NAIROBI, Kenya – The rebels have done an amazing job. Barely a week after their armed convoy roared across the desert in northern Chad, they started a fight that claimed the biggest scalp of all on Monday: Idriss Déby, Chad’s iron fist president for three decades, is on the battlefield dead when a shell exploded. according to a senior assistant, near his vehicle.
On Wednesday, a day after his death was announced, a feeling of fear and disbelief echoed through the capital Ndjamena, where the army formally as the interim president, Mr. Déby’s 37-year-old son Mahamat Idriss Déby has been installed. Rumors of a looming rebel attack on the city are coming through its streets.
But the secret of the rebels’ remarkable success so far lies behind them, across Chad’s northern border in Libya, where they have been fighting for years as fortune tellers, gathering weapons, money and battlefield experience, according to United Nations investigators, regional experts. and Chadian officials. In fact, the rebels used Libya’s chaotic war to prepare for their own campaign in Chad.
Until recently, they were employed by Khalifa Hifter, a powerful Libyan commander once presided over by President Donald J. Trump. They fought with weapons used by the United Arab Emirates, one of the largest foreign sponsors of Mr. Hifter, provided.
And last year they were based on a vast Libyan military air base alongside mercenaries from the Wagner group, the private Kremlin-backed private company that is seen as a spearhead for Russia’s secret efforts to spread its military influence over Africa.
According to experts, the unexpected coup by the Chadian rebels is a clear example of how the decades-old power vacuum in Libya, which began with the overthrow of the dictator. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011, cultivated a variety of mercenaries and other armed groups. some of which are now spreading chaos in the region.
“The civil war in Libya has created an environment in which armed groups, not only from Chad but from all over, can thrive and find sponsors and allies,” said Nathaniel Powell, a research fellow at the Center for War and Diplomacy. . Lancaster University in Britain, and the author of ‘France’s Wars in Chad.’
Uncertainty has plagued Chad since the death of Mr. Déby seized upon, challenging the stability of a people regarded by the United States and France as at the heart of their efforts to spread Islamic militant spread throughout West and Central Africa.
In a statement on Wednesday, the rebels, known as the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT, according to its French acronym), threatened to march to Ndjamena over the weekend following the funeral of Mr. Déby scheduled for Friday.
Whether the rebels could pose the threat is unclear. They suffered heavy losses earlier this week – Chad’s army claimed to have killed 300 rebels – and foreign military officials are not sure how far the capital’s rebel force is.
Nevertheless, the Chad army on Wednesday strengthened its defenses around the presidential palace, where officials deny stubborn rumors that Déby’s successor, his son Mahamat, was also killed or injured.
“If he is shot or killed, it means he is a good actor because he is alive and kicking,” said Acheikh Ibn-Oumar, a senior presidential adviser, speaking from inside the palace.
There are still questions about the circumstances of the death of the elder, Mr. Déby, and whether he was in fact killed by a rival. But Mr. Ibn-Oumar, who said in a statement from military leaders, insisted the president was dead when a rebel shell exploded near his vehicle near Nokou, 170km north of Ndjamena.
Mr. Déby was killed on the day he won his sixth election, broken by irregularities. Western countries largely ignored his grim record of corruption and rights violations because he was a bulwark against the rising tide of Islamic militants in the Sahel, an arid part of the Sahara that spans six African countries.
France has had a continuous military presence in Ndjamena since 1986, and its counter-terrorism operation in the Sahel, known as Operation Barkhane, has been headquartered in the capital of Chad since its launch in 2014. France says at least 1,000 of its troops are currently based in Chad.
But the rebels who wanted to overthrow Déby represent a variety of local grievances against the iron-fisted 31-year rule of an old-fashioned African man accused by critics of squandering Chad’s substantial oil revenues, and among the poorest countries on earth. .
Since the 1990s, a variety of rebel groups, many of which are defined by ethnic identity, have been trying to overthrow him. Some were in the Darfur region in western Sudan, where they received funding and weapons from Sudanese dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
Nadat mnr. Al-Bashir and Mr. Deby signed a peace agreement in 2010 and agreed to stop supporting rebels fighting each other’s governments, forcing the Chadian rebels to leave Sudan. They have found a new base in Libya.
In the chaos that followed the expulsion and death of Col. Qaddafi in 2011, rival Libyan factions hired African mercenaries to fight with their own forces. The Chadians, who have the reputation of being desert warriors, were very popular.
Some Chadians even switched sides if the price was right.
The FACT began with a Libyan faction in the central city of Misurata, said a United Nations official who spoke to the group’s leadership but was not authorized to speak to the media. But by 2019, they have shifted their support to a rival faction led by Mr. Hifter, who launched a campaign to seize the capital Tripoli.
The Chadians are by no means the most well-known foreign mercenaries in Libya. Much greater attention was paid to the Russian and Syrian fighters who played a key role in Mr. Hifter’s pursuit of Tripoli.
But the money, weapons and experience raised by African mercenaries, mostly from Chad and Sudan, are now being used in other countries.
A UN report published in February noted that FACT fighters were stationed at a major military air base in Al Jufra, in central Libya – an airfield that was also a hub for Russian mercenaries. Wagner group, and which received cargo flights with weapons from the United Arab Emirates, the report reads.
The UN also noted that a plane owned by Erik Prince, the former owner of Blackwater, which was a bad $ 80 million mercenary for Mr. Hifter arranged, was photographed at the Jufra air base.
After the collapse last year of Mr. Hifter’s assault on Tripoli, the warring factions in Libya in October signed a ceasefire agreement that was mostly kept.
When the fighting in Libya ended, the Chadian fighters returned home for the uprising they were fighting on April 11 against Mr. Déby launched. They may have taken with them some of the advanced weapons from Libya, said Cameron Hudson, a former State Department official now at the Atlantic Council, a research body in Washington.
He said the Chadians apparently traveled in the same type of armored vehicles as the Emiratis told Mr. Hifter donated.
The UN official said the rebels, even at the height of the Libyan war, had always intended to go to Chad.
“It’s their real interest,” he said. “They talked about collecting as many weapons as they could and going back to Chad.”
Mahamat Adamou reported on Ndjamena, Chad and Elian Peltier from London.