Déby: Plurilateral Implications of His Death and Politics

The death, last week, of the President of Chad, Idriss Débré Itno, was not without nuances of politics, but even more, are its imports for the region, writes Bola A. Akinterinwa

Chad is officially a Francophone and an Arabophone country, officially referred to as République du Tchad. Its system of government is a presidential republic in which there is a dominant political party. It is a multi-religious society with the Muslims accounting for about 53%; the Catholics, 20%; Protestant,14%; and animists, 7%; as at ten years ago.
In terms of topography, Chad is a wooded savannah, desertic in the South, part of the Sahara in the North, while its southern rivers flow into the Lake Chad. And more important, Chad is geo-politically located in central North Africa, and therefore, land-locked, with its neighbours located in four different regions of Africa as defined in Articles 1 (d) and 1(e) of the 1991 Abuja Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community.
Put differently, Chad is bordered by Libya towards the North (North Africa region); by Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon towards the West (West Africa region); by Central Africa Republic towards the South (Central Africa region); and by Sudan towards the East (East Africa region).

And perhaps most importantly, even though Chad has a total area of 1,284,000 sq km, of which the land area is 1,259,200 sq. km, only 3% of it is arable. Many countries, like Mali and Chad, are territorially bigger than Nigeria, but Nigeria has the biggest arable land in the whole of Africa. Chad is, however, strategically well-endowed with many natural resources: oil, uranium, kaolin, natron, etc.

It is against the foregoing background that the exegesis of the international politics and implications of the death of Idriss Débré Itno in Chad should be done and understood. The mere fact of being land-locked and located at the epicentre of four different regions of Africa also requires the Government of Chad to cope with the challenges from four different directions. Additionally, the fact of many ethnic groups (Sara, 28%; Arab, 12%; Mayo-Kebbi, 12%; Kanem-Bornou, 9%, etc) necessarily also implies internal struggle for power, fairness and justice in the allocation of national resources.
From the religious perspective, political instability and insecurity in Chad have been of major concern. Political instability in the country dates back to 1966, otherwise only six years after the country’s independence on August 11, 1960. It was as from 1966 that the Northern Muslim rebels began to fight the animists, the French troops, and the Christian government in the South, with several ceasefires and peace pacts done, but most of which have been to no avail. In fact, political governance in Chad has been very repressive under President Itno, against which there has also been vehement opposition.

Dynamics of Instability and Insecurity
The first dynamic of political instability and insecurity in Chad is not only that the Chadian military is divided against itself, thus compelling President Itno to be very cautious and to be suspicious of his military, but also the existence of many groups of insurgents in the country. In this regard, the Muslim rebels should be differentiated from the Libyan-based rebels fighting the government.

This means that Itno had to fight in different battle fields either simultaneously or one after every attack from whatever direction. In many of the battles to defend the independence and territorial integrity of Chad, President Itno had to lead from the front, not necessarily because of the need to provide leadership by example, but essentially because of his mistrust for the military.

Second, the ghosts of the people Itno had killed appear to have hunted him to the time of his death. Hissène Habré ousted Goukouni Oueddei in June 1982. Goukouni Oueddei was compelled to flee the country for safety. Hissène Habré himself was removed in another coup d’état by the Itno-led Mouvement patriotique du salut (Patriotic Salvation Movement). The Movement was founded on March 11, 1990 by Itno, who enjoyed the active support of Muammar Gaddafi of Libya in ousting Hissène Habré.

The Movement has been the ruling political party since 1990. As noted earlier, the governance of Chad has been repressive by force of necessity: difficulty in differentiating between terrorist threats and agitations for social security needs. There is the added problem of opposition to the presence of foreign powers in the country.

Third, there is the challenge of Libya’s claim of sovereignty over the Aouzou strip by the time Itno came to power. The territorial dispute with Libya was the first foundation of the irritant in Chado-Libyan relationship, even if Itno was assisted by Libya to gain power. As considered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya filed in the Registry a notification of an agreement that was concluded with Chad, on August 31, 1990, in Algiers.
As stipulated in the agreement, in the event of impossibility of political settlement of the dispute, the misunderstanding should be referred to the court for adjudication. It was on this basis that Chad, on 3rd September, 1990, filed an Application instituting proceedings against Libya on the basis of the Franco-Libyan Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourliness of 10 August, 1955 and on the basis of the Algiers Agreement of 31 August, 1990 between Chad and Libya.
Following the filing of Memorials and Counter-Memorials at the ICJ, as well as the oral proceedings held in June and July 1993, the issue for determination by the ICJ was whether there was an existing international frontier or border between Chad and Libya.

While Libya claimed that there was no existing boundary ‘on the basis of a coalescence of rights and titles of the indigenous inhabitants, the Senoussi Order, the Ottoman empire, Italy and Libya itself,’ Chad, on the contrary, posited that there was an existing boundary on the basis of a Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourliness concluded by France and Libya on 10 August, 1955, or alternatively, on French effectivités, either in relation to, or independently of, the provisions of earlier treaties.’

The ICJ delivered its judgment on 3rd February, 1994 in favour of Chad, largely considering that there was a boundary and that it is defined by the Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourliness of 10 August 1955 between France and Libya. As a result, Libya took the bad end of the stick and has not always meant well for the country. This partly explains the terrorist activities often launched from the territory of Libya, especially, from the Tibesti mountains, which are aimed at undermining political stability in Chad.

But without a scintilla of gainsaying, since Itno came to power in 1990, and even with a new constitution approved in March 1996, which enabled a multi-party presidential election in June and July in that year, Chad has largely remained a terra cognita for insurgency, which has also been largely driven by political chicanery.
For instance, President Itno won his third-term in office on May 3, 2006 in an election boycotted by the major opposition parties. In other words, since 2006, there has been contestation of election organisation and results. After the first two-terms, the election victory of Itno has always remained a dividing question in Chad.

His Death and Implications
On Monday, 19 April, 2021 President Itno was reportedly killed in a frontline battle with the Front-for-Change-and-Concord-in-Chad insurgents, a group of dissident army officers formed in 2016 and fighting for democracy. Did he die as a result of bullet wounds in the battle field? Was he killed by an insider in the battle field, because the Chadian military is on record to be divided against itself?
As it is believed that there are boko haramists in the Government of Nigeria, so also were anti-Idriss Déby Itno in government.

Besides, there are also many groups of insurgents in Chad. The more notable ones are the Libyan-based terrorist group and the Islamic fundamentalists group. With this factor, it is very difficult to identify, who was responsible for the killing of the president. What is quite obvious is that there is a military struggle at various levels to have the political power of control. The insurgents are looking for power and the military under President Itno are also struggling to remain in power. It is from this perspective that the many issues involved and their implications should be explained.

First is the issue of unconstitutional change of government in Africa. It is considered as a crime. As provided in Article 28A of the Malabo Protocol, a legal basis of the African Criminal Court, a crime of unconstitutional change of government comprises ‘a putsch or coup d’état against a democratically-elected government; an intervention by mercenaries to replace a democratically-elected government; any replacement of a democratically-elected government by use of armed dissidents or rebels or through political assassination; any refusal by an incumbent government to relinquish power to the winning party or candidate after free, fair and regular elections; any amendment or revision of the Constitution or legal instruments, which is an infringement on the principles of democratic change of government or is inconsistent with the Constitution; and any substantial modification to the electoral laws in the last six months before the elections without the consent of the majority of the political actors’ (vide J. Shola Omotola, Unconstitutional Changes of Government in Africa: What Implications for Democratic Consolidation, Nordiska Afrika Institutet, Uppsala, 2011, for analysis of the extent to which the crime of unconstitutional change of government can be considered as a supranational crime).
Not only does the Chadian Constitution requires that the Speaker of the House of Representatives stands in for a transitional period of forty days, the African Union also does not condone unconstitutional change of Government in whatever ramification in Africa.

From the crime of unconstitutional change of government discussed above, there is no disputing the fact that the demise of President Itno was a coup, especially, that his son, Mahamat, was imposed by the interim military council to serve as President of Chad. This development has the potential to further deepen the situation of insecurity, in spite of the fact that the late president survived two coups d’état in 2006 and 2008.

Second, the naming of Mahamat as successor of his father gives the impression that the Chadian presidential system is being turned into a monarchical system. President Itno was accused before he died that he had changed the rule of law to the rule of man, especially, following the amendment of the Constitution in 2006, which removed the limitation to the number of presidential tenures from the Constitution. By implication, he was enabled to contest and remain in power for as long as he wanted.

Most unfortunately, in his absence, his son cannot be a legitimate beneficiary of his election victory. It is quite true that President Itno won five earlier presidential elections in 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016. However, another truth is that there were complaints of irregularities and opposition boycotts during the said elections.

Therefore, the likelihood of Mahamat Déby being able to rule effectively in Chad is remote, not simply because his father took over power at the age of 37 and he too is repeating history by also taking over power at 37 years of age, but particularly, because the army is divided and he is from the minority group. This leads to the third point.
It should be recalled that President Itno was a Zaghawa from the Muslim ethnic group in Eastern Chad and also concentrated in the Sudanese State of North Darfur. The Saghawa people, though are a minority group in Chad, played active roles along with their kith and kin in Sudan in the insurrection against the central Government of Sudan in 2001.

In fact, the Saghawa are the main backbone of the Chadian military and economy under the late president, who initially did not support the Saghawa insurrection in Sudan, but for reasons of force majeure, had to later accept them in Chad and also strained relationship with Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, who enabled his ousting of Hissène Habré in 1990.
The implication in this case is that the killing of President Itno and the imposition of his son are an attempt to sustain the rule of the minority to the detriment of the interests of the majority ethnic groups. This is one major reason for the unending attempts to overthrow the late president. The situational reality in Chad as at today is that the opposition to Mahamat Déby has increased to near consensus.

Fourth, the French proverbial saying that ‘’ordre et contre ordre égalent désordre, that is, ‘order and counter order amount to disorder,’ is likely to come into play in Chad. On the one hand, France advised that efforts should be quickly made to ensure a return to democratic rule, but, on the other hand, France has also come up with the justification as to why Mahamat Déby has to be in power.

It has been argued that ‘logically, it should be the speaker of the House, Haroun Kabadi, but he refused because of the exceptional security reasons that were needed to ensure the stability of this country.’ To borrow the idea of the French Foreign Minister, Mr. Jean-Yves Le Drian, the Chadian military were right to have adopted Mahamat as Head of State and not the Speaker.

France may be rightly wrong in this case. France is right to the extent that, if the Speaker who is constitutionally required to accept the responsibility of leadership reneges, there has to be an alternative. The wrongness of the French position is at the level of the choice of alternative: why the choice of Mahamat Déby and not that of another Army General?

The plain truth is that the regional coordinating centre of France’s anti-terrorism struggle is in Chad. President Itno and his son, Mahamat are major useful instruments in the hands of France, who the Elysée/Matignon Government in Paris cannot afford the luxury to ignore. The challenge for France is how to maintain a balance in the error of terrorist insurgency in Chad: it is an error to promote the crime of unconstitutional change of government to the detriment of non-compliance with the constitutional requirement that the Speaker should succeed the late president.

At the plurilateral level, the demise of President Itno requires a coordinated reaction beyond unnecessary songs of praise for him. The challenge newly created is very daunting: heightened terrorism-driven jihad. The challenge requires greater border surveillance by all the neighbouring countries of Chad to prevent the influx of the insurgents into their countries. The challenge also requires a comprehensive encirclement by air of the whole operational areas of the insurgents in Chad and Nigeria simultaneously by the military forces of the ECOWAS and the ECCAS.

Specifically in Nigeria, while the Government is thinking of guiding and mainstreaming the Chadian saga within the framework of the ECCAS, ECOWAS and the AU, the Boko Haram has reiterated its intention to establish an Islamic Caliphate in Northern Nigeria, beginning from the North East. Perhaps more disturbingly, as revealed with the attacks on Geidam in Yobe State, last Friday, 23rd April, 2021, all those Nigerians, who refuse to accept their agenda of Islamisation have been told to expect more and greater attacks on them. The terrorist order is now ‘accept Muslim Caliphate or get killed.’
One leeway to consider in not simply addressing insecurity in Chad, but particularly also in Nigeria, is to first provide good leadership in the fight against the boko haramists in Nigeria, before offering to guide and mainstream regional strategies, the capacity for which Nigeria does not have.

Nigeria cannot be protecting sympathisers of terrorism at home, on the one hand, and also preaching the sermon of better than thou in the struggle against terror in international relations, on the other. Nigeria’s quest to guide and mainstream the saga in Chad is, at best, a resultant from poverty of ideas. Let charity begin from home first.
Pix: The late President at the war front.jpg, Mahamat Itno…the acting president.jpg and Late President Deby.png