Word: chadli
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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During 15 years of harsh and eccentric rule, President Ngarta Tombalbaye of Chad survived at least seven major assassination attempts. Last week his luck ran out. In a surprise sunrise attack, uniformed soldiers and police, led by General Mbailai Odingar, acting commander of Chad's 4,000-man army, stormed the white-walled presidential palace in Ndjamena, capital of this Central African nation. Tombalbaye's death was announced over national radio, and General Odingar claimed that the armed forces had "exercised their responsibilities before God and the nation." Almost immediately, thousands of brightly swathed men and women poured...
...former schoolteacher and union leader, Tombalbaye entered politics in 1947 and became Chad's head of state when it gained independence in 1960 after 47 years of French colonial rule. Several months later the dictatorial Tombalbaye merged the main opposition party into his own Progressives-a move that allowed him to be elected President without opposition...
Despite his ruthless oppression of political opponents, Tombalbaye was never able to gain complete control of Chad, a country torn by traditional religious and tribal animosities. Starting in 1965 and later with the support of the French Foreign Legion, Tombalbaye fought a guerrilla war against the Moslem rebels from his country's northern and eastern desert regions. The Moslems, who constitute 52% of the population, resented the political dominance that Tombalbaye gave to the Bantu tribesmen of Chad's tropical south...
...President Ngarta Tombal-baye of Chad to embark on what I consider a slow, premeditated and malicious extermination of Christians [Nov. 18] is dragging Chadians back to a neolithic way of life from which, ironically, we were all rescued by Christianity and colonialism alike...
...Although Chad's 52% Muslim majority, as well as its 5% Christian minority, condemn the pagan rites, no effective opposition has been organized. A secret meeting of Chad's church leaders was held in August. So far, they have not dared to speak out for fear of reprisal: the 130 assassinated churchmen were apparently killed for preaching against the rites. Until the dictatorial Tombalbaye can be persuaded to soften his drastic decree, many Chadians will have to choose between possible death from undergoing Yondo and certain death for resisting...