Word: gaddafi
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Syria charged that the Arab regimes cooperating with the maneuvers were "agents of imperialism." Palestine Liberation Organization Leader Yasser Arafat called the maneuvers part of an American-Zionist plot against the Arabs. Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi charged that Bright Star could be expanded into an invasion of Libya...
...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...
...declaration appalled most African governments in the area, as well as the French. Habré and his little army took refuge in the border area between Chad and the Sudan and began to launch periodic raids. What was not realized at the time was that Gaddafi's announcement also alarmed Chad's President Oueddei, who sought a way of escaping Libya's smothering embrace. He supported a proposal of the 50-nation Organization of African Unity to provide troops that could replace the Libyans, whose numbers by last month had reached an estimated 10,000. Nigeria...
Enter Mitterrand. In an effort to wean Oueddei away from Gaddafi, Mitterrand supported the proposal for an inter-African force, invited Oueddei to Paris, supplied his army with some small arms and repeated an earlier offer to help rebuild the Chadian army in a neighboring country, probably Cameroon. In early October, the French Development Minister, Jean-Pierre Cot, demanded the withdrawal of the Libyans from Chad by the end of the year. Oueddei, bolstered by the French, openly criticized the Libyan presence...
...usual, Gaddafi's motives were obscure. Was he simply bowing to African pressure, mindful that he is due to become chairman of the Organization of African Unity? Was he leaving so abruptly, weeks before African troops could arrive, in the hope of precipitating a new round of chaos, and thus justifying the past and possibly future role of his troops in Chad? For the time being, the French were being cautious, refusing to celebrate the news of Gaddafi's departure until, as one official put it, "we know what is going on and what is behind...