France faces dilemma in Chad

Press, 27 February 1984, Page 20

France faces dilemma in Chad

By

When France sent a force of 3000 troops to Chad in August, 1983, the hope was that this would halt the fighting between the forces of President Hissene Habre, and rebel leader Goukouni Weddeye. Creating a stalemate, Paris believed, would enable the two to come together at the negotiating table.

Only part of the plan succeeded. The intervention did produce a stalemate, and a five-month lull in the fighting. The second part of the plan fell through, because Mr Habre, the man France appeared to support, refused to go to Addis Ababa in mid-January for a meeting with Goukouni Weddeye. The conference was to have been held under the auspices of the Organisation of African Unity, and Mr Habre felt that the O.A.U. chairman, President Mengitsu Haile Mariam, had displayed bias towards Mr Weddeye. After this collapse of the diplomatic approach, Mr Weddeye did not wait. He immediately began sending his forces southwards to

RALPH JOSEPH,

in Paris

probe the defences of the Chadian Government — and the determination of the French. A day or two after Mr Habre’s failure to show up at Addis Ababa, a rebel force of 200 headed south to attack a Chadian post near Iriba, on the eastern border of the country, near Sudan. It was a carefully chosen target.

There were no French troops there, and the Government force of about 30 men quickly fell to the rebels. Mr Weddeye’s men killed 10 of the garrison and took the others prisoner. The Government at Ndjamena were not even aware that the attack had taken place. With this success, the rebels made another probe at Ziguey, an outpost in the western part of the country. It was similar to Iriba. There were no French troops, and the post was manned by a small force of Chadian Government troops. Once again the post fell in a quick, bloody battle. Ten men in the garrison were killed, and the rest taken prisoner. Once again neither the

Ndjamena Government nor the French realised that the attack had occurred — until next day, January 24. By this time the rebel column was well on its way back to base. Immediately the French commander at Ndjamena, Briga-dier-General Jean Poli, sent out two Jaguar and two Mirage aircraft to look for the retreating rebel column. The planes located them about 5.30 p.m., more than 90km north of the nearest French forces. The aircraft made low passes over the column. During the third pass, the rebels opened fire with machine-guns and hit one of the Jaguars, piloted by the commander of the reconnaissance group, Michel Croci. He ejected at a height of about 30 metres, but the parachute failed to open and he was killed. The other aircraft returned to Ndjamena although one of the Mirages had also been hit. When Brigadier Poli learned what had happened, he immediately ordered two Jaguars and four Mirages to attack the rebel force. The French planes struck the column of 18 trucks, destroying about 14 of them. An-

other rebel column headed south next day to assist the survivors of the French attack. Brigadier Poll asked for permission to hit them too, but Paris held his hand. The brigadier warned the French Government that Ziguey had not been an isolated incident. After having hit Iriba earlier, the rebels did not look as though they were going to stop. While Brigadier Poli was looking at it from the point of view of a local conflict, Paris had to take a global view, and preferred not to opt for an escalation so long as chances of a negotiated settlement had not been fully explored. France did not want to be drawn into the conflict as a belligerent. It wished to maintain the role of peace-maker, and was not essentially taking a hostile stance towards Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who was backing the rebels. Paris still had channels of communication open to Gaddafi, and hoped to be able to use those to keep Mr Weddeye in check. The French commander at Ndjamena has expressed suspicions of Colonel Gaddafi’s inten-

tions. In an interview with Agence France Press he said the Libyans were gradually “annexing” the rebel-held part of Chad. Central to the conflict is a strip of Chadian territory along the Libyan border, which Colonel Gaddafi has claimed. It contains uranium deposits, which Colonel Gaddafi could exploit to forward dreams of an “Islamic" nuclear weapon. When Mr Weddeye was Chadian president, he was inclined to cede the territory to Libya, but Mr Habre, as a member of his Government, opposed this. Mr Habre later went into exile and then overthrew him in an armed rebellion launched from Sudan, apparently with American support. Brigadier Poli withdrew his statement that Libya was “annexing” northern Chad, a day after he made it. He said he had used the term “consolidating its position” rather than “annexing," but observers in Paris believed he may have been reprimanded by Paris for having used the stronger term. French reports from Ndjamena were that throughout the period of “stalemate” the Libyans had strengthened the rebels by establishing military fuel depots along the road to the south, and building landing strips in rebel-held territory capable of receiving large transport planes. These were in addition to at least one air base on the Libyan side of the border where transport planes could land and take off. French reconnaissance was said to have observed Soviet-made weapons in Mr Weddeye’s camps, of the type that Libya had.

French Defence Minister Charles Hernu was informed of all this when he visited Ndjamena. Mr Hernu had flown there directly from a visit to French troops in Lebanon. The trauma France had suffered there in October, 1983, (when 58 of its paratroopers died in a truck-bomb attack) surfaced in his remarks in Chad. “If they fire on a single French soldier,” he said, “the reply will be immediate.”

Less than a month later Brigadier Poli was implementing that policy to the letter when he ordered his planes to strike at the retreating rebel column on January 24. The subsequent French stance was a chip-on-the-shoulder one rather than direct involvement in the conflict. Mr Hernu simply ordered Brigadier Poli to move the French “Red Line” northwards from the 15th parallel to the 16th, roughly a distance of 90km closer to the rebel bases at Faya Largeau and Fada.

By so doing he effectively deprived the rebels of a strip of territory they had earlier been free to move about in. But while it vindicated French “determination,” it did also bring France a step closer to becoming a belligerent rather than a peace-maker, and that is something Paris ardently wishes to avoid.