Chad rebel not necessarily puppet

Press, 20 August 1983, Page 16

Chad rebel not necessarily puppet

Reuter correspondent, N’djamena

Goukouni Oueddei, the rebel leader seeking to oust the Chadian President, Hissene Habre, is labelled a “Libyan puppet” by his opponents. The guerrilla leader’s relationship with Libya over the years had see-sawed — along with his battle against his former guerrilla comrade, President Habre — and Mr Goukouni at one time attacked “Libyan imperialism.” The taciturn, nobly-born Mr Goukouni once said half jokingly that the only book he had not read was Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s “Green Book” outlining the Libyan’s socialist Islamic plans. His friends describe Mr Goukouni, aged 40, as a nationalist using Libya to regain power in this

vast, semi-desert central African nation wracked by civil war for the last 17 years. Like President Habre, he is a northerner, but whereas President Habre is the son of a poor shepherd, Mr Goukouni is an aristocrat, the fourth son of the “Derdei,” or spiritual leader of the northern Tibesti district. The Derdei wields enormous power among the deeply religious nomadic tribes of the north, giving the tall, afro-hairstyled Mr Goukouni — an ascetic, religious man of few words — natural authority over his followers. Both President Habre and Mr Goukouni began their careers as local officials in the French administration.

In 1968, like many Muslim northerners, Mr Goukouni joined the Frolinat guerrilla movement seeking to end domination of postcolonial Chad by the affluent, Christian and Animist southerners.

He and President Habre fought in the same guerrilla group and his first row with the man he is now seeking to overthrow came in 1976 when he expelled him from his army for refusing to free a French ethnologist kept as a hostage. The kidnapping of the ethnologist, Francoise Claustre, turned President Habre into an international figure and publicised northern Chad’s demands for sharing power with the southerners. The two men have remained bitter rivals ever since. Yet Mr Goukouni had once ceded the command of his guerrillas to President Habre, arguing he was better suited for the job. In the mid-seventies Mr Goukouni had his first clash with Libya when he refused to recognise the 1973 annexation of the mineral-rich Aouzou strip by Colonel Gadaffi.

After the ousting of President Felix Malloum, Mr Goukouni became president of the transitional Government of National Union in November, 1979. As the leader of a shaky coalition, Mr Goukouni began a balancing act between Libyan and French pressures. Conscious of Colonel Gadaffi’s territorial ambitions on Chad, he had at one point threatened to fight “Libyan imperialism.” However, he realised that he needed Libyan money and military hardware to neutralise Hissene Habre, then his Defence Minister, who was seeking to gain total control in a fresh bout of civil war stemming from deep distrust between the two war lords. At the end of 1980, Mr Goukouni called in the Libyan army to crush Habre’s rebellion. In the “battle of N’djamena” in January, 1981, ferocious street-by-street fighting left thousands of dead and partly destroyed the capital. The Libyans had fulfilled their military mission, but refused to finance the reconstruction, so Mr Goukouni went to Paris to meet President Francois Mitterrand in October that year.

On his return he stunned his countrymen and African opinion by demanding and obtaining the withdrawal of Libyan troops. Mr Habre later came out of refuge in neighbouring Sudan to lead his men in a campaign climaxing in June, last year, in the routing of Mr Goukouni’s forces and Mr Habre’s assumption of the presidency. So Mr Goukouni once again had to turn to Libya for help in his battle with President Habre for power in N’djamena. Last year his troops, heavily supported by Libya, launched their offensive which has given them control over half the country. After his forces first conquered the northern Government stronghold of Faya-Largeau in late June,

Mr Goukouni told a Paris-based African magazine that he had no ambition to become President again. “All I want is to destroy Habre, he was quoted as saying. He was scornful towards “rotten countries,” such as Zaire, Senegal, Gabon, and the Ivory Coast, which support President Habre. On the help his troops receive from Libya, he said: “The Government of National Union has many friends, including Libya, but I don't want to name them all.” Asked about Chad’s political outlook if the Government of National Union returned to power, Mr Goukouni replied that the country will be progressive and revolutionary, “at the service of the liberation of Africa.”