Word: chadli
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...only surprise about this month's battle for Chad's capital city N'Djamena is that it was so long in coming. Every Chadian political dispute in the last 40 years has been settled by force of arms, and the latest conflict is running true to form. A coalition of Chadian rebels, backed by Sudan, made a lightning dash westward across the country from Darfur and assaulted the capital city. Hundreds of soldiers and civilians died in two days of bloody street fighting before Chad's President, Idriss Déby, with help from the French, rallied and pushed back...
...Chad is remote - almost equidistant from the Red Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean. From 1966 onward it was racked by 25 years of war. N'Djamena was destroyed and the country divided into rival fiefdoms. Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi tried to annex Chad, prompting France and the U.S. to fund a covert contra war in support of Chadian warlord-turned-President Hissène Habr...
...Janjaweed - into Darfur, sparking that region's descent into bloodshed. But Déby soon fell out with Habré, who tortured and executed thousands of opponents, real and suspected. Déby is a Zaghawa - part of a tribe of black Saharans equally at home in Darfur, Chad and the oases of the Libyan Sahara. Armed by Sudan and Libya, he stormed across the Chadian savanna from rear bases in Darfur and seized power in 1990. Paris ordered its troops to stand aside, congratulated the coup maker and renewed its military cooperation pact with Chad...
Under Déby's rule, Chadians began to enjoy stability for the first time. Oil promised real wealth, even schools and clinics. But hopes soured when Déby fixed the 2001 elections and Transparency International ranked Chad as the world's most corrupt country (alongside Bangladesh). Déby faced down mutinies at home, but the fuse for the current conflict was lit with the 2003 insurrection in Darfur, led in part by his own Zaghawa tribesmen...
...Still, intervening would undercut Sarkozy's efforts to move France beyond Françafrique, its half-century old policy of intervening in former colonies to prop up friendly dictators. Sarkozy had made it clear he wants to end such arrangements and favor greater democracy, events in Chad have left no good option. "I didn't want direct intervention before a precise legal framework" had been outlined, Sarkozy said Tuesday, insisting that the U.N. vote changed the equation. "We're no longer in what was called Françafrique. There are international rules, and I want to conform to them...