Word: chadli
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...commander of Libya's occupation forces in the central African nation of Chad received an urgent phone call from his government in Tripoli last week. When he hung up, he told reporters that he had received "an order" from Libya's mercurial strongman, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, to withdraw his troops from Chad. Added the clearly shaken soldier: "We must leave immediately...
This latest turn in Chad's murky political fortunes was unexpected and, like so many events that have preceded it, open to many interpretations. But if Gaddafi does indeed pull out all his troops, it would clearly be a triumph for the diplomatic tactics of the Socialist government of France's President François Mitterrand...
...came as Mitterrand was acting as host to a meeting in Paris of more than 30 African leaders, including a dozen heads of state. Encouraged by Mitterrand, the conference unanimously endorsed a resolution appealing to African states to help set up a multinational African peacekeeping force to move into Chad and to help rebuild the country's army...
Restoring peace to Chad will be a formidable task for Mitterrand and his African allies. A vast country, over twice the size of France but with a population of only 4.6 million, Chad has been torn by a civil war between the Muslims of the north and the black Christians of the south for the better part of two decades. That struggle ended, at least temporarily, in March 1979, when Muslim guerrillas, armed by Gaddafi, finally succeeded in overthrowing President Felix Malloum, one of the two black Christians who had run the country since it gained its independence from France...
...fighting soon broke out between the armies of the Libyan-backed Oueddei and the French-backed Habré. The struggle continued off and on, killing thousands and ravaging the country's riverside capital of N'Djamena, until November 1980, when Gaddafi dispatched to Chad a contingent of 4,000 troops, complete with tanks, rocket launchers, mortars, helicopters and MiG-25 fighters, to support Oueddei. Habré quickly agreed to a cease-fire and fled. Gaddafi, who dreams of creating a sub-Saharan Islamic republic from Senegal on the Atlantic to the Sudan on the Red Sea, announced...