or a militant Muslim fundamentalist. As a result, politics in the 1950s was a struggle between the south, which mostly supported the PPT, and the Muslim sahelian belt, which favored the UDT [AST]. Koulamallah played a generally disruptive role in the middle.
In 1956 the French National Assembly passed the loi cadre (enabling act), which resulted in greater self-rule for Chad and other African territories. Electoral reforms expanded the pool of eligible voters, and power began to shift from the sparsely settled northern and central Chadian regions toward the more densely populated south. The PPT had become less militant, winning the support of chiefs in the south and members of the French colonial administration, but not that of private French commercial interests. The PPT and allied parties won forty-seven of the sixtyfive seats in the 1957 elections, and Lisette formed the first African government in Chad. He maintained a majority for only about a year, however, before factions representing traditional chiefs withdrew their support from his coalition government.
In September 1958, voters in all of Africa's French territories took part in a referendum on the Fifth Republic's constitution, drawn up under de Gaulle. For a variety of political and economic reasons, most of Chad's political groups supported the new constitution, and all voted for a resolution calling for Chad to become an autonomous republic within the French community. The three other AEF territories voted similarly, and in November 1958 the AEF was officially terminated. Coordination on such issues as customs and currency continued among the four territories through written agreements or on an ad hoc basis. Nonetheless, some Chadians supported the creation of an even stronger French federation, rather than independence. The leading proponent of this proposal was Barthélemy Boganda of Ubangi-Chari, but his death in 1959 and the vigorous opposition of Gabon resulted in political independence on a separate basis for all four republics.
After Lisette's coalition crumbled in early 1959, two other alliances governed briefly. Then in March the PPT returned to power, this time under the leadership of Tombalbaye, a union leader and representative from Moyen-Chari Prefecture. Lisette, whose power was undermined because of his non-African origins, became deputy prime minister in charge of economic coordination and foreign affairs. Tombalbaye soon consolidated enough political support from the south and north to isolate the opposition into a collection of conservative Muslim leaders from central Chad. The latter group formed a political party in January 1960, but its parliamentary representation steadily dropped as Tombalbaye wooed individual members to the PPT. By independence in August 1960, the PPT and the south had clearly achieved dominance, but Tombalbaye's political skills made it possible for observers to talk optimistically about the possibility of building a broad-based coalition of political forces.
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TOMBALBAYE ERA, 1960-75
Tombalbaye faced a task of considerable magnitude when Chad became a sovereign state. His challenge was to build a nation out of a vast and diverse territory that had poor communications, few known resources, a tiny market, and a collection of impoverished people with sharply differing political traditions, ethnic and regional loyalties, and sociocultural patterns. The colonial powers that had created the country's boundaries had done little to promote economic interdependence, political cooperation, or crosscultural understanding. Chadians who had hoped that the country's first president might turn out to be a state builder like the thirteenth century's Dabbalemi or the sixteenth century's Aluma were soon disappointed. During its first fifteen years, Chad under Tombalbaye experienced worsening economic conditions, eventual alienation of the most patient of foreign allies, exacerbation of ethnic and regional conflict, and grave weakening of the state as an instrument of governance.
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Tombalbaye's Governance: Policies and Methods
At the outset, Tombalbaye demonstrated an autocratic style along with a distrust of the institutions of democracy. One week before the country gained independence, Tombalbaye purged Lisette from his own party, declared Lisette a noncitizen while he was traveling abroad, and barred him from returning to Chad. This "coup by telegram" was the first in an extensive series of Tombalbaye's increasingly authoritarian actions to eliminate or neutralize opponents.
To increase his power and freedom of action, Tombalbaye declared a ban on all political parties except the PPT in January 1962, and in April he established a presidential form of government. When serious rioting occurred in 1963 in N'Djamena and Am Timan, the government declared a state of emergency and dissolved the National Assembly. And, as part of a major campaign against real and imagined political opponents, Tombalbaye created a special criminal court. By the end of the year, the country's prisons contained a virtual "who's who" of Chadian politicians. In June 1964, a new National Assembly granted Tombalbaye complete control over all appointments to the Political Bureau of the PPT, which by then was the sole source of political authority. With the PPT, government, and upper echelons of the civil service stocked with loyalists, and with opposition leaders in prison, exile, or completely co-opted, Tombalbaye was in full command of the country.
An effort to Africanize the civil service and security forces as rapidly as possible complemented Tombalbaye's drive for personal power. Between 1960 and 1963, the number of French officials in the central government administration declined from ninety-five to thirty (although the total number of French personnel increased as technical advisers were hired for development programs), and by the end of 1962 the entire territorial administrative structure was in Chadian hands. In addition, units of the Chad's national army replaced French military forces in Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti Prefecture and in Abéché, a process formally completed on January 23, 1965.
Africanization was not entirely popular among Chad's farmers and herders, despite their deep resentment of French colonial rule. A decline in the quality of government service was immediately apparent, in part because of the usual difficulties of transition, but also because many of the newly hired and promoted Chadians were less experienced and less adequately trained than their departing French counterparts. Increasing the discontent, Tombalbaye imposed an additional tax in 1964, under the euphemism of a "national loan." On top of that action, some government administrators were allegedly forcing citizens in rural areas to make payments at three times the official taxation rates. Reports of corruption and other abuses of authority grew as Chad's new officials became aware of both the increased pressures and the decreased constraints on public servants.
Because the great majority of the country's Western-educated and French-speaking citizens were southerners, the policy of Africanization often represented a "southernization" of the Chadian government. What appeared to some Western observers to be progress in African self-government was perceived by those from the northern and central areas to be an increasingly blatant seizure of power by southerners. To many in northern and central Chad, the southern Chadians were simply another set of foreigners, almost as alien and arrogant as the departing French. Tombalbaye's failure to establish hiring and training policies geared to achieving greater ethnic and regional balance in public administration was one of his most serious shortcomings. Another was his lack of success--or lack of interest--in reaching power-sharing agreements with key leaders in the Saharan and sahelian regions.
Dissatisfaction with these failures was expressed violently, and the government response was just as violent. When Muslims rioted in N'Djamena in September 1963 following the arbitrary arrests of three Muslim leaders, the government reacted swiftly and repressively. A little more than a year later, an altercation at a public dance in the northern town of Bardaï prompted a Sara deputy prefect to order the inhabitants of an entire village to march to prison, where many were stripped and all were insulted. Many were arbitrarily fined for such offenses as wearing beards or turbans. Included among the targets of abuse was Oueddei Kichidemi, the derde, or spiritual head, of the Teda people, a Toubou group. Explosive confrontations such as this occurred repeatedly as the inexperienced southerners, who understood little and cared less for the customs of the peoples they governed, replaced experienced French administrators.
By this time, just five years after independence, the possibility of armed conflict was growing. Politicians throughout Chad increasingly used traditional loyalties and enmities to decry opposition and solidify popular support for their positions. In view of Chad's historical legacy of conflict, some historians have argued that even the most competent leader with the most enlightened set of policies would have eventually faced secessionist movements or armed opposition. Tombalbaye, however, hastened the onset of civil conflict by quickly squandering his legitimacy through repressive tactics and regional favoritism.
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Rebellion in Eastern and Northern Chad
On November 1, 1965, frustration with what was perceived as government mismanagement and tax collection abuses erupted in riots in the town of Mangalmé in Guéra Prefecture. Five hundred persons died, including the local deputy to the National Assembly and nine other government officials. From Mangalmé and nearby Batha Prefecture, the rebellion spread to Ouaddaï and Salamat prefectures, where in February 1967 the prefect and deputy prefect were killed. In August 1968, a major mutiny in Aozou among the Toubou-dominated National and Nomad Guard highlighted the continuing unrest in the north (see Origins and Early Development , ch. 5). In the same year, antigovernment activities and tracts began to appear in Chari-Baguirmi Prefecture, only about 100 kilometers from N'Djamena. Travel became unsafe in much of central Chad, and governmental authority in the north was reduced by 1969 to the garrison towns of Faya Largeau, Fada, Bardaï, and Ounianga Kébir.
In addition to historical causes and what Tombalbaye himself was later to call "maladministration," the country's Arabicspeaking neighbors abetted rebellion in the northern and central regions of Chad. In Sudan and Libya, numerous self-styled "liberation fronts" appeared in the mid-1960s, printing manifestos and claiming leadership over rebellious groups inside Chad. The most prominent of these fronts, the National Liberation Front of Chad (Front de Libération Nationale du Tchad--FROLINAT), was formed in June 1966 in Nyala in southwestern Sudan. Personality, philosophical, and ethnic differences soon led to the front's fragmentation, with one group moving to Khartoum and another, which retained the FROLINAT designation, establishing offices in Algiers and Tripoli.
The influence of external assistance to the rebels during this period was minimal. Prior to 1976, Chad's uprisings were disorganized and uncoordinated among dissident groups. Most observers attribute the rebels' success more to the ineptitude of Chad's government and national army than to outside assistance.
After FROLINAT's eastern region field commander, Ibrahim Abatcha, died in combat in February 1968, four contenders for leadership emerged. Within two years, two of them reportedly had been assassinated and one had fled to Sudan; the fourth, Abba Siddick, became FROLINAT's new secretary general in 1970. But in 1971, when Siddick called for greater cooperation among various groups under the FROLINAT banner, he encountered vigorous opposition in the north from Goukouni Oueddei, son of Oueddei Kichidemi, and Hissein Habré, one of the leaders of the Armed Forces of the North (Forces Armeés du Nord--FAN). Goukouni and Habré broke with Siddick, who managed to retain only nominal control over FROLINAT's First Liberation Army in east-central Chad (see Appendix B).
Tombalbaye's initial response to the increasing antigovernment activities was to attempt to crush them. When the government's forces proved woefully inadequate for the task, Tombalbaye swallowed his pride and called in the French under provisions of military treaties signed in 1960.
Confronted by the unpopularity of such a step, the French government joined many Chadian intellectuals in calling for a broad range of economic and political reforms by Chad's government. Desperate for French assistance, Tombalbaye reluctantly accepted the thirty-three member Administrative Reform Mission (Mission de Réforme Administrative--MRA), which arrived in 1969 with authority to retrain the army, reorganize the civil service, and recommend the abolition of unpopular laws and taxes. The most significant political reform was the full restoration to Chad's major sultans of their previous judicial authority. The government also allowed them to resume their function as tax collectors in exchange for 10 percent of the revenue. This action, which Tombalbaye implemented grudgingly, temporarily undermined rebel activities across central Chad.
Liberalization continued in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Following the 1969 presidential elections, in which Tombalbaye ran unopposed, some 600 political prisoners were released, including a number of prominent Muslims. In April 1971, Tombalbaye, addressing the Seventh Congress of the PPT, admitted for the first time that he had made mistakes and that there were some shortcomings associated with his policies. He promised a campaign of national reconciliation, and a few weeks later he formed a government that included a greater proportion of Muslims and northerners. In June Tombalbaye freed another 1,500 political prisoners and toured rebel regions in the north, where he promised, among other things, government-subsidized salt and sugar for the nomads of Zouar and Bardaï.
These reforms and French assistance contributed to the relative calm of 1970 and 1971. French military forces provided extensive and effective assistance in containing rebellious activities in central Chad. By June 1971, overt rebellion had been reduced for the most part to isolated pockets in the Tibesti region. The French government, under domestic pressure, began to withdraw its forces from Chad.
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Fall of the Tombalbaye Government
Tombalbaye's reform efforts ceased abruptly in August 1971. In that month, he claimed to have quashed a coup involving some recently amnestied Chadians who allegedly received support from Libyan leader Muammaral Qadhaafi. Tomabalbaye severed relations with Libya and invited anti-Qadhaafi elements to establish bases in Chad. In retaliation, Qadhaafi recognized FROLINAT, offered (for the first time formally) an operational base in Tripoli to Siddick, and increased the flow of supplies to the Chadian rebels.
Domestic calm deteriorated further when students conducted a strike in N'Djamena in November 1971. Although easily contained, the strike demonstrated the growing politicization and disaffection of young members of the southern elite and reflected their increased awareness of the army's political potential. Tombalbaye then replaced the chief of staff, General Jacques Doumro, who was a favorite of the students, with Colonel Félix Malloum.
In June 1972, a band of Libyan-trained saboteurs was captured while attempting to smuggle guns and explosives into the capital. These arrests coincided with a serious financial crisis, a worsening drought, bitter government infighting, and civil unrest in the capital. These events convinced Tombalbaye to abandon his policy of national reconciliation. He incarcerated more than 1,000 real or suspected "enemies of the state." In an indication of his growing distrust of the previously secure south, Tombalbaye detained hundreds of southerners and removed two key southern cabinet ministers. He also effected a dramatic diplomatic aboutface designed to obtain economic assistance from the Arab world while undermining FROLINAT. To enhance ties to the Arab world, Tombalbaye broke Chad's relations with Israel in September 1972. A few months later, Tombalbaye secured an initial pledge of CFA F23 billion (for value of the CFA franc--see Glossary) from Libya. In 1973 other Arab capitals promised aid. In addition, Chad withdrew from the Afro-Malagasy and Mauritian Common Organization (Organisation Commune Africaine, Malgache, et Mauricienne--OCAMM), a moderate alliance of French-speaking African states.
Tombalbaye's strategy to create difficulties for FROLINAT was successful. When Qadhaafi began restricting deliveries of military supplies and food to the rebels, fighting for the limited supplies erupted between FROLINAT's First Liberation Army and FAN (at that time also called the Second Liberation Army). The Second Liberation Army lost control of Ennedi and retreated into northern Borkou and Tibesti. In April 1974, however, it struck back by seizing three European hostages, including a French archaeologist at Bardaï.
By this time, the Tombalbaye presidency was rapidly unraveling, as greater attention focused on the real and suspected threats from within the government. In June 1973, Tombalbaye arrested Malloum, the head of the women's wing of the PPT, and a score of other party officials, mostly from the south. These individuals were held on charges of "political sorcery" in what came to be known as the "Black Sheep Plot" because of their alleged involvement in animal sacrifices. Moreover, when Outel Bono, a widely admired liberal politician, was assassinated in Paris while organizing a new political party in August, many believed that Tombalbaye's government was behind the murder. Also that month, Tombalbaye decided to replace the PPT with a new party, the National Movement for the Cultural and Social Revolution (Mouvement National pour la Révolution Culturelle et Sociale--MNRCS).
To deflect domestic criticism, Tombalbaye embarked on a campaign to promote authenticité, or "Chaditude." This effort was aimed at expunging foreign practices and influences. To shore up his support from Chad's expanding urban elite, Tombalbaye Africanized the names of several places (Fort-Lamy and FortArchambault became N'Djamena and Sarh, respectively) and ordered civil servants to use indigenous names in place of their European ones; he changed his first name to Ngarta. In addition, his policies induced many foreign missionaries to repatriate. His strident attacks on the French government were also popular. Tombalbaye lashed out specifically at Jacques Foccart, the powerful secretary general to the French Presidency for African Affairs, who was labeled an "evil genius" and formally condemned in a National Assembly resolution as the source of some "fourteen plots" against the government of Chad.
To restore his sagging support among Sara traditionalists in the rural south, Tombalbaye came out in favor of the harsh physical and psychological yondo initiation rites for all southern males between sixteen and fifty, making them compulsory for any non-Muslim seeking admission to the civil service, government, and higher ranks of the military (see Classical African Religions , ch. 2). From mid-1973 to April 1974, an estimated 3,000 southern civil servants, including two cabinet ministers and one colonel, went through the yondo ordeal. Because the rites were perceived as anti-Christian and essentially borrowed from one Sara subgroup, resistance to the process exacerbated antagonisms along clan and religious lines. Therefore, rather than encouraging greater southern support, Tombalbaye's action created disaffection among civil servants, army officers, and students.
The worsening drought in the early 1970s also affected Chad's degenerating political situation. Throughout 1974 international criticism of Chad's handling of drought-relief efforts reached a new peak, as government insensitivity and overt profiteering became obvious.
In response to its economic crisis, the government launched Operation Agriculture, which involved a massive volunteer cottonplanting effort on virgin lands. The project increased production somewhat, but at the expense of major economic dislocations and greater southern resentment, particularly from people in cities and towns who were rounded up by the military to "volunteer" for agricultural labor.
By early 1975, many observers believed that Tombalbaye had eroded his two main bases of support--the south and the armed forces. Only intra-Sara divisions and concern over the possible loss of southern influence in government had prevented any wellorganized anti-Tombalbaye movement. In addition, throughout the early 1970s Tombalbaye's criticism of the army's mediocre performance in the field had angered the officer corps and dissipated its loyalty. Other military grievances included frequent purges and reshufflings of the top ranks. In March 1975, Tombalbaye ordered the arrest of several senior military officers, as suspects in yet another plot. On April 13, 1975, several units of N'Djamena's gendarmerie, acting under the initial direction of junior military officers, killed Tombalbaye during a mutiny.
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CIVIL WAR AND NORTHERN DOMINANCE, 1975-82
Malloum's Military Government, 1975-78
The coup d'état that terminated Tombalbaye's government received an enthusiastic response in N'Djamena. Malloum emerged as the chairman of the new Supreme Military Council (Conseil Supérieur Militaire--CSM). His government contained more Muslims from northern and eastern Chad, but ethnic and regional dominance still remained very much in the hands of southerners. The successor government soon overturned many of Tombalbaye's more odious policies. For example, the CSM attempted to distribute external drought relief assistance more equitably and efficiently and devised plans to develop numerous economic reforms, including reductions in taxes and government expenditures.
Neither reformers nor skilled administrators, the new military leaders were unable to retain for long the modicum of authority, legitimacy, and popularity that they had gained through their overthrow of the unpopular Tombalbaye. The expectations of most urban Chadians far exceeded the capacity of the new government--or possibly any government--to satisfy them. It soon became clear, moreover, that the new leaders (mostly southern military officers) saw themselves as caretakers rather than innovators, and few of Tombalbaye's close associates were punished. Throughout its tenure, the CSM was unable to win the support of the capital's increasingly radicalized unions, students, and urban dwellers. The government suspended the National Union of Chadian Workers (Union Nationale de Travailleurs du Tchad--UNTT) and prohibited strikes, but labor and urban unrest continued from 1975 through 1978. On the first anniversary of the formation of the CSM, Malloum was the target of a grenade attack that injured several top officials and spectators. A year after that, in March 1977, the CSM executed summarily the leaders of a short-lived mutiny by several military units in N'Djamena.
The fundamental failures of Malloum's government, however, were most evident in its interactions with France, Libya, and FROLINAT. In his first few months in office, Malloum persuaded a few eastern rebel elements to join the new government. In the north, the derde (Oueddei Kichidemi) returned from exile in Libya in August 1975. But his son, Goukouni Oueddei, refused to respond to his entreaties or those of the government and remained in opposition. When the Command Council of the Army Armed Forces of the North (Conseil de Commandement des Forces Armées du Nord-- CCFAN), a structure set up in 1972 by Habré and Goukouni to represent northern elements in FROLINAT, continued to refuse negotiations with the CSM over the release of the hostage French archaeologist, France began dealing directly with the rebels. Malloum's government reacted to this embarrassment by demanding the departure of 1,500 French troops, at a time in late 1975 when Chad's military situation was beginning to worsen. Throughout 1976 and 1977, the military balance of power shifted in favor of FROLINAT as Libya provided the rebels with substantially more weaponry and logistical support than ever before. Faya Largeau was placed under siege twice in 1976, and then in June 1977 Bardaï fell to the CCFAN.
The sharp increase in Libyan activity also brought to a head the power struggle within the CCFAN between Goukouni and Habré. In 1971 Habré had left his position as a deputy prefect in the Tombalbaye government to join Goukouni's rebels. Goukouni and Habré, ambitious Toubou leaders from two different and competing clans, became bitter rivals, first within the CCFAN and later within all of Chad. In the CCFAN, the key issues dividing the men were relations with Libya and the handling of the hostage affair. Habré opposed vigorously all Libyan designs on the Aozou Strip and favored retaining the French hostage even after most of the ransom demands had been met. Goukouni felt that priority should go to the conflict with the CSM, for which Libyan assistance could be decisive, and that the kidnapping had already achieved more than enough. Habré finally split with him in 1976, taking a few hundred followers to fight in Batha and Biltine prefectures and retaining for his group the name FAN (see Appendix B). Goukouni and his followers prevailed (the CCFAN released the hostage to French authorities in January 1977).
As the military position of the CSM continued to decline in 1977, Malloum's political overtures to the rebel groups and leaders became increasingly flexible. In September Malloum and Habré met in Khartoum to begin negotiations on a formal alliance. Their efforts culminated in a carefully drafted agreement, the Fundamental Charter, which formed the basis of the National Union Government of August 1978. Malloum was named president of the new government, while Habré, as prime minister, became the first significant insurgent figure to hold an executive position in a postcolonial government.
Habré's ascension to power in N'Djamena was intended to signal to Goukouni and other rebel leaders the government's willingness to negotiate seriously following its reversals on the battlefield in 1978. In February Faya Largeau fell to FROLINAT, and with it roughly half the country's territory. Shortly thereafter, Malloum flew to Sabha in southern Libya to negotiate a cease-fire, but even as it was being codified in March, FROLINAT's position was hardening. Goukouni claimed that all three liberation armies were now united under his leadership in the new People's Armed Forces (Forces Armées Populaires--FAP) and that their objective remained the overthrow of the "dictatorial neocolonial regime imposed by France on Chad since August 11, 1960." FAP continued to advance toward the capital until it was halted near Ati in major battles with French military forces and units of the Chadian Armed Forces (Forces Armées Tchadiennes--FAT; see Appendix B). It was Malloum's hope that the FROLINAT leadership would soften its terms, or possibly undergo renewed fragmentation.
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Civil War and Multilateral Mediation, 1979-82
From 1979 to 1982, Chad experienced unprecedented change and spiraling violence. Southerners finally lost control of what remained of the Chadian government, while civil conflicts became significantly more internationalized. In early 1979, the fragile Malloum-Habré alliance collapsed after months of aggressive actions by Habré, including demands that more northerners be appointed to high government offices and that Arabic be used in place of French in broadcasting. Appealing for support among the large communities of Muslims and Arabs in N'Djamena, Habré unleashed his FAN on February 12. With the French garrison remaining uninvolved, FAN sent Malloum into retirement (under French protection) and drove the remnants of FAT toward the south. On February 22, Goukouni and FAP entered the capital. By this time, most of the city's Sara population had fled to the south, where attacks against Muslims and nonsoutherners erupted, particularly in Sarh, Moundou, and throughout Moyen-Chari Prefecture. By mid-March more than 10,000 were said to have died as a result of violence throughout the south.
In early 1979, Chad became an open arena of unrestrained factional politics. Opportunistic power seekers sought to gather followers (often using sectarian appeals) and to win support from Chad's African neighbors. Between March 10 and August 21, four separate conferences took place in the Nigerian cities of Kano and Lagos, during which Chad's neighbors attempted to establish a political framework acceptable to the warring factions. Chad's neighbors, however, also used the meetings to pursue interests of their own, resulting in numerous externally generated complications and a growing number of factions brought into the process. For example, at one point, Qadhaafi became so angry with Habré that the Libyan sent arms to Colonel Wadel Abdelkader Kamougué's anti-Habré faction in the south, even though Kamougué was also anti-Libyan. At the second conference in Kano, both Habré and Goukouni were placed under what amounted to house arrest so Nigeria could promote the chances of a Kanembu leader, Mahmat Shawa Lol. In fact, Nigerian support made Lol the Chadian titular head of state for a few weeks, even though his Third Liberation Army was only a phantom force, and his domestic political support was insignificant. Within Chad the warring parties used the conferences and their associated truces to recover from one round of fighting and prepare for the next.
The final conference culminated in the Lagos Accord of August 21, 1979, which representatives of eleven Chadian factions signed and the foreign ministers of nine other African states witnessed. The Lagos Accord established the procedures for setting up the Transitional Government of National Unity (Gouvernement d'Union Nationale de Transition--GUNT), which was sworn into office in November. By mutual agreement, Goukouni was named president, Kamougué was appointed vice-president, and Habré was named minister of national defense, veterans, and war victims. The distribution of cabinet positions was balanced between south (eleven portfolios), north, center, and east (thirteen), and among protégés of neighboring states. A peacekeeping mission of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), to be drawn from troops from Congo, Guinea, and Benin, was to replace the French. This force never materialized in any effective sense, but the OAU was committed to GUNT under the presidency of Goukouni.
GUNT, however, failed. Its major participants deeply mistrusted each other, and they never achieved a sense of coherence. As a result, the various factional militias remained armed. By January 1980, a unit of Habré's army was attacking the forces of one of the constituent groups of GUNT in Ouaddaï Prefecture. Shortly thereafter, N'Djamena plunged into another cycle of violence, and by the end of March 1980 Habré was openly defying the government, having taken control of a section of the capital. The 600 Congolese troops of the OAU peacekeeping force remained out of the fray, as did the French, while units of five separate Chadian armies prowled the streets of N'Djamena. The battles continued throughout the summer, punctuated by more OAU mediation efforts and five formal cease-fires.
It became evident that the profound rivalry between Goukouni and Habré was at the core of the conflict. By mid-1980 the south-- cut off from communication and trade with N'Djamena and defended by a regrouped, southern army--had become a state within a state. Colonel Kamougué, the strongman of the south, remained a prudent distance away from the capital and waited to negotiate with whichever northerner emerged as the winner.
In 1980 the beleaguered Goukouni turned to Libya, much as he had done four years earlier. With the French forces having departed in mid-May 1980, Goukouni signed a military cooperation treaty with Libya in June (without prior approval of the all-but-defunct GUNT). In October he requested direct military assistance from Qadhaafi, and by December Libyan forces had firm control of the capital and most other urban centers outside the south. Habré fled to Sudan, vowing to resume the struggle.
Although Libyan intervention enabled Goukouni to win militarily, the association with Qadhaafi created diplomatic problems for GUNT. In January 1981, when Goukouni and Qadhaafi issued a joint communiqué stating that Chad and Libya had agreed to "work for the realization of complete unity between the two countries," an international uproar ensued. Although both leaders later denied any intention to merge their states politically, the diplomatic damage had been done.
Throughout 1981 most of the members of the OAU, along with France and the United States, encouraged Libyan troops to withdraw from Chad. One week after the "unity communiqué," the OAU's committee on Chad met in Togo to assess the situation. In a surprisingly blunt resolution, the twelve states on the committee denounced the union goal as a violation of the 1979 Lagos Accord, called for Libya to withdraw its troops, and promised to provide a peacekeeping unit, the Inter-African Force (IAF). Goukouni was skeptical of OAU promises, but in September he received a French pledge of support for his government and the IAF.
But as Goukouni's relations with the OAU and France improved, his ties with Libya deteriorated. One reason for this deterioration was that the economic assistance that Libya had promised never materialized. Another, and perhaps more significant, factor was that Qadhaafi was strongly suspected of helping Goukouni's rival within GUNT, Acyl Ahmat, leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Council (Conseil Démocratique Révolutionnaire--CDR). Both Habré and Goukouni feared Acyl because he and many of the members of the CDR were Arabs of the Awlad Sulayman tribe. About 150 years earlier, this group had migrated from Libya to Chad and thus represented the historical and cultural basis of Libyan claims in Chad (see Languages and Ethnic Groups , ch. 2).
As a consequence of the Libya-Chad rift, Goukouni asked the Libyan forces in late October 1981 to leave, and by mid-November they had complied. Their departure, however, allowed Habré's FAN-- reconstituted in eastern Chad with Egyptian, Sudanese, and, reportedly, significant United States assistance--to win key positions along the highway from Abéché to N'Djamena. Habré was restrained only by the arrival and deployment in December 1981 of some 4,800 IAF troops from Nigeria, Senegal, and Zaire.
In February 1982, a special OAU meeting in Nairobi resulted in a plan that called for a cease-fire, negotiations among all parties, elections, and the departure of the IAF; all terms were to be carried out within six months. Habré accepted the plan, but Goukouni rejected it, asserting that Habré had lost any claim to legitimacy when he broke with GUNT. When Habré renewed his military advance toward N'Djamena, the IAF remained essentially neutral, just as the French had done when FROLINAT marched on Malloum three years earlier. FAN secured control of the capital on June 7. Goukouni and other members of GUNT fled to Cameroon and eventually reappeared in Libya. For the remainder of the year, Habré consolidated his power in much of war-weary Chad and worked to secure international recognition for his government.
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Little research material was available in English on the historical background of Chad or the central Sudanic region. For earlier historical periods, The Cambridge History of Africa offers a comprehensive survey, along with maps and bibliographic references. Principal sources include the contributions of Nehemia Levtzion in Volume 2 of the Cambridge series and H.J. Fisher in Volumes 3 and 4, as well as African History by Philip Curtin and others, for nineteenth-century material in particular. The published thesis State and Society in Three Central Sudanic Kingdoms by Anders J. Bjørkelo, although not widely available, contains extensive analysis and interpretation. A detailed examination of Kanem-Borno is presented in Pages d'histoire du Kanem, by Jean-Claude Zeltner.
Dennis D. Cordell's Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Sahahan Slave Trade, although not specifically about Chad, is especially useful for its regional perspective and its analysis of nineteenth-century developments. Cordell also provides useful perspectives on the culture of the Sara people.
No standard English work on the colonial experience in Chad is readily available, and the most frequently cited French source, Jacques Le Cornec's Histoire politique du Tchad de 1900 à 1962, is dated. Brian Weinstein's biography of Félix Eboué surveys the human dimension of the colonial era. Samuel Decalo's Historical Dictionary of Chad is also a valuable reference work.
Chad's recent history is analyzed in the works of Decalo, René Lemarchand, and William J. Foltz. Other important references include Conflict in Chad by Virginia M. Thompson and Richard Adloff and A State in Disarray, by Michael P. Kelley. French works on recent history include Le Frolinat et les révoltes populaires du Tchad, 1965-1976 by Robert Buijtenhuijs and Tchad-Libye: La querelle des frontières by Bernard Lanne. (For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.)
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Chapter 2. The Society and Its Environment
GEOGRAPHIC VARIATION, ETHNIC and linguistic diversity, and religious differences have presented serious obstacles to nation building in Chad. A range of environments has contributed to the evolution of a variety of life-styles and social structures, including nomadic societies in the Sahara Desert in the north, seminomadic (or semisedentary) peoples in the Sahel (see Glossary) in the center, and agricultural communities in the soudanian south. With three of Africa's four major language families represented within its borders, Chad's peoples do not share broad cultural characteristics, as do, for example, the Bantu peoples of countries in central, eastern, and southern Africa. Religion also divides Chad's people among followers of classical African religions, Islam, and Christianity. Ethnic differences often overlay and intensify these divisions.
Preoccupied with assuring the country's survival, successive Chadian governments have had little motivation or resources to deal with urgent social and economic problems. Up-to-date population data--necessary for reliable development planning--are lacking; however, a census scheduled for 1989 promised to remedy this problem partially.
Other challenges include providing adequate education and health care. Starting in the mid-1960s, civil strife has undermined the Chadian goal of universal primary school education. It has also brought the exile of much of the country's intellectual community and the flight of foreign personnel who had staffed institutions of higher learning. Health care has fared even more poorly than has education. Although the number of medical facilities of all kinds seems to have grown between the early 1970s and the early 1980s, the number of trained personnel has not kept pace. And once again, the violence of war and discontent with the government in rural areas have provoked the closing of many facilities and the flight of their staffs.
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PHYSICAL SETTING
Located in north-central Africa, Chad stretches for about 1,800 kilometers from its northernmost point to its southern boundary. Except in the far northwest and south, where its borders converge, Chad's average width is about 800 kilometers. Its area of 1,284,000 square kilometers is roughly equal to the combined areas of Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. Chad's neighbors include Libya to the north, Niger and Nigeria to the west, Sudan to the east, Central African Republic to the south, and Cameroon to the southwest.
Chad exhibits two striking geographical characteristics. First, the country is landlocked. N'Djamena, the capital, is located more than 1,100 kilometers northeast of the Atlantic Ocean; Abéché, a major city in the east, lies 2,650 kilometers from the Red Sea; and Faya Largeau, a much smaller but strategically important center in the north, is in the middle of the Sahara Desert, 1,550 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. These vast distances from the sea have had a profound impact on Chad's historical and contemporary development. The second noteworthy characteristic is that the country borders on very different parts of the African continent: North Africa, with its Islamic culture and economic orientation toward the Mediterranean Basin; West Africa, with its diverse religions and cultures and its history of highly developed states and regional economies; Northeast Africa, oriented toward the Nile Valley and Red Sea region; and Central or Equatorial Africa, some of whose people have retained classical African religions while others have adopted Christianity, and whose economies were part of the great Zaire River system. Although much of Chad's distinctiveness comes from this diversity of influences, since independence the diversity has also been an obstacle to the creation of a national identity.
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The Land
Although Chadian society is economically, socially, and culturally fragmented, the country's geography is unified by the Lake Chad Basin (see fig. 3). Once a huge inland sea (the Pale-Chadian Sea) whose only remnant is shallow Lake Chad, this vast depression extends west into Nigeria and Niger. The larger, northern portion of the basin is bounded within Chad by the Tibesti Mountains in the northwest, the Ennedi Plateau in the northeast, the Ouaddaï Highlands in the east along the border with Sudan, the Guéra Massif in central Chad, and the Mandara Mountains along Chad's southwestern border with Cameroon. The smaller, southern part of the basin falls almost exclusively in Chad. It is delimited in the north by the Guéra Massif, in the south by highlands 250 kilometers south of the border with Central African Republic, and in the southwest by the Mandara Mountains.
Lake Chad, located in the southwestern part of the basin at an altitude of 282 meters, surprisingly does not mark the basin's lowest point; instead, this is found in the Bodele and Djourab regions in the north-central and northeastern parts of the country, respectively. This oddity arises because the great stationary dunes (ergs) of the Kanem region create a dam, preventing lake waters from flowing to the basin's lowest point. At various times in the past, and as late as the 1870s, the Bahr el Ghazal Depression, which extends from the northeastern part of the lake to the Djourab, acted as an overflow canal; since independence, climatic conditions have made overflows impossible.
North and northeast of Lake Chad, the basin extends for more than 800 kilometers, passing through regions characterized by great rolling dunes separated by very deep depressions. Although vegetation holds the dunes in place in the Kanem region, farther north they are bare and have a fluid, rippling character. From its low point in the Djourab, the basin then rises to the plateaus and peaks of the Tibesti Mountains in the north. The summit of this formation--as well as the highest point in the Sahara Desert--is Emi Koussi, a dormant volcano that reaches 3,414 meters above sea level. The basin's northeastern limit is the Ennedi Plateau, whose limestone bed rises in steps etched by erosion.
East of the lake, the basin rises gradually to the Ouaddaï Highlands, which mark Chad's eastern border and also divide the Chad and Nile watersheds. Southeast of Lake Chad, the regular contours of the terrain are broken by the Guéra Massif, which divides the basin into its northern and southern parts.
South of the lake lie the floodplains of the Chari and Logone rivers, much of which are inundated during the rainy season. Farther south, the basin floor slopes upward, forming a series of low sand and clay plateaus, called koros, which eventually climb to 615 meters above sea level. South of the Chadian border, the koros divide the Lake Chad Basin from the Ubangi-Zaire river system.
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Water Systems
Permanent streams do not exist in northern or central Chad. Following infrequent rains in the Ennedi Plateau and Ouaddaï Highlands, water may flow through depressions called enneris and wadis. Often the result of flash floods, such streams usually dry out within a few days as the remaining puddles seep into the sandy clay soil. The most important of these streams is the Batha, which in the rainy season carries water west from the Ouaddaï Highlands and the Guéra Massif to Lake Fitri.
Chad's major rivers are the Chari and the Logone and their tributaries, which flow from the southeast into Lake Chad. Both river systems rise in the highlands of Central African Republic and Cameroon, regions that receive more than 1,250 millimeters of rainfall annually. Fed by rivers of Central African Republic, as well as by the Bahr Salamat, Bahr Aouk, and Bahr Sara rivers of southeastern Chad, the Chari River is about 1,200 kilometers long. From its origins near the city of Sarh, the middle course of the Chari makes its way through swampy terrain; the lower Chari is joined by the Logone River near N'Djamena. The Chari's volume varies greatly, from 17 cubic meters per second during the dry season to 340 cubic meters per second during the wettest part of the year.
The Logone River is formed by tributaries flowing from Cameroon and Central African Republic. Both shorter and smaller in volume than the Chari, it flows northeast for 960 kilometers; its volume ranges from five to eighty-five cubic meters per second. At N'Djamena the Logone empties into the Chari, and the combined rivers flow together for thirty kilometers through a large delta and into Lake Chad. At the end of the rainy season in the fall, the river overflows its banks and creates a huge floodplain in the delta.
The seventh largest lake in the world (and the fourth largest in Africa), Lake Chad is located in the sahelian zone, a region just south of the Sahara Desert. The Chari River contributes 95 percent of Lake Chad's water, an average annual volume of 40 billion cubic meters, 95 percent of which is lost to evaporation. The size of the lake is determined by rains in the southern highlands bordering the basin and by temperatures in the Sahel. Fluctuations in both cause the lake to change dramatically in size, from 9,800 square kilometers in the dry season to 25,500 at the end of the rainy season. Lake Chad also changes greatly in size from one year to another. In 1870 its maximum area was 28,000 square kilometers. The measurement dropped to 12,700 in 1908. In the 1940s and 1950s, the lake remained small, but it grew again to 26,000 square kilometers in 1963. The droughts of the late 1960s, early 1970s, and mid-1980s caused Lake Chad to shrink once again, however. The only other lakes of importance in Chad are Lake Fitri, in Batha Prefecture, and Lake Iro, in the marshy southeast.
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Climate
The Lake Chad Basin embraces a great range of tropical climates from north to south, although most of these climates tend to be dry. Apart from the far north, most regions are characterized by a cycle of alternating rainy and dry seasons. In any given year, the duration of each season is determined largely by the positions of two great air masses--a maritime mass over the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest and a much drier continental mass. During the rainy season, winds from the southwest push the moister maritime system north over the African continent where it meets and slips under the continental mass along a front called the "intertropical convergence zone". At the height of the rainy season, the front may reach as far as Kanem Prefecture. By the middle of the dry season, the intertropical convergence zone moves south of Chad, taking the rain with it. This weather system contributes to the formation of three major regions of climate and vegetation.
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Saharan Region
The Saharan region covers roughly the northern third of the country, including Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti Prefecture along with the northern parts of Kanem, Batha, and Biltine prefectures (see fig. 1). Much of this area receives only traces of rain during the entire year; at Faya Largeau, for example, annual rainfall averages less than three centimeters. Scattered small oases and occasional wells provide water for a few date palms or small plots of millet and garden crops. In much of the north, the average daily maximum temperature is about 32° C during January, the coolest month of the year, and about 45° C during May, the hottest month. On occasion, strong winds from the northeast produce violent sandstorms. In northern Biltine Prefecture, a region called the Mortcha plays a major role in animal husbandry. Dry for nine months of the year, it receives 350 millimeters or more of rain, mostly during July and August. A carpet of green springs from the desert during this brief wet season, attracting herders from throughout the region who come to pasture their cattle and camels. Because very few wells and springs have water throughout the year, the herders leave with the end of the rains, turning over the land to the antelopes, gazelles, and ostriches that can survive with little groundwater.
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Sahelian Region
The semiarid sahelian zone, or Sahel, forms a belt about 500 kilometers wide that runs from Lac and Chari-Baguirmi prefectures eastward through Guéra, Ouaddaï, and northern Salamat prefectures to the Sudanese frontier. The climate in this transition zone between the desert and the southern soudanian zone is divided into a rainy season (from June to early September) and a dry period (from October to May). In the northern Sahel, thorny shrubs and acacia trees grow wild, while date palms, cereals, and garden crops are raised in scattered oases. Outside these settlements, nomads tend their flocks during the rainy season, moving southward as forage and surface water disappear with the onset of the dry part of the year. The central Sahel is characterized by drought-resistant grasses and small woods. Rainfall is more abundant there than in the Saharan region. For example, N'Djamena records a maximum annual average rainfall of 580 millimeters, while Ouaddaï Prefecture receives just a bit less. During the hot season, in April and May, maximum temperatures frequently rise above 40°C. In the southern part of the Sahel, rainfall is sufficient to permit crop production on unirrigated land, and millet and sorghum are grown (see Agriculture , ch. 3). Agriculture is also common in the marshlands east of Lake Chad and near swamps or wells. Many farmers in the region combine subsistence agriculture with the raising of cattle, sheep, goats, and poultry.
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Soudanian Region
The humid soudanian zone includes the southern prefectures of Mayo-Kebbi, Tandjilé, Logone Occidental, Logone Oriental, Moyen-Chari, and southern Salamat. Between April and October, the rainy season brings between 750 and 1,250 millimeters of precipitation. Temperatures are high throughout the year. Daytime readings in Moundou, the major city in the southwest, range from 27°C in the middle of the cool season in January to about 40°C in the hot months of March, April, and May.
The soudanian region is predominantly savanna, or plains covered with a mixture of tropical or subtropical grasses and woodlands. The growth is lush during the rainy season but turns brown and dormant during the five-month dry season between November and March. Over a large part of the region, however, natural vegetation has yielded to agriculture.
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Chad
POPULATION
Source: Based on information from Chad, Ministry of Planning and Reconstruction, Tchad: Relance economique en chiffres, N'Djamena, Chad, 1983, 15.
In the late 1980s, demographic data for Chad were very incomplete. One of the most important demographic techniques is projection from one set of data to anticipate the evolution of the population, but the lack of a national census in Chad has made applying such a technique difficult. In addition, population projections assume that the population has evolved with regularity since the last collection of data. In Chad, domestic conflict, foreign military occupation of part of its territory, and serious famines, from 1968 through 1973 and in the early 1980s, have disrupted the regular change of the population. As a result, many population estimates were probably inaccurate. In 1988 most population estimates continued to be based on projections from partial studies made in 1964 and 1968 by the National Institute of Economic and Statistical Studies (Institut National des Etudes Statistiques et Economiques--INSEE) in France and by the Chadian government. These survey data, projected forward, were the major reference sources for the Chadian government and for many international agencies and foreign governments. Two organizations, the Sahel Institute (Institut du Sahel--INSAH) and the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), gave different figures for Chad's population in 1985. The first organization estimated the population at almost 5 million; the second, at 5.2 million. In the late 1980s, cognizant of the need for demographic data for planning, the Ministry of Planning and Reconstruction and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa began planning the first national census for 1989.
Estimates of total population acquire greater meaning when the processes behind them are examined more closely. Population change is the sum of two sets of additions and two sets of subtractions. First, there are additions through births. In mid-1987 the PRB estimated Chad's birthrate at 43 live births per 1,000 inhabitants annually (the world average was 28 in 1987). The same organization suggested that, on average, Chadian women gave birth to 5.9 children over their reproductive years, a slightly lower number than the 6.3 average for Africa women as a whole.
Second, there are additions through immigration. Although ethnic, political, and economic ties connect most regions of Chad with neighboring states, such links probably have not brought a large number of permanent immigrants. By the late 1980s, Chadians who had fled the civil strife in the southern and central parts of the country during the late 1970s and early 1980s apparently had returned in large numbers. Nonetheless, overall immigration probably has not exceeded emigration.
Subtractions for population decrease also are calculated for two sets of events. First, there are subtractions through deaths. In the mid-1980s, the PRB estimated Chad's mortality rate at 23 deaths annually per 1,000 inhabitants--one of the highest mortality rates in the world (the global average stood at 10 in 1987). Civilian and military deaths, resulting from warfare, poor health conditions, and drought undoubtedly have contributed to this high mortality rate. The yearly infant mortality rate (the number of children per 1,000 births who die before age one) was also extremely high in Chad, estimated by INSAH and the PRB at 155 and 143, respectively. Among children, a second peak in mortality occurs after weaning (from about one and one-half to two years of age), when they are deprived of their mothers' natural immunities. High mortality rates are indicative of short life expectancies. In Chad, INSAH estimated the life expectancy for a female born in the period 1975-80 at 43.4 years; for a male, it was even lower--38.5 years.
Emigration is the second form of subtraction. Although the data for Chad were partial, labor migration and refugee flight were the two major |
