Idriss Deby, who had been president of Chad for 31 years, has died after head wounds sustained on battle front with rebels
Chad’s President Idriss Deby, who on Monday had secured a sixth term in office, has been killed in a frontline battle against rebels in the north of the country.
Deby, 68, had been president of the landlocked country — Africa’s tenth-largest oil producer that exports the bulk of its crude via pipeline to Cameroon — for 31 years.
In what is being described as a de facto coup, his 37-year old son and head of the presidential guard Mahamat Idriss Deby, who has been groomed for power for some years, has been made interim president by a military transitional council (MTC) – a move that violates the country’s constitution.
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According to a statement issued by Mahamat Deby on behalf of the MTC — available on the website of Chad’s president — his father died from head wounds after “defending territorial integrity on the battlefield” and following his repatriation to the capital, N’Djamena.
Ensuring ‘peace, security and order’
Dissolving the national assembly and government, the MTC implied it will be in power for up to 18 months in order to maintain stability and will form a transitional government.
A country-wide curfew is now in place, while land and air borders are closed.
The TMC said it “reassures the Chadian people that all measures are being taken to ensure peace, security and…order”.
Some reports said he was commanding his army at the weekend as it battled against rebels who had launched a major incursion into northern Chad on 11 April, the day of the presidential election.
Other reports said he and four generals were killed during talks with the rebel group called Front for Change and Concord in Chad, based in the Tibesti mountains in Libya.
Nathaniel Powell, an academic focused on Chad, said Mahamat Deby’s appointment, in what is “technically a coup,” signals “pure regime continuity and will certainly reassure Chad’s international partners — especially France — that they can continue to rely on Chad as a pillar for their regional security policy”.
However, he argued that Deby’s death poses “a longer-term threat to the specific political configuration which concentrates power into the hands of a fragment of the Zaghawa minority which runs the regime”.
“It may open an opportunity for armed opponents of various stripes to launch their own bids (to secure power).”
Ryan Cummings, a political-security analyst with US-based CSIS, said: “Military cohesion is going to be tested amid this transfer of power”, adding that he “will not be surprised should we see insurrection within ranks of the Chadian army despite the leadership void being so rapidly filled”.
He also said that Chadian opposition will not take kindly to an unconstitutional power transfer.
Cameron Hudson, senior fellow at US-based Atlantic Council’s Africa Centre, said Deby’s recent re-election was “widely seen as fraudulent” and, together with Chad’s poor economic condition, suggests “FACT could well be successful in tapping into pent-up frustration from within the military and civilian ranks.”
He remarked that despite Mahamat Deby being installed as transitional president, “there is a great deal of uncertainty around how events in Chad will unfold.”
Hudson, former director for African affairs at the US National Security Council, questioned if the army will stay loyal to Mahamat and continue efforts to repel the advancing FACT rebels, or whether Chad’s citizens, fed up after 30 years of Deby’s rule and on the heels of his sixth re-election, will join the rebels to undo the current political dispensation.
“Either scenario presents a high risk of civilian casualties and a likelihood that fleeing civilians or soldiers could export Chad’s instability to neighbouring states.”
Under Deby, Chad was considered a bulwark against Islamist insurgents across the Sahel, providing support to military efforts by the US and European Union to contain these movements.
France, which once ruled Chad as a colonial power and has been fighting Islamist militants throughout the Sahel, openly backed Deby in 2019 by unleashing airstrikes against an incursion by FACT rebels.
Rama Yade, director of Atlantic Council’s Africa Centre, said that with Deby’s death the entire Chad-based French military mission in the Sahel, which has been going on for nearly a decade, will now come under greater scrutiny.
“The military response is clearly not enough to overcome the terrorist threat,” she said, “despite the financial and military backing of the US.”
Yade, a former French government minister, believes the US, France, and other international actors need to “tackle one of the main weaknesses of foreign intervention: the lack of results on the economic and social-development fronts. It is urgent to address the roots of terrorist contagion.”
She noted that “Chad is not just Déby. The country can write a new page of its history provided that the transition is not confiscated by his family or by a clan.”
Hudson, writing just the day before Deby died, said the late leader had become very unpopular in Chad because he undermined political opposition, hollowed out civil society while oil revenues went to his Zaghawa tribe.
“Deby’s inability to turn billions of dollars in oil revenue accumulated since Chad started exporting its production through a World Bank-financed oil pipeline has emerged as a particular sore point for any Chadian not a part of (the) Zaghawa tribe, who have benefited the most from the corrupt patronage system that oil wealth has created.”
According to Hudson, when the World Bank pulled out of the pipeline deal in 2008, its final report noted “Chad failed to comply with the key requirements of this agreement. . . The government did not allocate adequate resources critical for poverty reduction.”
According to Chad’s Ministry of Finance, oil generated revenues of $401 million for the government in the fourth quarter of 2020.
The US International Trade Administration (ITA) said Chad ranked as the number 10 African oil producer in 2020, with output running at 140,000 barrels per day and reserves standing at 1.5 billion barrels.
Oil production generated about 90% of government revenues amid allegations that much of these funds were mismanaged by the late Deby.
ITA said oil is produced by China National Petroleum Company — which also operated a 20,000 bpd refinery — ExxonMobil, Glencore and Taiwan’s Opic.
This article has been adapted from its original source
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