Word: chadli
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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These men are part of the first and second regiments of the Chad army, which is fighting a daily game of no-prisoners with the rebels who infiltrate from Libya to the north and Sudan to the east. The enemy also uses escadrons of Toyota vehicles, usually along with a 22-ton Mercedes truck for support. Some of these get through government lines, mine the roads and frighten the local population. When they do engage the army, they usually get the worst of it. In the battlefields of what has come to be called the Great Toyota War, the desert...
...Chad is effectively partitioned between the government and the rebels, but Idriss Deby, 27, commander of the Chad army, has no intention of letting things remain that way. Says Deby, a lean, ascetic man with samurai eyes: "Despite all kinds of shortages, we have been able to hold both the Libyan army and the rebels at bay." Nobody knows exactly how many men the Chad army has. The French say 7,000; the Chadians say "many, many." Its best fighters are the Goran, tribesmen from the northern district of Tibetsi, a starkly beautiful area of volcanic massifs, gorges and craters...
...mile trip from the capital to the outpost of Kalait in northeastern Chad can take days, even weeks, over one of the worst roads in Africa. It varies from soft, treacherous quicksand and dunes to flinty, sunbaked plains to immense boulders. On occasion it is mined by rebel infiltrators, and sometimes it is patroled by bandits of uncertain political persuasion...
...ranks," says Abdul Osman, 21. "We are all combatants, we are all volunteers." His job is to teach reading and writing to the troops. After supper he conducts a lesson: "Maman est tres belle .. . Maman a une belle robe . .. Bonjour, maman." Since there are 300 different languages in Chad, French is the lingua franca...
...slued into a line of coffins, knocking one over, and finally rolled to a halt, after coming within ten feet of French Defense Minister Charles Hernu. The incident last week climaxed an otherwise solemn military funeral at the Toulouse-Francazal airbase for the nine French paratroopers killed in Chad. The grieving brother of one of the dead soldiers had tried to run down the Minister...