Word: chadli
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Libyan Strongman Muammar Gadaffi last November dispatched tanks and troops into neighboring Chad, defeated one faction in that country's sputtering civil war and announced a "merger" of the two nations. Since then tremors of anxiety have reverberated across West Africa. Last week a meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa was marked by angry attacks against Libya's "aggression" in Chad. Many West and Central African leaders fear it is only the first step toward a consummation of Gadaffi's long-range ambition to establish an Islamic sub-Saharan republic...
Defending the role of his Libyan allies not long ago, Chad's provisional President Goukouni Oueddei boasted that since the Islamic legion had intervened, "peace and calm" had been restored to N'Djamena after nine months of bloody civil strife. Indeed, with the .exception of an occasional gunshot or the roar of a Libyan jet fighter wheeling overhead, within the capital an eerie quiet reigns. The bulk of the residents who fled N'Djamena when fighting broke out between Oueddei supporters and the rival forces of former Defense Minister Hissène Habré do not seem...
...bank. No one is allowed to approach the airport, where Soviet-built MiG-23 and MiG-25 jet fighters are based, or the closely guarded garrison, where up to 7,500 combat troops, supported by Soviet T-54 tanks, are bivouacked. Diplomats say that Libya is providing funds for Chad government salaries and essential services...
...heels of protests from neighboring countries and from some of the eleven factions that constitute the unwieldy Transitional Government of National Unity, official talk of the proposed "merger" with Libya has almost disappeared. "Nobody even mentions it any more," says a Western diplomat. Indeed, Chad has requested that the U.S. and other Western powers, who withdrew their representatives when the fighting broke out last year, reopen their embassies as soon as possible. But many countries appear reluctant to do so because they do not wish to give even tacit approval to a Gadaffi takeover. The Organization of African Unity...
Nevertheless, Gadaffi seems determined to maintain his foothold in Chad, where his forces have been steadily encroaching for nearly a decade. Since 1973 Libyan troops have occupied the Aozou strip, a uranium-and manganese-rich area astride the Chad-Libyan border. On Libyan maps, the zone is known as Southern Libya. It was Tripoli's annexation of the strip that led to the original split between Habré and Oueddei, both northern Muslims who had been allied against the southern Christian government headed by General Félix Malloum. Habré, who had previously received arms from Gadaffi, resisted...