The Chadian–Libyan War was a series of military campaigns in Chad between 1978 and 1987, fought between Libya and its Chadian allies, and anti-Libyan Chadian groups supported by France, with the occasional involvement of other foreign countries and factions.
Libya had been involved in Chad's internal affairs prior to 1978 and before Muammar Gaddafi's rise to power in Libya in 1969, beginning with the extension of the Chadian Civil War to northern Chad in 1968. The conflict was marked by a series of four separate Libyan interventions in Chad, taking place in 1978, 1979, 1980–1981 and 1983–1987. On all of these occasions, Gaddafi had the support of a number of factions participating in the civil war, while Libya's opponents found the support of the French government, which intervened militarily to support the Chadian government in 1978, 1983 and 1986.
The pattern of the war delineated itself in 1978, with the Libyans providing armour, artillery and air support and their Chadian allies the infantry, which assumed the bulk of the scouting and fighting. This pattern was radically changed in 1986, towards the end of the war, when most Chadian forces united in opposing the Libyan occupation of northern Chad with a degree of unity never previously witnessed in Chad. This deprived the Libyan forces of their habitual infantry, exactly when they found themselves confronting a mobile army, well provided now by the United States, Zaire and France with anti-tank and anti-air missiles, thus cancelling out Libya's superiority in the air and in other respects. What followed was the Toyota War, in which the Libyan forces were routed and expelled from Chad, putting an end to the conflict.
Gaddafi initially intended to annex the Aouzou Strip, the northernmost part of Chad, which he claimed as part of Libya on the grounds of an unratified treaty of the colonial period. In 1972 his goals became, in the evaluation of historian Mario Azevedo, the creation of a client state in Libya's "underbelly", an Islamic republic modelled after his Jamahiriya, that would maintain close ties with Libya, and secure his control over the Aouzou Strip; expulsion of the French from the region; and use of Chad as a base to expand his influence in Central Africa.
Background
Occupation of the Aouzou Strip
Libyan involvement with Chad can be said to have started in 1968, during the Chadian Civil War, when the insurgent Muslim National Liberation Front of Chad (FROLINAT) extended its guerrilla war against the Christian President François Tombalbaye to the northerly Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti Prefecture (BET). Libya's king Idris I felt compelled to support the FROLINAT because of long-standing strong links between the two sides of the Chad–Libya border. To preserve relations with Chad's former colonial master and current protector, France, Idris limited himself to granting the rebels sanctuary in Libyan territory and to providing only non-lethal supplies.
All this changed with the Libyan coup d'état of 1 September 1969 that deposed Idris and brought Muammar Gaddafi to power. Gaddafi claimed the Aouzou Strip in northern Chad, referring to an unratified treaty signed in 1935 by Italy and France (then the colonial powers of Libya and Chad, respectively). Such claims had been previously made when in 1954 Idris had tried to occupy Aouzou, but his troops were repelled by the French Colonial Forces.
Though initially wary of the FROLINAT, Gaddafi had come to see by 1970 the organization as useful to his needs. With the support of Soviet bloc nations, particularly East Germany, he trained and armed the insurgents, and provided them with weapons and funding. On 27 August 1971, Chad accused Egypt and Libya of backing a coup against then-president François Tombalbaye by recently amnestied Chadians.
On the day of the failed coup, Tombalbaye cut all diplomatic relations with Libya and Egypt, and invited all Libyan opposition groups to base themselves in Chad, and started laying claims to Fezzan on the grounds of "historical rights". Gaddafi's answer was to officially recognize on 17 September the FROLINAT as the sole legitimate government of Chad. In October, Chadian Foreign Minister Baba Hassan denounced Libya's "expansionist ideas" at the United Nations.
Through French pressure on Libya and the mediation of Nigerien President Hamani Diori, the two countries resumed diplomatic relations on 17 April 1972. Shortly after, Tombalbaye broke diplomatic relations with Israel and is said to have secretly agreed on 28 November to cede the Aouzou Strip to Libya. In exchange, Gaddafi pledged 40 million pounds to the Chadian President and the two countries signed a Treaty of Friendship in December 1972. Gaddafi withdrew official support to the FROLINAT and forced its leader Abba Siddick to move his headquarters from Tripoli to Algiers. Good relations were confirmed in the following years, with Gaddafi visiting the Chadian capital N'Djamena in March 1974; in the same month a joint bank was created to provide Chad with investment funds.
Six months after the signing of the 1972 treaty, Libyan troops moved into the Strip and established an airbase just north of Aouzou, protected by surface-to-air missiles. A civil administration was set up, attached to Kufra, and Libyan citizenship was extended to the few thousand inhabitants of the area. From that moment, Libyan maps represented the area as part of Libya.
The exact terms by which Libya gained Aouzou remain partly obscure and are debated. The existence of a secret agreement between Tombalbaye and Gaddafi was revealed only in 1988 when the Libyan leader exhibited an alleged copy of a letter in which Tombalbaye recognizes Libyan claims. Against this, scholars like Bernard Lanne have argued that there never was any sort of formal agreement and that Tombalbaye had found it expedient not to mention the occupation of a part of his country. Libya was unable to exhibit the original copy of the agreement when the case of the Aouzou Strip was brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1993.
Expansion of the insurgency
The rapprochement was not to last long, as on 13 April 1975 a coup d'état removed Tombalbaye and replaced him with General Félix Malloum. As the coup was partly motivated by opposition to Tombalbaye's appeasement of Libya, Gaddafi considered it a menace to his influence and resumed supplying the FROLINAT. In April 1976, there was a Gaddafi-backed attempted assassination of Malloum, and in the same year, Libyan troops started making forays into central Chad in the company of FROLINAT forces.
Libyan activism began generating concerns in the strongest faction into which the FROLINAT had split, the Command Council of the Armed Forces of the North (CCFAN). The insurgents split on the issue of Libyan support in October 1976, with a minority leaving the militia and forming the Armed Forces of the North (FAN), led by the anti-Libyan Hissène Habré. The majority, willing to accept an alliance with Gaddafi, was commanded by Goukouni Oueddei. The latter group soon renamed itself People's Armed Forces (FAP).
In those years, Gaddafi's support had been mostly moral, with only a limited supply of weapons. All this started changing in February 1977, when the Libyans provided Oueddei's men with hundreds of AK-47 assault rifles, dozens of RPGs, 81 and 82mm mortars and recoilless cannons. Armed with these weapons, the FAP attacked in June the Chadian Armed Forces' (FAT) strongholds of Bardaï and Zouar in Tibesti and of Ounianga Kébir in Borkou. Oueddei took full control of the Tibesti with this attack after Bardaï, besieged since 22 June, surrendered on 4 July 1977, while Zouar was evacuated. The FAT lost 300 men, and piles of military supplies fell into the hands of the rebels. Ounianga was attacked on 20 June, but was saved by the French military advisors present there.
As it had become evident that the Aouzou Strip was being used by Libya as a base for deeper involvement in Chad, Malloum decided to bring the issue of the Strip's occupation before the UN and the Organisation of African Unity. Malloum also decided he needed new allies; he negotiated a formal alliance with Habré, the Khartoum Accord, in September. This accord was kept secret until 22 January 1978, when a Fundamental Charter was signed, following which a National Union Government was formed on 29 August 1978 with Habré as Prime Minister. The Malloum-Habré accord was actively promoted by Sudan and Saudi Arabia, both of which feared a radical Chad controlled by Gaddafi. The two nations saw in Habré, with his good Muslim and anti-colonialist credentials, the only chance to thwart Gaddafi's plans.
Conflict
Libyan escalation
The Malloum-Habré accord was perceived by Gaddafi as a serious threat to his influence in Chad, and he increased the level of Libyan involvement. For the first time with the active participation of Libyan ground units, Goukouni's FAP unleashed the Ibrahim Abatcha offensive on 29 January 1978 against the last outposts held by the government in northern Chad: Faya-Largeau, Fada and Ounianga Kébir. The attacks were successful, and Oueddei and the Libyans assumed control of the BET Prefecture.
The decisive confrontation between the Libyan-FAP forces and the Chadian regular forces took place at Faya-Largeau, the capital of the BET. The city, defended by 5,000 Chadian soldiers, fell on 18 February 1978 after sharp fighting to a force of 2,500 rebels, supported by possibly as many as 4,000 Libyan troops. The Libyans do not seem to have directly participated in the fighting; in a pattern that was to repeat itself in the future, the Libyans provided armor, artillery and air support. The rebels also were much better armed than before, displaying Strela-2 surface-to-air missiles.
Goukouni Oueddei's forces captured about 2,500 prisoners in 1977 and 1978; as a result, the Chadian Armed Forces lost at least 20% of their manpower. In particular, the National and Nomadic Guard (GNN) was decimated by the fall of Fada and Faya. Oueddei used these victories to strengthen his position in the FROLINAT: during a Libyan-sponsored congress held in March in Faya-Largeau, the insurgency's main factions reunited themselves and nominated Goukouni Oueddei as the secretary-general.
Malloum's reaction to the Goukouni–Gaddafi offensive was to sever diplomatic relations with Libya on 6 February 1978 and bring before the UN Security Council the issue of Libyan involvement. He raised again the question of Libya's occupation of the Aouzou Strip; on 19 February, however, after the fall of Faya-Largeau, Malloum was forced to accept a ceasefire and withdraw the protest. Gaddafi halted the advance of Oueddei because of pressure from France, then an important supplier of Libya's weapons.
Malloum and Gaddafi restored diplomatic relations on 24 February 1978 in Sabha, Libya, where an international peace conference was held which included as mediators Niger's president, Seyni Kountché, and Sudan's vice-president, Abu al-Gasim Mohamed Ibrahim. Under severe pressure from France, Sudan and Zaire, Malloum was forced to sign the Benghazi Accord, which recognized the FROLINAT and agreed on a new ceasefire, on 27 March. The agreement called for the creation of a joint Libya–Niger military committee tasked with implementation; through this committee, Chad legitimized Libyan intervention in its territory. The accord also contained a condition dear to Libya: the termination of all French military presence in Chad. The stillborn accord was for Gaddafi nothing more than a strategy to strengthen his protégé Oueddei; it also weakened considerably Malloum's prestige among southern Chadians, who saw his concessions as a proof of his weak leadership.
On 15 April 1978, only a few days after signing the ceasefire, Oueddei left Faya-Largeau, leaving there a Libyan garrison of 800 men. Relying on Libyan armor and air power, Goukouni's forces conquered a small FAT garrison and turned towards N'Djamena.
Against Goukouni Oueddei stood freshly arrived French forces. Already in 1977, after Oueddei's first offensives, Malloum had asked for a French military return in Chad, but President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was at first reluctant to commit himself before the 1978 legislative elections; also, France was afraid of damaging its profitable commercial and diplomatic relations with Libya. However, the rapid deterioration of the situation in Chad resolved the President on 20 February 1978 to start Opération Tacaud, which by April brought 2,500 troops to Chad to secure the capital from the rebels.
The decisive battle took place at Ati, a town 430 kilometres northeast of N'Djamena. The town's garrison of 1,500 soldiers was attacked on 19 May 1978 by the FROLINAT insurgents, equipped with artillery and modern weapons. The garrison was relieved by the arrival of a Chadian task force supported by armor and, more importantly, of the French Foreign Legion and the 3rd Regiment of Marine Infantry. In a two-day battle, the FROLINAT was repelled with heavy losses, a victory that was confirmed in June by another engagement at Djedaa. The FROLINAT admitted defeat and fled north, having lost 2,000 men and left the "ultramodern equipment" they carried on the ground. Of key importance in these battles was the complete air superiority the French could count on, as the Libyan Air Force pilots refused to fight them.
Libyan difficulties
Only a few months after the failed offensive against the capital, major dissensions in the FROLINAT shattered all vestiges of unity and badly weakened Libyan power in Chad. On the night of 27 August, Ahmat Acyl, leader of the Volcan Army, attacked Faya-Largeau with the support of Libyan troops in what was an attempt by Gaddafi to remove Goukouni from the leadership of the FROLINAT, replacing him with Acyl. The attempt backfired, as Goukouni reacted by expelling all Libyan military advisors present in Chad, and started searching for a compromise with France.