Suddenly, Nation Is United : Chad’s Civil War Turns Into a Battle With Libya

For three bloody years, Chidi Yira Outouman and his fellow Toubou rebels in Chad’s northern Tibesti Mountains fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Libya in a civil war against the national troops of President Hissen Habre.

But when the government soldiers showed up a few weeks ago, they were on a rescue mission: Chidi and more than 100 Toubou refugees under Libyan attack were evacuated by truck to the safety of this oasis town, 450 miles south along trails marked by two tire tracks in the soft desert sand.

The Toubou nomads had switched their allegiance abruptly in October, and within days the Libyans had chased Chidi and others high into the rugged mountains above their homes in Zouar. They hid there for three months, encircled by Libyans, sneaking home at night for food and water.

“The Libyans were trying to destroy us,” Chidi said recently, sitting cross-legged on a blanket in his temporary home. “They destroyed our palm trees, they destroyed our cattle and our homes, they even dropped bombs on our little boys. We rejected the Libyans but they refused to leave.”

The recent arrival here of Chidi and other refugees from the rebel forces in the Tibesti is one of the small signs of hope beginning to appear in this country pockmarked by poverty and two decades of war.

In a matter of weeks, the nature of Chad’s strife has changed dramatically. Long a civil war between various factions, with Libya helping one group or another, it is now a war between a virtually united Chad and an invading Libya. Once a war that Chad was losing, it is now a war that the country appears to be winning, despite being outgunned and outmanned.

“The Libyans have done one good thing--Chad is more unified than I’ve ever seen it,” says a Westerner who has spent most of more than 20 years in Chad and seen the fighting shift like desert sands, motivated at times by religious rivalries, at others by geographic, tribal, political or purely personal quarrels.

But even the most optimistic military analysts here and in the West say the war is far from over. They predict a sharp increase in the fighting soon when Col. Moammar Kadafi tries to offset his recent embarrassing setbacks in Chad with a major offensive. Kadafi, sources here say, is determined to replace what he has called a “hostile regime” and put Chad firmly under his control.

Libya has 12,000 troops, or nearly a third of its army, in northern Chad or near the border, the Western military analysts say. Kadafi’s warplanes continue daily bombing runs in the north, causing few casualties “but blowing up a heck of lot of sand,” in the words of one analyst.

Kadafi’s troops are poorly disciplined, morale is low and the war is unpopular back in Libya, these analysts say. A Libyan army transport plane from Chad landed in Egypt last week, with the six soldiers on board reportedly seeking asylum.

The Chadian troops, on the other hand, are well-trained, highly motivated and, with the Toubou rebels now on their side, know the vast northern terrain of their country much better than the interlopers.

Libyan casualties, at 1,000, outnumber Chadians’ by 5 to 1, and Chadians have either shot down or confiscated at least 15 Libyan warplanes as well as hundreds of Libyan tanks, trucks and sophisticated weaponry, most of it Soviet-made.

French Air Patrols

The Chadians have no air force, but French air force Jaguar and Mirage jets roar off a runway in the capital in N’Djamena day and night to patrol the 16th Parallel--the line that France has drawn across the center of Chad and vowed to defend from Libyan attack.

The French, with a multibillion-dollar military effort in their former colony, have increased troop strength here from 900 in December to 2,000 in recent weeks and sent soldiers to Abeche and Biltine, near the 16th Parallel. The United States is giving Chad $20 million in military assistance this year, including three C-130 transport planes and shoulder-fired missiles that Chadian soldiers have used to keep Libyan bombers at bay.

Several hundred refugees from the war up north have been taken to Mao, 150 miles north of N’Djamena on the apron of the vast northern desert. Mao, which means monkey in the local language, is a village of several hundred gray, mud-brick homes, built within tall perimeter walls thrown up as protection from the frequent sandstorms. The people live on the food they grow on the outskirts of town, in oval plots under palm trees nourished by subterranean pools of water.

The relief agency CARE has provided some food for the refugees; the local citizens of Mao have donated blankets and water.

Chidi was the only man in his tribe who made the trip south. The 70-year-old tribal chief said he was too old to fight and had been chosen to lead the women and children to safety.

Crowded Conditions

Four families, 34 people in all, share two rooms here. As Chidi spoke, his wife and nine youngest children sat against a wall, watching the old man’s hollow and wrinkled face, patched with long white whiskers.

In the other room, a young feverish boy slept fitfully, his head on his mother’s knee. His mother says he was suffering from diarrhea, a common cause of death among children in Africa.

Chidi said the refugees need blankets and gloves against the night cold, more room to sleep and more food as well.

“We have suffered for a long time and we are still suffering,” he said.

But the Toubou village chief was grateful to the government rescuers.

“We of the Tibesti recognize only Habre as our president,” he said. “Even if I go back, it will be under Habre.”

Kadafi Loses Ally

Kadafi has supported various rebel groups against a succession of governments in N’Djamena over the years. Until last fall he was backing the Toubou leader Goukouni Oueddei, a former president and longtime rival of fellow northerner Habre. But Goukouni had an unexplained falling out with his Libyan ally, and his forces joined Habre.

Without a significant ally in northern Chad, Kadafi’s hold on the region grew tenuous. Last month, he lost the heavily fortified northern city of Fada, which his troops had held for three years. It took Chadian forces less than a day to retake the city.

Although Chad has some strategic importance as a bridge between Africa’s Muslims in the north and the black, mostly Christian people in the central and southern regions, it is dubious prize for any invaders seeking economic riches.

Covering mostly a desert area three times the size of California, Chad has 75 miles of paved road, fewer than 1,000 telephones and no daily newspaper for its 5 million people. It was once known as one of the last frontiers for big-game hunting, but the elephants and the hunters were scared away in 1980 when the war reached N’Djamena.

For 10 months, fighting raged in that flat, dusty capital, and by the time it was over most of the city had been flattened by bombs or shot up by automatic weapons, leaving thousands dead.

Rebuilding Under Way

For two years, no one bothered starting over in N’Djamena. But now a new cathedral has been built over one damaged by the fighting, boutiques and restaurants are opening, and whole stretches of offices along Charles de Gaulle Avenue have been replastered and glisten with new coats of paint.

The University of Chad reopened two years ago, although the professors are still working at half pay (about $175 a month at the top level) and the senior students have protested that the government has not come up with their scholarship money, which was due last November.

Even the elephants are coming back to the country, the hippopotamuses have returned to the Chari River in N’Djamena and Chad is still so optimistic that it has a Department of Tourism plotting ways for southern Chad to snare some of Africa’s lucrative photo-safari business.

Although a tourism official in N’Djamena admits, solemnly, that those are “long-term plans,” he noted that a couple of Frenchmen flew in recently to hunt for small game in a reopened lodge on Lake Chad, about 50 miles north of the capital. They were the lodge’s first guests of the year.

Relief agencies that were closed and reopened several times over the years are back in town. CARE, for example, is launching an irrigation project here that is its largest agricultural development effort in the world.

Making a Difference

“The thing about Chad that is so satisfying is that it’s so near the bottom that it’s easy to make a difference,” said Allan Turnbull, director of CARE here.

Chad’s economic problems begin with cotton, a legacy of the French colonizers that accounts for 80% of its exports and half of government revenue. When the world market for cotton falls sharply, as it has since 1985, Chad’s economy falls with it.

Not long ago, a Western relief official was filling out a form for headquarters that asked what conditions would be necessary for the success of his project in Chad. He answered simply: “Peace and water.”

Chad, like Ethiopia, suffered during the 1984 drought, and thousands here died of starvation. But the rains have returned and Chad again is producing enough food for itself.

Despite the mounting economic and development crises facing Chad, President Habre frankly tells his people that the war comes first.

‘Question of Survival’

“When a country’s independence is jeopardized, it must consider that a question of survival,” he said a few days ago. “For us now, the priority is given to war.”

Pleased with his new coalition, Habre has begun a subtle campaign to make sure that it lasts. A popular slogan on government posters around N’Djamena is: “Chad. One country. One nation.”

A recent issue of the weekly Al Watan magazine said the government’s political opponents were burying the hatchet and a headline greeted them this way--”Hello, Fellow Citizens Who Have Understood.”

“The carrots are already cooked,” said Information Minister Moumine Togoi Hamidi. “We’ve already reconciled on the military field.”

But other Chadians say privately they are not so sure.

“I have my doubts,” said an educated Chadian who fled N’Djamena to work on his family’s farm for three years after an earlier war, in 1980. “These animosities linger, like the war.”

Reconciliation is the newcomer in Chad. War is the veteran.

“I don’t know when we will go back,” Chidi said. “But until then, I will look after these children. One day they may also fight the Libyans.”