0:03

Hello and welcome to another episode

0:06

of Radio Warnored. The

0:26

date today is May 7th, 2024 and this is episode 443.

0:34

I'm the co-host Mark Ames in

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Western New York and

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you are listening to Radio Warnored,

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subscribers and others. And

1:02

as you heard, I'm on the line with

1:05

John Dolan, aka The Warnored,

1:07

aka Gary Brecher in Southern

1:11

Italy. How you doing,

1:13

John? Pretty good. Yeah. I'm

1:16

going to be trying to finish

1:19

off and send

1:22

to our listeners a

1:24

compilation of all the Warnored Civil War,

1:27

US Civil War articles, along

1:30

with an introductory essay,

1:32

contextualizing them. In

1:35

fact, I hope to

1:37

issue that with at least within the next

1:40

month, free to

1:42

subscribers, of course, and it

1:46

should be done by

1:48

the time we reach New Zealand because

1:50

Catherine and I are flying to

1:53

New Zealand on family business and

1:56

that's a mighty long flight and

1:59

plenty of time. time to revise

2:02

and tinker with those essays. Right.

2:04

When do you fly out again? In a week? Yeah,

2:07

less than a week now. Okay. I

2:10

never look forward to that flight. No, that's long.

2:13

Not somebody who can sleep on planes. Yeah. But,

2:15

uh, cause you know, they'll crash if I

2:17

don't guide them. Yeah,

2:20

guide them with your mind. Yeah.

2:23

Yeah. Um, okay. So,

2:26

uh, well, let's get right to our

2:28

interview today. It's an amazing

2:31

story. I mean, you know, I, I

2:34

don't think people

2:36

interested in, um, foreign

2:38

war stories have the,

2:41

have shown sort of the

2:43

proper due interest in African

2:46

Wars as you have since you

2:49

started the war nerd column at

2:51

the exile, you know, 20 plus years ago. And

2:54

on the show we've tried to give these words also

2:56

their proper due. And we

2:58

have a great interview, uh, now

3:00

coming up with Nathaniel Powell who

3:03

wrote a book, Francis wars in Chad

3:05

and France as well

3:07

here has been very busy warring

3:10

in Africa, um,

3:13

over the last 60 years or so. So

3:15

let's get straight to our, uh,

3:18

our discussion with Nathaniel Powell. Okay.

3:23

We are really honored to have with

3:25

us, uh, today,

3:27

our guest Nathaniel Powell. Uh,

3:30

he is an honorary researcher with

3:32

the center for war and diplomacy

3:34

at Lancaster university. Uh,

3:37

but more importantly for us, he's also

3:39

the author of, um, a

3:41

pretty amazing look. Uh,

3:44

we'll get into this. Anyway, the author of the

3:46

book, Francis wars in

3:48

Chad military intervention and decolonization in

3:50

Africa. It's put out by Cambridge

3:53

university press. Um, first of all,

3:55

Nathaniel, thanks for coming on the

3:57

show. Welcome. Thanks for having me.

4:00

It's a pretty amazing book. There

4:03

are a lot of reasons why it's amazing. Among other things,

4:05

it has some of the

4:07

star characters. I mean, you know,

4:09

Godaffi, Bokasa, I mean, a lot

4:11

of Abray, really

4:14

some amazing characters. Yeah, exactly.

4:16

Some amazing characters. Lovely people

4:18

too. Yeah, I

4:21

know. Bokasa, for people who

4:23

don't know, this is probably for us old,

4:27

but he famously fed his enemies

4:29

to his crocodiles, right? That's

4:31

possible, you may say. Possibly,

4:35

yes. But I want to believe it, you know. He

4:37

wasn't a great guy, but he may have done that.

4:39

Okay. But he did beat

4:42

school kids to death for not

4:44

buying the proper uniform. Well,

4:46

yeah, I mean, that's understandable, though, right? More

4:51

reasonable stuff, yeah. I

4:54

mean, he's one of

4:56

the most infamous dictators of the post-World

4:58

War II era, I would say. And

5:02

he makes an appearance, well, yeah,

5:04

the Central African Empire.

5:08

A lot of amazing characters. But

5:11

also what I think is so

5:14

fascinating and interesting about your book

5:16

is that it's a very granular

5:18

look at

5:21

a series of insurgencies or kind

5:24

of evolving insurgencies and

5:26

counterinsurgency strategies to

5:28

try to deal with them. And

5:31

it starts off so small, like

5:34

old medieval or middle ages European

5:37

wars, you know, with such small numbers

5:39

of fighters and battles.

5:42

And it just grows and grows and grows,

5:44

and it gets harder and harder for

5:47

France to deal with. And in a

5:49

sense, because of its small size in

5:51

the beginning, it's kind

5:53

of, it's just interesting to

5:55

draw then, you know,

5:58

applicable analogies or lessons. or

6:00

whatever to other

6:02

insurgencies today or in other times. So

6:04

I think it's really useful in that

6:07

way. But I guess the first question

6:09

is what made you choose to

6:11

write about Francis Warr's in chat? I

6:14

mean, I don't think anybody in the Anglo

6:16

world anyway knows much about it at all. I

6:19

mean, that was one of the reasons I did it. No,

6:21

part of it was I

6:23

started a PhD in 2008 because

6:25

it was a financial crisis, nothing else to do. So

6:29

I had spent

6:31

a lot of time in West Africa and I

6:33

was studying in Geneva at the time and also

6:36

spent time in France. So I was interested in

6:38

this kind of strange connection within the francophone world

6:40

between France and its former colonies, which you don't

6:42

really have on the anglophone side. You don't really

6:44

have this weird connection between Britain and its former

6:46

colonies. I mean, there are strange

6:49

connections and there are difficult legacies, but you

6:51

don't have the same kind of relationship.

6:55

And I was just kind of exploring that further

6:57

from the historical perspective. So I went

6:59

to the French archives and just spent time in the French

7:01

archives to try to dig out what I could, what was

7:03

available at the time. And obviously that's things were not and

7:06

still are not available in

7:08

terms of what I could kind of suss out

7:10

about the nature of these interventions. And

7:12

just to kind of situate this or

7:14

contextualize it, France, since 1960, which

7:16

is the date which in which

7:18

most of France's African colonies gained

7:21

their independence, France has intervened over

7:23

50 times militarily in Africa from

7:25

1960 to the present. And

7:29

that's a massive number of interventions, almost one

7:31

a year. Right? I

7:33

mean, that's France and Africa is

7:35

not the only place where France has intervened. France

7:38

is just as much an interventionist power as

7:40

the United States is. And

7:43

in a way that no other, I think nobody

7:45

really comes close to France, United States in terms

7:48

of their projection of force abroad.

7:50

And even though France is obviously a much lesser

7:52

power in terms of its amount of

7:54

force it has and the fact of its economy, in Africa

7:57

Especially it has been and remained. You're

8:00

on your giant. And. Hobbies

8:03

interventions are in a result the question what

8:05

impacts of the had? Why? Why have intervened

8:07

So off and and. You. Know what

8:10

to say about the ongoing interventions

8:12

at the moment for the tide

8:14

still owes them a difference. Military

8:16

condition for instance, be my much

8:19

longer right. I mean said I

8:21

guess to start up with the

8:23

present tense a little bit sad.

8:25

Just had a so called election.

8:27

This election he selects and self

8:29

selection and I'm. At.

8:32

And. The. Leader was

8:34

if a leader of chatter one of

8:36

the top ministers. I've called on Us

8:39

forces to evacuate. To. Leave Chad

8:41

out and there's talk that Us forces

8:43

were. Are. Being kicked out

8:45

or maybe that is whether they left. Okay,

8:47

that might don't go well. It is lot

8:49

of lack of clarity over who actually requested.

8:51

This is written in the name of the

8:53

air of the head of the air. I.

8:57

Was us defense it as a and that's

8:59

not the know that many tales these kinds

9:01

of requests and Italian government says in i

9:03

asked us to believe just a question mark

9:05

basing ah but the U S kind of

9:08

to pants and probably rightly so. And

9:10

will he had about sixty security guys there

9:12

to begin with. I'm it is still the

9:14

in the marines, the embassy and and maybe

9:16

some others, but the bulk of the special

9:19

forces contingent left. A. Couple

9:21

days ago and and this comes

9:23

at the same time as news

9:25

air the user who ruling junta.

9:29

Is. Pushing us out of i

9:31

think was the largest or the

9:33

most expensive airbase. In the

9:35

world in the in the north of New

9:37

Sir I've heard claims is the most expensive

9:39

airbase V was never built. I don't buy

9:42

that, I'm it's one hundred the cost over

9:44

the couple years they're building it from twenty.

9:47

Forty. Fifteen. Twenty Nineteen Or Twenty. When

9:49

he finished it was suddenly one hundred Ten

9:51

million dollars. Which is enormous. Yeah, it's a

9:53

pocket scenes with Pentagon and you know of

9:56

retire to suit costs of India and space.

9:58

It costs a fraction of that. Run.

10:01

By. Tonight where but the French troops have

10:03

been driven out of molly right or up

10:05

and quarter mile. A working holiday. An easy.

10:08

Ride. My yeah, But. They

10:10

both died. As I understand they

10:12

sort of move to chat right?

10:14

or some of the moved into

10:16

of Chad. Yes, That's this

10:19

way of becomes complicated so it's. The.

10:21

Right of the actual number of friendships and

10:23

sad as it is unclear released publicly. It's

10:25

officially the friendship the left

10:27

deserved. Went remedy. They exited

10:30

zoo said. Save. With sue

10:32

sued As and a name returned to France

10:34

but there's already a French contingent in Chat.

10:36

About. A thousand troops spread across

10:38

much three bases. Are and

10:41

I don't have any to sneeze or are staying

10:43

in. remained inside or not and that's an object

10:45

of as this question has raised by numerous people

10:47

and nobody really knows the answer to that. right?

10:50

Set seems like there's been some consistency,

10:52

and Chad at least. Since. Nineteen

10:54

Sixty. The thin said the number one

10:56

thousand. French. Troops is kind of

10:59

at his i'm it It goes up or down

11:01

of course but it's kind of funny that it's

11:03

it's still what it was it to nice round

11:05

wondered yeah hands. So.

11:08

It's. Just. That again just with a

11:10

little bit with the present tense. It

11:13

has the as son took over when

11:15

he was killed on the battlefield which

11:17

people just couldn't believe could pies are

11:19

a number on a lot of subscribers

11:21

could not believe that like a motorcyclist

11:23

to area bbc guys like know where

11:25

they just saying that because what is

11:27

the last time the leaders of any

11:29

country died on the battlefield Later let

11:31

us audience don't believe it either to

11:33

be I had car so is it

11:35

possible or is it true and now

11:38

I think assuming he or that the

11:40

first time he was on the battlefield

11:42

and he was. Very successful General

11:44

Nineteen eighties. Ah in own

11:46

and drought his time in in office

11:48

he fought off rebellions. That. Sometimes

11:50

that he can have friends or it doesn't surprise me and

11:52

I think it's probably to. rid of

11:54

it's international conducted a pretty wide ranging investigation

11:56

and their conclusion was that it he of

11:58

the details of the story that the

12:00

government put forward are mainly made up,

12:03

but the general fact that he led

12:05

his troops in the field and was killed has probably actually

12:07

happened. But a lot of Chinese don't

12:09

believe that. They think that there's all sorts of conspiracy

12:12

theories about what actually happened. Right. So

12:15

the son Muhammad interested, is

12:17

he ruling any differently from

12:19

his father? Yeah, there's different

12:22

interpretations. I would say in some

12:24

ways he's really more deftly in

12:26

the sense that he's managed to very, well, the

12:28

reasonably short period of time, mixing

12:31

very harsh oppression with very

12:34

effective outreach and co-optation techniques has

12:36

managed to demobilize both the armed,

12:38

most of the armed opposition and

12:40

the domestic civilian opposition.

12:43

And in doing so,

12:46

he's made it very difficult to, at

12:49

least from, in terms of being a rebel

12:51

group or an opposition movement to really challenge

12:53

his rule. I mean, the biggest threat

12:55

for him comes from within, like a coup threat.

12:57

But that's always been the case in

12:59

Chad. There's always been that coup threat there. So

13:03

I guess let's go back now, through

13:07

the story that you tell, I mean, your

13:09

book focuses on the period roughly from Chad's

13:12

independence in 1960 from

13:15

France to the beginning

13:17

of the 80s. Right.

13:20

And well, I guess real quickly, could you

13:22

do a quick sort of brief

13:25

recap of France's

13:28

colonization of Chad, and

13:31

then we'll start with independence in 1960. Sure.

13:35

So France troops

13:38

first reached Chad in 1900s, and

13:41

this is kind of a long standing plan

13:44

to reach Lake Chad, which was

13:46

seen as hopefully, well, two reasons for it. One, they

13:49

thought it was a very wealthy region. It's not that

13:51

wealthy. But the other issue was

13:53

to head off the advances of other

13:55

competing powers, like Britain and Germany especially.

13:57

So if they could reach Lake Chad,

14:00

off British expansion from Nigeria

14:02

and German expansion from Cameroon.

14:06

And you know, they succeeded in

14:08

the process, they relatively brutally imposed

14:10

a very skeletal colonial administration. And

14:13

it took them quite a long time because Chad was

14:15

was actually a it wasn't obviously

14:19

a country at the time, but there were three

14:22

or four kind of powerful sultanates that

14:24

controlled much of what is now Chad.

14:27

And these weren't pushovers. You know, the French

14:29

allied with one to fight some others in

14:31

that alliance was quite helpful. But

14:35

the sources of Wadi in the east was

14:39

which border is Darfur in case you're

14:41

wondering geographically what these things are. Right.

14:43

It took something like 20 years to

14:45

actually finally subdue. So it

14:49

wasn't a pushover. It took time, especially in the

14:51

north of Chad, which is mostly desert and sparsely

14:54

inhabited. The French took, you know, a few

14:56

decades to finally pacify it to the

14:58

favorite word. I remember at the

15:00

end of the 19th century, in Fashoda

15:04

in, I guess

15:06

what's now South Sudan, that

15:08

the French and the English really

15:11

almost went to war. And

15:13

a lot of people in the French elite

15:16

seem to mourn the

15:18

fact that they didn't go to war over

15:21

Fashoda. Oh, yeah. I

15:23

mean, this is there's a there's a phrase that

15:26

was coined in the 90s called the Fashoda complex,

15:28

which is

15:31

Fashoda syndrome, actually, French,

15:34

this like visceral paranoia among French elites

15:37

about other people trying to grab their

15:39

grab their shit. Can

15:41

I say that in your podcast? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

15:45

Trying to grab it, especially the

15:47

dreaded Anglo Saxons. And this actually

15:49

became very, you know, very tragic in

15:51

the 1990s, because the one

15:53

of the reasons why France intervened Rwanda to

15:55

protect the Rwandan Hutu supremacist regime was because

15:57

they were afraid of Anglo Saxon design. and

16:00

their territory. And this

16:02

is very deeply believed within the

16:04

French policymaking establishment. And, you

16:07

know, it's one of the tragic outcomes of 100

16:09

years of imperial rivalry. Right. Well,

16:11

now, Rwanda, I read recently,

16:13

is adopting English and

16:16

renouncing French as a language like,

16:18

you know, you have brought about

16:20

the very situation you wish to

16:22

avoid. My book is full of instances

16:24

like this. It's kind

16:26

of remarkable how in the last five

16:29

to ten years, like France's whole empire

16:32

has been collapsing. I don't know if it's

16:34

a permanent thing or a temporary thing. There

16:37

seems to be some ebb and flow in

16:39

its former imperial colonies in terms of being,

16:42

you know, publicly anti-France,

16:44

but privately relying

16:47

on France. But it seems

16:49

qualitatively different in the last

16:51

like seven, eight years, would

16:53

you say? Yeah, certainly. I mean,

16:55

France really, there's a lot of

16:58

reasons for it. But, you know, France

17:00

intervened in the South in 2013 because

17:02

of a rebellion in Mali, which then became

17:05

a jihadist emirate in Northern Mali. And

17:08

the French played a key role in

17:10

knocking them out. And it's actually, you

17:12

know, liberating the territory from jihadist rule.

17:14

But then, of course, these are essentially guerrilla

17:17

groups and they spread, you know, they were unable to,

17:19

you know, utterly defeat them. So they spent, you

17:22

know, they expanded the scope of their mission to

17:24

cover five countries, many focused in

17:26

Mali, Indonesia and Burkina Faso. The idea

17:28

was to, you know, to expand their operations and

17:31

stop the spread of these groups. And that they

17:33

significantly failed to do, despite

17:35

having, you know, ramping up their force numbers

17:37

like five or six thousand troops. But

17:40

this is a size, you know, an area that's the

17:42

size of Western Europe. Five thousand

17:44

soldiers trying to fight an insertionary that size,

17:46

you know, that nothing may happen. Yeah. Yeah.

17:48

I mean, this is a question I really

17:50

wanted to ask you, like, in

17:52

terms of military effectiveness, I seem

17:55

to remember, and this is a dim memory

17:57

from long past that.

18:00

But when

18:03

Chad fought Libyan

18:07

invaders, they

18:10

did extremely well using the

18:12

Toyota pickup approach, the Toyota

18:14

Hilux. So I mean, why

18:17

do small numbers of French

18:20

troops make such a difference?

18:23

Right. So there was a French

18:25

foreign minister in the 1970s who had

18:28

this expression, which is I

18:30

think it captures everything about, you know,

18:33

the French view of their impact. And

18:35

he said something along the lines of, you know, with

18:38

500 men in Africa, France can change the course of

18:40

history. Wow. And

18:42

that's kind of been the French philosophy that you

18:45

don't need that many troops to have a major

18:47

political impact. Well, that

18:50

number of troops is great if you

18:52

want to overthrow a regime or protect

18:54

a regime, right, against rebels

18:57

fighting essentially a conventional style war. Like in

18:59

Chad, these wars are the

19:02

first rebellion was largely a guerrilla war.

19:04

But after that, it's almost semi-conventional. And

19:06

that allows French air power to play

19:08

a major role in stopping rebel groups

19:10

from reaching Jamina, the capital of Chad.

19:14

And that's true elsewhere. In Mali, you know, with jihadist

19:16

groups are trying to defend fixed territory. Well, obviously, that

19:18

wasn't going to work very well against the French army.

19:21

But, you know, 500 troops isn't going

19:23

to help you fight a guerrilla war. It's

19:26

not enough. And not only

19:28

that, it's also the political dimension to this.

19:31

That is, you know, there isn't enough actually,

19:34

there aren't enough soldiers to fight this

19:36

kind of war because the dynamics

19:39

are, you know, go beyond that

19:41

kind of dimension. Right. So

19:44

real quickly for our listeners here, we should

19:46

a quick description of Chad. It's

19:49

a very large country, you

19:52

know, kind of hatchet shape. It

19:54

is well, so to the north

19:56

of Chad is his border with Libya, which

19:58

we'll talk about in this story. that's

20:00

where the out I don't know how

20:02

to pronounce this property the Ouzo strip

20:04

the Ouzo strip Ouzo strip okay which

20:07

which becomes contested territory for Qaddafi and

20:11

that is and the north of the country is

20:13

also just Saharan desert as the

20:15

south of Libya anyway to

20:17

the west is Niger another

20:20

ex-french colony we did an

20:22

episode on Niger also

20:25

sparsely populated also a large country actually

20:27

Chad I looked it up

20:29

it's I think the 20th largest country

20:31

by square mileage

20:33

in the world and

20:36

it's like three times the size of

20:38

California and twice the size of France

20:40

roughly yeah and

20:43

then the so to

20:45

the southwest that share

20:47

a border with Nigeria and

20:51

then also Cameroon they have a border

20:53

with Cameroon in the southwest and the

20:55

very south is

20:58

the Central African Republic and

21:01

to the west is Darfur in Sudan

21:04

in fact we talked about Chad in our episode

21:07

recently on the on the wars and

21:09

Molly Molly Molly has had a

21:11

lot of the same kind

21:13

of insurgency so yeah

21:16

my understanding would be that traditionally

21:20

these countries were

21:22

seen as sort of similar

21:26

entities in that there was

21:29

a war like Muslim North

21:32

and Francophone Christianized

21:35

riverine south

21:38

in all three like Molly Niger

21:40

and shat is

21:43

that still a real division sometimes

21:45

the conflicts are simplified kind of in those

21:47

ways I mean the thing is most

21:50

of Chad's civil wars after the 1960s were between

21:53

northerners not between north and south right

21:57

and you know the geography

21:59

is obviously important The economy and said what you

22:01

did have you had a southern elite. Or

22:04

because they were the ones that that had

22:06

your for it's mission schools and had a

22:08

lead to spoke French so the vencedores putting

22:10

them to been stated positions in in north

22:12

or more resistant more effective at resisting fence

22:14

the imposition of french colonial rule. So when

22:16

independence team about are actually the decade or

22:18

so before independence when. The. Sort.

22:21

Of. As skeleton of or

22:23

become must have a skeletal Chadians date began

22:25

to emerge You're almost all of the reasons

22:27

are so by southerners. Who. You were

22:29

educated and spoke French, but not Northerners.

22:31

The once I became independent state wasn't

22:34

totally dominate by southerners. And.

22:36

The. Way they treated and the people

22:38

on a press release in the

22:40

north and then especially head and north

22:43

and and in the east of sad

22:45

especially with a particularly good since you're

22:47

probably even with the friend the friend

22:50

said at cover risk of a little

22:52

let live relationship with with some

22:54

parts of the country that. Route.

22:57

Through to this the leaders who in on

22:59

a scenes for agreed to pay taxes and

23:01

abiding by kind of friends rules were allowed

23:03

to settle in a power. The.

23:07

Didn't Saudi government wanted to assert it's control

23:09

over the entire state? Are you

23:11

retired territory? And in doing that and like

23:14

a centralized control. Your. That alienated a

23:16

lot of people who than took up

23:18

arms and and eventually after about. Fifteen

23:21

years or so, Rosy, sixteen years managed to

23:24

overthrow that Southern Bay state. And.

23:26

A person's and to the south of the

23:28

bases and as if he plans to capital

23:30

at least for a while. And.

23:33

And. Suicide the civil

23:35

wars and put a consolidation. Remove.

23:39

Southerners from the leadership the state a lot

23:41

of. Administrative posts are still dummy

23:43

by southerners. But. Today.

23:45

Even today you an entire state

23:47

apparatus. Essentially it is dominated by.

23:50

People. From the North from different ethnicities know

23:52

that a single one. Right. there's

23:54

different. ethnic groups in different languages

23:57

are several of them and is not

23:59

at all unitary,

24:01

even by religion. Even

24:04

the ruling sort of ethnic clique, it's called

24:06

the Zagawa, it's an ethnic group that actually

24:08

poured his Sudan in chat. They're heavily divided

24:10

politically among themselves. So some of them are

24:12

very supportive of the regime and others are

24:14

very much not so. Not supportive.

24:17

Okay, so going back to chronologically,

24:23

as your book does as well, I

24:26

guess first, could you talk a little bit about

24:28

the independence later? Well, France would tumble

24:30

by if I'm pronouncing that properly. Tumble

24:33

by. Tumble by. Yeah,

24:35

so he was kind of a sad story. He

24:40

wasn't a particularly powerful

24:42

or charismatic voice during the pre-independence

24:45

era. He started as a school teacher. You

24:48

know, he spoke French, which is obviously a big plus. But

24:52

he was an administrator within the state. And

24:55

as the Chadian,

24:57

as the decolonization process that led

24:59

to the independence of all these

25:01

African, sub-Saharan African states

25:04

was essentially inter-elite negotiation

25:06

that was punctuated by strikes

25:09

and protests, but mainly in the wealthier

25:11

coastal states. States like

25:13

Chad and Niger, they

25:15

saw a lot of agitation against the

25:17

colonial rule, but these were not the

25:20

main drivers of the movement towards independence.

25:22

There was people in Cote d'Ivoire and

25:24

Senegal that were, as well as

25:26

in Paris, of course. So when Chad

25:29

became independent, you don't have a cohesive

25:32

group of people that had struggled

25:36

together against colonialism. And

25:39

now you're facing the brave new world

25:42

together. Instead, you had essentially

25:44

a collaborationist elite that

25:47

was itself divided and took

25:49

power. And Tomo Bayh kind of

25:51

emerged out of a struggle

25:53

among this elite, very

25:56

quickly, to sideline his

25:58

one rival. a guy

26:00

named Gabriel Lisette, who wasn't even

26:02

Chadian. He came from the

26:05

Caribbean and exiled

26:07

him and then he became the top, you know, it's kind of

26:09

the top dog. How did

26:12

a Caribbean guy almost become

26:14

the leader of Chad? So

26:17

that's part of the

26:19

nature of the French colonial administration. I

26:21

mean, essentially by the 30s,

26:24

they started to recruit. They

26:26

had this idea, well, you know, maybe black

26:29

people can rule black people better. So let's

26:31

bring some people who are French Caribbean, you

26:33

know, from Martinique or the Antilles and we'll

26:35

bring them over and make it colonial administrators,

26:38

which, you know, some very high

26:40

profile, very famous French colonial governors

26:42

were, you know, were from the

26:44

Caribbean. And Gabriel Lisette was

26:46

one of these. He wasn't a governor, I don't

26:48

think. He was a high level administrator. But a

26:51

lot of them became, you

26:53

know, quite, you know, they're also themselves

26:55

victims of racism and exclusion the

26:57

same way that Africans were. So

27:00

a lot of them ended up

27:02

sort of internalizing and really promoting

27:04

nationalist political activity. And

27:06

Gabriel Lisette was one of these. So that and, you

27:08

know, he was very much rooted in his territory that

27:11

he was in Chad. I think he married

27:13

a Chadian. And then, you know,

27:16

that he was, he was

27:18

one of the few dozen people that were the

27:21

French saw as, you know, capable

27:23

of running the country. So he was part of

27:25

that small elite. And he kind of used

27:27

that position to get

27:30

close to power. And then eventually he was,

27:32

you know, shoved out once independence came.

27:35

That's an amazing story. You can see the

27:37

possibilities of this about this guy from the

27:39

Caribbean becoming a

27:43

leader in a French colony,

27:45

united only by a nominal

27:47

allegiance to French

27:50

language, French culture in Chad

27:53

and then becoming a Chadian

27:57

patriot and, and

27:59

losing out to another chatty and

28:01

nationalist leader. Yeah. I mean,

28:03

France is another example of somebody like that.

28:05

I was just gonna say Fanon. Yeah, he's

28:07

from Martinique, right? Yeah, well, yeah, as well.

28:09

Yeah. I mean, very different trajectories. When Fanon

28:12

was a left-wing radical revolutionary, Gabriel Lusette was

28:14

not. Most of the

28:16

most of the African nationalists, once they had autonomy

28:19

or had independence were absolutely fine

28:21

having very close maintaining, not

28:23

only fine with, they desperately wanted to

28:25

maintain close relationships with France. Right. Right.

28:28

What sort of deals did, if you

28:30

could describe the deals that independent

28:32

Chad made with France in terms

28:34

of security and even in

28:36

terms of like, they essentially became neo

28:39

colonies. I don't know if this is true

28:41

with the wealthier, or to what extent it's

28:43

true with the wealthier West Coast

28:45

countries like Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal.

28:48

Was it the same there? I don't know. But

28:51

if you could describe sort of the relationship or

28:53

how the colonialist it was. Right.

28:55

So I would say that the scale

28:58

and scope of French neo colonialism definitely

29:00

varied by country, but almost everywhere in

29:03

the first decade or decade and a half of French

29:05

independence, you know,

29:07

you have, and this is true in Chad, you

29:09

have a state administration that is, you know,

29:13

dominated by French officials who

29:15

are officially, they're co-operatons, so

29:17

they're officially, you know, advisors,

29:19

but oftentimes they're running things,

29:22

both within the military and the

29:24

state administration, security services, intelligence agencies

29:26

are oftentimes French run in Chad,

29:29

they were. And, you know,

29:31

some of the president's closest advisors

29:34

were French until you started getting,

29:36

you know, a bit suspicious about them

29:38

and deciding that he went to clean house. So

29:42

yeah, I mean, you're talking about a

29:44

state that's essentially dominated by a French

29:47

administrative core that didn't

29:49

leave when independence ended, right? It was totally administered by

29:51

the French, essentially the Northern half of Chad,

29:54

it's called the Boku entity tenant,

29:56

Tebresti region, right? The BET, the

29:58

BET, the That was administered

30:00

by the French Army until 1965, so

30:03

five years after independence. It was still administered by the

30:05

French Army. And

30:07

you know, you had a big French military presence in

30:09

the country at the beginning of 1960. I don't remember

30:11

the exact number, but like 1,500 troops maybe. Eventually

30:15

the number was reduced a

30:17

bit. But you know, Chad

30:20

wasn't unique. If Chad was something unique in terms

30:22

of number of troops based there, and that was

30:25

because of his geographical location, not because of anything

30:27

intrinsic related to Chad. But

30:29

it wasn't unique in terms of the

30:32

extent of the French presence. And also the

30:34

economy was entirely dominated by France. I mean,

30:36

most imports are French. The French

30:38

controlled the only, it's

30:40

a cotton company that would buy all the cotton. And

30:42

the cotton was the next- Okay, yeah, I meant to

30:44

ask you about this. Yeah. Did

30:47

France make money as a

30:49

colonial power in post-colonial

30:51

Chad? How did, and if so,

30:53

how? Right. Probably

30:56

not much from Chad. And

30:59

this is one of the, it's one of

31:01

the kind of myths about French neocolonialism that

31:03

I tried to address in the book a

31:05

little bit. Is that the

31:08

idea that French interventions are always driven by

31:12

precise economic interests they're trying to protect.

31:14

And at a

31:18

very basic kind of, at

31:20

a crude level it doesn't make sense. Because the amount

31:22

of French, even at this

31:25

height, the percentage of French exports,

31:27

or the percentage of French trade

31:30

with Chad and France's overall trade was like a

31:32

fraction of 1%. I

31:34

mean, this is not something, and the percentage of

31:37

French foreign investment in Chad was a fraction of

31:39

1% still is today. I mean,

31:41

there's very, very limited French

31:44

economic interest in Chad. The flip side

31:46

isn't true. I mean, Chad in the 60s

31:49

was massively dependent on France economically. But France

31:51

had no particular attachment to Chad economically. And

31:54

this is true for a lot of the African colonies. In fact, by the

31:56

1970s, France's largest African

31:58

trade partners. already became Nigeria

32:01

in South Africa, not its former colonies.

32:03

So is the French investment,

32:06

whether literal or metaphorical,

32:09

driven by something else like prestige or

32:11

the need to remain as an imperial

32:14

power? Part of it is about protecting

32:16

political order in the region. That is

32:19

the region of its former colonies. And there's a

32:21

French expression for that, for the play carre, which

32:24

a figurative translation would be like their backyard.

32:27

And there is a

32:29

sense from de Gaulle, when independence

32:32

happened, to almost the present, or as we could

32:34

argue, it still is the case in the present,

32:36

there's a that France has special

32:39

responsibility to maintain political order, and it's

32:41

in this backyard, this African

32:43

backyard. And part of that's related to

32:45

prestige, of course. Part of it is

32:47

related to economic interest. I mean, Niger

32:49

for a long time was the main

32:52

you know, the main source of uranium

32:54

for France's nuclear programs. And,

32:57

you know, there was also hope from the

32:59

60s onwards that France could develop much more

33:02

substantial economic ties with its

33:04

former colonies, as they would grow, they themselves

33:06

would grow economically, that France would benefit from

33:10

these. France also saw this

33:12

as an area of kind of strategic

33:14

depth. So in case of war

33:16

with the Soviet Union, you know, this is a place

33:18

that troops could retreat to, that they could source recruits

33:20

from, that they kind of repeat a sort

33:22

of, you know, World War One scenario, that,

33:25

and they're also natural resources there that might not

33:27

be useful now, but could be useful in the

33:29

future, like, you know, more

33:32

uranium, gold, timber,

33:34

tin, copper, I

33:36

mean, you name it. Oftentimes,

33:38

these hopes are a bit exaggerated. I ran into a

33:41

CIA, a

33:44

1980s, a CIA assessment of the actual mineral

33:48

reserves of northern Chad, which had always been kind

33:50

of talked up as being really rich.

33:52

And It basically says like, there's no

33:55

proof of any of this. And, You

33:57

know, there's, you know, there's, there's, even

33:59

if. There was yeah.

34:01

Massive tungsten depositor? Yeah,

34:04

where'd. You. Cop or whatever

34:06

or gold it's just will be profitable

34:08

to might it. Oh. Not with

34:10

current technology. Nineteen eighties unit grains obviously

34:12

A. but for the goal goes every

34:14

bigelow that the big deal now doesn't

34:16

sound right. it was not at the

34:18

time so I'm oh god is big

34:21

in northern Chad now as opposed to

34:23

live inside. yeah yeah sort of near

34:25

near nearer to Darfur area or know

34:27

anyone in northwest was and so long

34:29

does ah of in border thing okay

34:31

interesting. Yeah. Because God is

34:34

a become a big the on Sudan and

34:36

as well and it's interesting but oil I

34:38

mean they. They did have a big Weldon

34:40

much later. Than. They. Yeah.

34:42

So that's that's when the

34:45

nineteen sixties France Defense Company

34:47

else which later became Without

34:49

they started doing i'm. Oil

34:52

exploration or elites as is after

34:54

Independence and davis out some deposits.

34:56

But. Then insecurity became an issue and

34:59

also a distance from the ocean. Was.

35:02

In a infrastructure was is the social problems and

35:04

addicted to it but you it would have been

35:06

really you're gonna have to be a real. Real.

35:09

Good profit at the end of it since

35:11

invested. That's of the things that they dropped

35:13

the contract in the Chadians positive to undergo

35:15

an American company so by ninety seven is

35:18

it U S is actually the ones drilling

35:20

for on oil and said they were exploiting

35:22

much. But they had a kind

35:24

of. And your

35:26

test platforms are exploits way platforms there

35:28

and he had been everly developed as

35:31

into the two thousands Some I'm in

35:33

the right reasons for that but no

35:35

I read it wasn't his friends engage

35:37

it wasn't was really related oil. Yeah,

35:40

okay, interest I'd so let's go

35:42

back. I'd go back again

35:44

to the Tumble by. So

35:47

he he starts ruling the country

35:49

and he has. Some

35:53

key French. Former French

35:55

sort of military people as advisors

35:58

as well and at. point

36:00

he starts because as you write your book you

36:02

know as you said France has

36:04

intervened 50 times since 1960 which

36:07

puts it basically number two behind the US

36:10

but Chad is the number

36:13

despite being so economically marginal

36:17

and small Chad

36:19

is where they've done the most interventions

36:21

right in 1960 which is number two is

36:24

essential African Republic Wow right beneath

36:26

it right I mean I got to say one

36:28

thing that just stands out it's like France's

36:31

France has kept

36:33

a much tighter integrated

36:35

relationship on the financial side and

36:37

the military side with its former

36:40

colonies as you say that then England

36:42

has for the most part and and

36:44

yet France's ex colonies have

36:46

done so poorly in terms

36:49

of governance in terms of you know the poverty

36:51

and so on I mean I guess

36:54

we'll get into this more but how much of it how

36:56

much is there a direct relationship

36:58

between France's you know

37:02

neo-colonialist more

37:04

activist neo-colonialism and

37:06

the problems in these countries maybe besides

37:08

Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal to an extent

37:11

yeah I mean it's a difficult question to

37:13

answer and that's this been you know there's

37:15

a lot of debate about that for example

37:17

the World Bank put out the

37:19

study in the early 2000s saying that the being a

37:22

former French colony reduced your risk of having a

37:24

civil war and that was probably because

37:26

of the French security guarantee I don't

37:29

know that's true or not I think if you take

37:31

if you send that out by another two decades that

37:33

might not be exactly today it's definitely not true but

37:36

but also you know it depends on your times and so

37:38

if you looked at say 1960

37:41

1970 French colonies was a lot better off than

37:43

the first decade after independence in West Africa the

37:46

French colonies look a lot better off than the

37:49

English-speaking ones did economically

37:51

like Gambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria

37:53

they're all kind of economic basket cases

37:56

in the 60s compared to Cote

37:59

d'Ivoire or even Senegal or Gabon

38:01

which then discovered oil and was starting to really

38:03

grow but then you push it forward

38:05

into the 70s and 80s and 90s then

38:07

it looks like Frank Finesca is a place

38:10

of stagnation compared to a more dynamic Anglophone

38:12

Africa. Then

38:14

you push it further the situation changes

38:17

back again so it's really

38:19

hard to say. What

38:22

you could say is that France colonized

38:24

places that were poorer than the English

38:26

colonized. They sort of got what was

38:29

left. And

38:32

that's the right place. With some exception,

38:34

Cote d'Ivoire obviously was not. That

38:38

obviously plays a role. There's

38:41

surely colonial legacies in terms of economic development. One

38:44

of the biggest things is all the colonizers, for

38:47

one thing they demanded that all their colonies self

38:50

fund themselves. Which

38:52

meant that you have to exploit the

38:54

peasantry quite a bit or

38:57

find an export crop really quickly to make sure

38:59

that they are funding the financials, the colonial administration.

39:02

So that means that the only

39:04

investments you're making, the only development investments you're

39:06

making are in export infrastructure. And

39:10

that's increasing export dependence of all these places.

39:12

And that is one of the main colonial

39:14

legacies is the export dependence which

39:17

has been a disaster economically because

39:20

you're dependent on global prices for

39:22

a single or maybe a few commodities you can produce.

39:25

It was the French colonizers

39:27

who really made Chad a

39:30

cotton export country.

39:33

Is that right? Yeah, they imposed it

39:35

by force. Not because of the food security issues too

39:37

because people couldn't grow food, they had to grow cotton

39:39

and they couldn't feed themselves. Classic

39:42

colonialist move. Okay so getting

39:45

back to Thumbubye, if you

39:47

could talk about the first problems he

39:49

runs into in Operation Limousine and

39:52

sort of how his rule

39:54

starts to come

39:56

undone, well basically what

39:58

he starts to face in terms of the trade. of rebellions

40:01

and why. Yeah, I

40:04

mean this is kind of a structural issue and

40:06

a personal issue. Well, on the personal side, Tummel

40:09

Bayh wasn't particularly competent.

40:12

He had vast ambitions, but he didn't

40:14

really have the ability to achieve them.

40:17

He also was extremely authoritarian and wanted

40:19

to deal with any kind of dissent

40:21

with brute force. The

40:24

other issue is that he was extremely paranoid

40:26

and not only concerned about his immediate fears,

40:29

but also Muslims. He was not Muslim, but

40:32

also eventually the French who he

40:34

never really, for good reasons, never

40:37

really fully trusted. And

40:40

the other flip side of that is that this

40:42

state is trying to raise

40:46

more taxes and acquire more

40:48

resources for your normal state building activities.

40:51

And people talk about building state capacity

40:53

as a way of fixing all these

40:55

problems even to this day, but

40:58

the state building in the Western sense means

41:00

we're making an extraction, especially

41:03

if you're essentially a pre-industrial economy. So

41:06

that's what Tummel Bayh did. He imposed

41:09

by force a very harsh tax

41:11

regime all across parts

41:13

of rural Chad, which were extremely

41:15

poor. And

41:18

that generated tax rebellions, essentially,

41:20

that then emerged with

41:22

some kind of outside

41:24

more militant activists who wanted to

41:26

end the neo-colonial relationship and got

41:28

some support from some women,

41:31

some support from some Eastern black countries,

41:33

but also from Gulf countries and from

41:35

Egypt and used

41:37

that to start a rebellion or expand a

41:39

rebellion and organize it by 1966. And

41:43

that became a... So the organization was called

41:45

Folina, which is the liberation

41:47

front of Chad, essentially the

41:50

acronym Folina, and

41:53

they are National Liberation Front of Chad, I should say. And

41:56

by the late 60s, like in 66, 57, 68... The

42:00

be managed to control. A. Large

42:02

about the territory in central and eastern side

42:04

and he was secondary rebellion the Bricks or

42:06

northern side which also calls itself the Frilly

42:08

not second army even know there wasn't much

42:11

coordination between the two. A. Now

42:13

is in response to government efforts

42:15

to set into rise Pastoralist A

42:17

nomad communities and who young these

42:19

can use rejected this efforts are

42:21

offered you like taxation A didn't

42:23

like the imposition of know harsh

42:25

lives that. When. It gets sick

42:27

also customs so. You're the

42:29

the lesser billions of sacrificing to rebellions. Been to

42:31

the seventy or enter the sixties and that's went

42:33

over by called the fence and for help. Traditionally

42:37

these countries are described and you

42:39

would know far better than I

42:41

would as as having our are

42:44

are. Not terribly

42:46

effective society. In

42:49

the nomadic or semi nomadic.

42:52

North. And. Of.

42:55

Dependent. Ah,

42:57

Dependent on the Colonial Army. South.

43:00

So why was he

43:02

using what was tumble

43:04

by using for. Armed.

43:07

Force until they resorted to

43:09

the front. Yeah, I did

43:11

see to say that because. That. The.

43:13

Stereotype Different Sad in the early Cleo

43:16

military the early independent state had was

43:18

that northerners make bad soldiers the southerners

43:20

make good for the was I just

43:22

that Kristin sort of president apart yeah

43:25

part of that was of course i'm

43:27

you with of course of a racial

43:29

prejudice or have but also as based

43:31

a different experience of recruitment from southern

43:34

sad turns up with the do so

43:36

sick all the chelios illegally which are

43:38

their blood their Africa the asking couple

43:40

of the of the army. A

43:43

lot of these wretched critics. I'm sad not

43:45

Senegal know. Sad was against

43:48

Islam history Recruitment: French Army. of

43:50

southern chef right world war two right yeah

43:52

thing that air air and ruin and more

43:54

than one abby ultra you could i know

43:56

all about the senegalese that's right it's kind

43:59

of just that general term for them is

44:01

the Senegalese. Exactly, even though there were

44:03

certainly Senegalese in the units. And

44:06

did they remain in Tombal

44:08

Bayh's era as an

44:10

effective force? Yeah,

44:12

so it's a hard question. So, I mean,

44:15

in a sense, well, no, because

44:18

they, you know, they tried, but also it was because

44:20

of the way that they were being used. They

44:24

were, this fascinating French document from the

44:27

mid-60s complaining that,

44:29

you know, Tumbleby spending more money to collect

44:31

taxes than he actually making in taxes. Tried

44:34

to use armed forces to get this money, squeeze

44:36

money from villagers. So the

44:38

army's being used in very repressive ways. And

44:41

you know, it's just a one-on-one engagement that's kind of

44:43

hit and miss. But yeah, they're generally not doing particularly

44:45

well against these rebels. The rebels

44:47

in the center and the east, which are their

44:49

main opponents, are not the nomads of the north.

44:52

These are mostly sedentary communities

44:55

as well, or mixed sedentary pastoralists.

44:58

So the advantage that the northerners

45:00

had, so this large, this broad

45:02

group of people we call the tubu,

45:05

which actually kind of mixes different communities.

45:09

A lot of them had much more, well, first

45:11

of all, they had a lot of strategic depth.

45:13

They're used to moving, you know, long, large distances.

45:16

They're also better armed. If you look

45:18

at French intelligence reports, the eastern

45:20

rebels had something like, and the rebels in the

45:22

center, something like one small alarm or one firearm

45:24

for 10 or 15 combatants. Most

45:28

of the rest were using knives

45:30

or swords or... Reading

45:35

that was just amazing how

45:38

hard, it was very Mad Maxie or something, like how

45:40

hard it was just to get a weapon. How

45:43

they would put guys with spears in

45:45

front of one guy with a firearm

45:48

to protect that firearm. Those

45:50

are some wild stories. When

45:53

you're American, it's so hard to

45:56

imagine that because you just think, just go to the local

45:58

Walmart. hard to

46:00

imagine it. What's the difference with today? I

46:02

mean, fire arms have proliferated so much since

46:05

the late 20th century, right? That's no longer

46:07

an issue. But also, that also

46:09

limited casualties, right? I mean, if

46:11

you clash the curve in the 80s, you're gonna kill a

46:14

lot more people than having a bow

46:16

and arrow in the 60s. And

46:18

that's gonna change the nature of your

46:20

fighting. I was just thinking

46:22

of something, a book I read

46:24

called The Interpreter by Zagawa, who

46:27

was from Darfur, east of Chad, but said

46:29

he felt

46:37

a really strong community with the whole

46:40

Zagawa community, including

46:43

Debbie in Chad, across

46:46

the border. And

46:48

his take, whether

46:51

it's true or not, I don't know, but is

46:54

that the

46:56

Zagawa were farmers, and

46:59

that was part of the problem. They

47:01

were dealing with the

47:04

Jandja weed who were

47:06

more pastoralist, migratory,

47:09

and all that. Although

47:11

there would be Northerners in the Chadian

47:13

divide, they were agricultural

47:15

people, and they were sedentary.

47:18

Yeah, yeah. So the Zagawa were mixed,

47:20

I think, the most mixed sedentary and

47:22

pastoralist, at least in the Chadian side.

47:26

But yeah, I mean, there's

47:29

a lot of communities across the borders. And actually, if you

47:31

look at the origins of the Darfur, the first kind of,

47:33

well, not even the first, but the famous round

47:36

of the Darfur conflict in the early 2000s, you

47:38

know, they led to the genocide. A

47:40

lot of the origins of what we call the

47:43

Jandja weed actually not only linked

47:45

to the Sudanese state, but also with the Chadian

47:47

civil wars, because a lot of these guys were

47:49

from Chad, and were involved

47:51

in these conflicts. So

47:54

can you describe for us the operation

47:56

of limousine and sort of what lessons

47:59

maybe were than that. Sure. I

48:01

mean, this is sometimes described as France's

48:03

last counterinsurgency operation in the

48:05

20th century. And I

48:07

think it probably was. The French logic was,

48:10

look, we have to, we have a defense

48:12

agreement with the Chadian government. We have to

48:14

respond. If we don't respond, then our other

48:16

African allies are going to start questioning

48:18

our own commitment to them. And these

48:20

African allies are way more important to

48:23

us than in Tomobai. So we're talking

48:25

about Sengur in Senegal, Hufui Buanyi in

48:28

Cote d'Ivoire, and Ali

48:30

Omar Bongo in Gabon. And

48:32

these are very important Francophone leaders. And they're looking at

48:34

France and asking, you know, what are you going to

48:37

do about Chad? Are you going to intervene

48:39

or not? And this is a frequent kind

48:41

of consideration in French's intervention. Like how are our strong

48:43

allies going to react? You know, if we don't intervene,

48:45

are they going to stand up for their partners? We

48:47

have to show that we stand up for our friends.

48:50

We protect our friends, right? Yeah. Even the ones we

48:52

don't like very much. And they didn't

48:55

like Tomobai very much. They thought he was a bit crazy.

48:58

And they thought that he was kind of responsible for

49:00

the problems that he was facing when they're absolutely right

49:02

about that. I don't know if

49:04

he was crazy, but he was certainly responsible for his

49:07

own problems. So, but you

49:09

know, the interview in his behalf, not that many troops, I

49:12

think in the end

49:14

it peaked at like something like 2,800

49:16

troops, which was still the largest, you

49:18

know, French intervention, post Algeria, post Algerian

49:21

aware. But you know, in terms

49:23

of Chads geography and population, it's actually not that

49:25

many soldiers, but they took command

49:27

of the Chadian army. They embedded French military

49:29

advisors and in almost every Chadian military unit,

49:32

French, French

49:35

companies kind of did these tactical sweeps

49:37

through southern through central Chad and Eastern

49:39

Chad. And it didn't take them

49:41

that long to defeat the main

49:44

elements of the central and Eastern rebellion.

49:46

It's also a company with this state

49:48

building scheme called the mission for administrative reform,

49:51

which ended up getting watered

49:53

down pretty quickly to just what the French call

49:55

the time quick impact project, which is really funny because

49:57

we still call the same thing quick impact project with

49:59

the same result. They don't do anything. Yeah,

50:01

it reminded me of the Iraq strategy

50:03

with the surge a little bit, you know, in

50:06

some version of it, right? Yeah, I mean, there's

50:09

this recurring logic to military interventions and defensive, you

50:11

know, failing states that, you know, that

50:13

I think you can you can transpose into other

50:15

contexts. Yeah, Afghanistan always comes to mind when I

50:17

think. Yeah. Yeah.

50:20

But I mean, that yesterday, we've recently quickly come to terms

50:22

with the central rebellion. They never completely defeat

50:25

it, but they stop it from threatening the

50:27

capital. They stop it from from threatening the

50:29

agricultural south. And then

50:31

they turn their turn to the north

50:33

of Chad's northern rebellion. And there

50:35

they fare much worse. They don't. They

50:38

one column falls into the major ambush and

50:40

they lose 11 true 11 soldiers. And

50:45

they they launched this major

50:47

kind of offenses in

50:49

the north and they bag very few fighters.

50:52

They don't do very well capturing

50:54

anybody. But

50:58

they torched a lot of oases, which is a problem because,

51:00

you know, that either they do it or the chatting army

51:02

does unclear who did it. But,

51:04

you know, huge percentage of

51:06

the population north depends on these oases because that's

51:08

where you grow dates. That's where you source water

51:11

for your camels. That's where you have

51:13

shelter, you know, and that's where your markets are and that

51:15

sort of thing. So, you know, this

51:17

is untold damage to the communities northern Chad and

51:19

the French were widely held as responsible for this, you

51:21

know, whether it was them actually doing it or not

51:24

is another question. But, you

51:26

know, we're looking at death toll of, you know, probably

51:28

10,000 people or so. Yeah.

51:31

The disparity between the French death toll and

51:33

the local death toll

51:36

is pretty amazing because as

51:38

you mentioned, 11 in

51:41

a small war in a place that

51:43

most of the metropolitan population

51:45

of France doesn't care

51:48

much about is an unacceptable

51:50

hole. Because if a war

51:52

was differently managed, you could...

51:56

Well, I remember when the Iraq

51:58

toll started... I thought, nobody's

52:00

going to take this. But

52:03

they took it quite well until

52:05

it went on year after year. But that

52:08

was because it was very carefully prepared

52:11

as a very important theater of war.

52:14

I don't imagine Chad

52:16

was ever a very important theater of war for

52:18

those. Well, it was barely reported on in the

52:20

French press. I mean, and that was deliberate, too.

52:22

The French government really tried to repress coverage of

52:26

it. But yeah,

52:28

it got pretty nasty. I mean, you get some

52:30

stories out about torture and, you know, extrajudicial

52:32

murders and that sort of thing. I mean,

52:34

I don't know if these are systematic or

52:36

not. It's really hard to tell. Because you

52:38

also have the propaganda from the rebels, which

52:41

exaggerates everything. So it's trying to come to,

52:43

trying to figure out what actually

52:45

happened. I went to some French

52:47

veterans forums. And you

52:50

do get some really nasty

52:52

stories on these. I mean, they open up

52:54

a bit. Veterans

52:57

forums, where they talk about what I saw. So it

52:59

would treat people and that sort of thing. Yeah. It

53:01

would make sense, though. You

53:04

know, in a horrible way, it was French Foreign Legion

53:06

was part of the force, right, used? Yeah. And

53:09

you're literally so far out. Like,

53:12

there are no cell

53:14

phones recording anything, obviously. And there are

53:17

no reporters. You're in

53:19

the middle of nowhere. And

53:21

you're there to kill people and to pacify. So

53:24

you would expect, actually, atrocities.

53:29

But that said, reading your

53:31

account of Operation Le Mousine, as

53:34

a counterinsurgency goes, in

53:36

the short term, it did seem pretty successful. Of course, these things

53:38

always then wind up blowing up in your face. But

53:43

in the short term, as counterinsurgencies go,

53:45

it did seem to pacify the country

53:49

and stabilize Tambal

53:51

Bayh's regime for a while. Yeah. One

53:54

of the reasons why it did is that they

53:56

used a classic trick of a counterinsurgent was let's

53:58

empower parts of the population. to fight

54:01

the insurgents. So they created all

54:03

these militias, these local militias, called

54:05

them self-defense militias. And

54:07

they actually were quite effective because

54:09

at some point because of lack of supplies

54:11

and utter lack of

54:13

any kind of logistical support, the rebels

54:16

started off living off the populations as

54:18

well, right? And they're making themselves unpopular.

54:20

So the French and the Chinese government

54:23

started taking advantage of this and also

54:25

taking advantage of intra-ethnic disputes and

54:28

arming local militias and empowering local

54:30

chiefs. And it's interesting

54:32

because the French Cooperation Ministry

54:34

at the time said, you know, you shouldn't

54:36

do this because this is going to lead

54:38

to, you know, long-term violence and serious problems

54:40

later on down the line. You know,

54:43

even if this solves your immediate problem, you

54:45

know, they're absolutely right because Central

54:48

Eastern Chad became, you know, just

54:50

this space of massive

54:53

amounts of banditry and kind of armed

54:56

group activity, unclear exactly what their political

54:58

goals were, but kind of operating outside

55:00

the norms of the state and everything

55:03

else. And these militias became quite predatory

55:05

among each other and a few local

55:08

ethnic conflicts and local conflicts. And this

55:10

is also where you, this builds into

55:12

Sudan as well, because this is where you start getting

55:15

one of the origin stories of the Jain Jili, these kind of armed

55:17

groups that emerged out of Chad that

55:19

aren't particularly organized, but, you know, some end

55:21

up as guns for hire and that sort

55:23

of thing. And that's one of

55:25

the legacies of operationally Muslim. I'm

55:28

not saying the Jain Jili demerigingly Muslim, but that

55:30

this, you know, you have essentially a permanent breakdown

55:32

of the Chadian state or semi-permanent breakdown of the

55:34

Chadian state as a

55:36

consequence of France's counterinsurgency and militia

55:39

building strategy in Central Eastern

55:41

Chad. And, you know,

55:43

the long-term is all of that as a weakening of

55:45

the state and a weakening of their ability to counter

55:47

rebellions later on down the line. Right.

55:49

And then we inevitably have

55:52

the other component of this

55:54

kind of war, which is somebody

55:57

invites a foreign king. And

56:00

it doesn't go as

56:02

well or as simply as they thought.

56:04

Like, I think in 1977, is it?

56:10

The Chadian leader

56:14

forced and

56:16

lists Libya, which was

56:18

quite a really dynamic power. I

56:21

know. And Adafie was active. He

56:23

was everywhere. He was the Tasmanian

56:25

devil of world politics. Yeah.

56:29

After he came to power in 1969, he

56:31

had his sights set on Chad pretty early. In

56:35

1972, he annexed this northern part of Chad we

56:37

talked about earlier called the Uzu Strip. He claimed

56:39

it was part of Libya because of a

56:41

colonial treaty with Libya that was Italy that

56:43

had never been ratified. And

56:47

we sent troops there and he started, I mean,

56:49

the population wasn't huge, a couple thousand people max.

56:53

But also this idea that there were critical

56:55

minerals there, that sort of thing that would be

56:57

in the future. But

56:59

he built a big airstrip there. He started

57:01

stationing troops there, circulating

57:03

currency around and essentially annexing

57:06

it. I mean, not essentially he did annex it, just

57:09

not under international law. And

57:14

he started developing relationships with all these

57:16

northern Chadian rebels because the Toubou as

57:19

a community stretched well into Libya as

57:21

well. So it was easy. And Libya

57:24

was their sanctuary. So they were drawn to Libya

57:26

and the French really couldn't pursue them there. The

57:28

Chadian government couldn't really pursue them there. So

57:30

when Gennazi was looking to expand his influence

57:32

into Chad further beyond

57:34

the Uzu Strip, he built

57:38

these alliances with these rebel groups, one

57:41

in particular led by a guy named Gekunewedai

57:43

who became quite important. And

57:47

in exchange for weapons and

57:49

supplies and some training, and

57:52

eventually intervention, intervention

57:54

of actually Libyan troops, he's willing

57:56

to sponsor a rebellion. in

58:00

exchange to offer more or less

58:02

political fealty to Gaddafi. Gaddafi

58:05

will, it will take a long time, but will eventually

58:07

realize that he has the same problem the French do,

58:09

that you can pay

58:11

an arm in train chatting, it's all you

58:14

want, but you're never going to get their

58:16

loyalty. They have

58:18

their own interests and they are just

58:21

likely to play you off as they are

58:23

to follow you. It's

58:26

for good reasons too, but the Libyans

58:29

were never popular in Northern Chad, but

58:31

the Northern rebels didn't have any other option than

58:34

to go to the Libyans. So

58:36

it was a marriage inconvenience, it was always

58:38

seen as a marriage inconvenience. You

58:41

read the memoirs and even if

58:43

you read correspondence

58:45

from the time among these rebel leaders you

58:47

get a sense that they understand perfectly well

58:49

the stakes, so there are no Libyans doodges

58:51

at all, but they are

58:53

often painted by the chatting government or by

58:56

the French, these are just especially the Americans

58:58

who have no sense of nuance that these

59:00

are in fact Libyans doodges and

59:02

we can just discount them because Libya is the

59:04

one that really matters here. Time

59:07

and time again these rebel groups

59:10

have proved that contention wrong. I

59:12

got to say they are hard

59:14

negotiators, the cluster affair, this hostage

59:16

affair, it's an amazing story also

59:18

with a whole bunch of unintended

59:21

consequences and it's also where

59:24

we first, where

59:26

Abre, another

59:28

infamous dictator, is in Abre where he

59:31

sort of first appears in damn is

59:33

he a hard negotiator too. I don't

59:35

know could you sum up the cluster

59:37

affair for listeners, I had never

59:40

heard of this before either. Actually

59:42

in 1974 the rebels,

59:45

the rebels are starved of cash,

59:47

starved of literally starving and

59:49

they thought let's kidnap some

59:51

people and sell them for ransom. And

59:56

that was a novel idea at the time I guess, not

59:59

that novel. But they ended

1:00:01

up capturing a head of a

1:00:03

French archaeological mission and a French

1:00:05

advisor and then a German

1:00:08

doctor as well. And the Germans paid their ransom pretty

1:00:10

quickly and the German doctors freed. But

1:00:13

the French, they pose

1:00:15

these demands of the French that are difficult

1:00:17

to satisfy because they require the Chateau government

1:00:19

to approve. And the Chateau government under

1:00:21

Tomovai doesn't want to approve. So it

1:00:24

was really complex in negotiations that

1:00:26

eventually, which

1:00:29

I've done for two and a half years and involves

1:00:32

the capture of another

1:00:34

French official,

1:00:38

actually two French officials, one of which is

1:00:40

an executor because he was a former deputy

1:00:42

head of the Chateau Intelligence Agency. Yeah,

1:00:46

they executed this guy. Haunrey has

1:00:48

him hung. Yeah, Haunrey hung him.

1:00:50

Yeah, he asked to be killed by a firing

1:00:52

squad if he had to be killed and they

1:00:54

said no and hung them. That was wild. This

1:00:57

French officer was responsible for some pretty terrible shit.

1:00:59

Yeah, he's not a good guy. I mean, he

1:01:01

was a serial torture when he was... And the

1:01:03

French thought he'd be a good idea as a

1:01:05

mediator. Oh, let's use him as a mediator. You

1:01:07

can speak like this. Yeah. I mean, the reward

1:01:10

at the time, don't do this. It's the dumbest

1:01:12

thing you possibly do. I mean, it's

1:01:14

like, I don't know.

1:01:16

It's like, yeah, I can't think of a parallel. It's

1:01:19

just arrogance. Like, they couldn't imagine

1:01:21

that they would take him because...

1:01:23

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, too big a

1:01:26

deal. And how about he's like, no, we'll

1:01:28

just take him. Yeah. So

1:01:30

it goes on for a couple of years,

1:01:32

but how does it sort of resolve itself

1:01:34

and what are the consequences? Well, the Libyans

1:01:36

and the Gaddafians are paying the ransom and

1:01:39

saying, look, stop this. I'll

1:01:44

take care of it. I'll help you with your rebellion

1:01:46

now. Okay. This is causing

1:01:48

a problem for me. So, you

1:01:50

know, you release the hostages and

1:01:53

in exchange, you're getting the, you know, five

1:01:55

or ten million francs you asked for and plus

1:01:57

more plus arms and that sort of thing. And

1:02:01

it was just a few months after that the rebels launched

1:02:03

their first offensive and they took over a third of the

1:02:05

territory and then Six months later they took over another third.

1:02:07

So You're not a third. Let's say

1:02:09

by 1978 they controlled about half of Chad and

1:02:12

that's what occasion the second French intervention What

1:02:16

I remember at the time and I mean

1:02:18

obviously there wasn't a lot of news about Chad But

1:02:20

I remember there were a lot

1:02:23

of stories talking about the the

1:02:25

really striking military performance of lightly

1:02:28

armed Chadian troops in

1:02:31

Toyotas, you know and as maybe

1:02:33

one of the first Toyota

1:02:36

wars that that I can think of

1:02:38

that were technical started Yeah,

1:02:41

well, they're more lightly armed than that. I

1:02:43

think there were guys

1:02:45

with a case the right back of

1:02:48

or SKS is in the back

1:02:50

of Toyota pickups and Supposedly

1:02:52

and this may have been US

1:02:55

propaganda you tell me but They

1:02:58

routed the Libyan troops who are much

1:03:00

more heavily armed Yeah,

1:03:02

it's absolutely that happened in the 80s. I was more of a

1:03:18

Overwhelm them Completely,

1:03:20

you know almost killing to a man the

1:03:22

defenders, you know taking no prisoners or a

1:03:24

few prisoners or the Khalifa

1:03:28

half-star was the main commander of the

1:03:31

Libyan army at the time and he was

1:03:33

Completely, this is his base at what he

1:03:35

doing was, you know was Infiltrated

1:03:37

and overwhelmed by a force that's not less

1:03:40

than half the size of the defenders and

1:03:42

you know I was the same half star

1:03:44

who today is the big I

1:03:47

mean he was movie

1:03:49

I mean good off he was humiliated and half star and it

1:03:51

became a prisoner and then he was turned by

1:03:54

the CIA to Lead the National Liberty the Libyan army to

1:03:56

you know, it's a sort of Contra force that

1:03:59

led into a fallout the French and the American later on,

1:04:02

which led the French to agree to overthrow Habre.

1:04:04

We can talk about that if you want later on. Yeah,

1:04:07

I mean, yeah, one thing that was

1:04:09

really surprising about what

1:04:11

you described going on in the 70s and in

1:04:13

the cluster affair is that

1:04:16

France, like they're really slow

1:04:18

to get Qaddafi, it

1:04:20

seems like. Qaddafi clearly

1:04:22

has these sort

1:04:24

of revolutionary, quasi-revolutionary and

1:04:26

imperialist, you know, really

1:04:29

imperialist designs. And

1:04:31

the French just keep thinking he's

1:04:33

way more important to us than

1:04:35

kind of, I don't know, anybody

1:04:37

in the region. We can work

1:04:39

with him on resolving Chad.

1:04:44

But they didn't seem to quite

1:04:46

grasp that Qaddafi's interest in Chad

1:04:48

was so radically different from

1:04:50

the French interest in Chad. Like it took them quite

1:04:53

a long time. But

1:04:55

they had very friendly relations until

1:04:57

the end of the 70s, it sounds

1:04:59

like. Yeah, yeah, they had

1:05:01

a very schizophrenic relationship with

1:05:03

Libya. And part of this had to do with different

1:05:06

parts of the French government, you know,

1:05:08

pushing different lines, like

1:05:10

the French Ministry and really

1:05:13

wanted to pursue good relations with

1:05:15

Libya because Libya was a major purchaser

1:05:17

of French military equipment. And this time when France

1:05:20

desperately needed good foreign exchange and Libya was able

1:05:22

to provide it. Also a type of

1:05:24

high oil prices and Libya was offering to offer, you know,

1:05:26

lower cost oil to

1:05:31

the French market. So Qaddafi

1:05:33

had, there were serious economic reasons to

1:05:35

maintain good ties with Libya. And

1:05:39

later on when Qaddafi got more involved with terrorism, it

1:05:41

was also the idea we want to avoid terrorist attacks

1:05:43

on our soil. But

1:05:46

in the 70s, this was part of the issue.

1:05:48

I mean, Jisgar, who was the president,

1:05:50

the French president at the time, was, he didn't

1:05:53

like Qaddafi a lot. In fact, he sponsored

1:05:55

at least two assassination attempts. That's

1:06:00

Charles somebody's real feelings One

1:06:04

or both of them he would correspond to actually

1:06:06

said that was the main mover the Egyptians but

1:06:08

the French were were co-movers

1:06:10

I guess But

1:06:15

This is a big cut. This is a big kind of problem

1:06:18

in French policy because you have this this One

1:06:21

side you have this kind of pro-livian policy and

1:06:24

you have French aircraft

1:06:26

bombing chatting positions in

1:06:28

you know in Chad because the

1:06:30

French had sold mirages to Libya

1:06:33

and The Chadian's it

1:06:35

is also conspiracy theories that the French you know

1:06:37

weren't right to cut up Chad Libyans take a

1:06:39

deal Because the

1:06:42

French were maintaining Libyan equipment the French had you

1:06:44

know make They

1:06:47

had people in Libya as part of their defense

1:06:49

contracts to repair and maintain their equipment that was

1:06:51

ending used in chatting at the Chadian's And

1:06:55

not directly against the French army, but indirectly against the

1:06:57

French army as well Which you

1:06:59

know cause them press almost press scandals as well,

1:07:01

but they did a good job suppressing those Yeah,

1:07:06

so the one hand you're you're arming you're arming the guy you're

1:07:08

fighting on the ground And that's

1:07:10

you know that sort of thing is said conspiracy

1:07:12

theories ever since you see that with them But

1:07:14

well, I mean I'm just thinking even more recently

1:07:16

with America. I think it's just sort of the

1:07:18

schizophrenic Logic of Empire because

1:07:20

like in Syria for example there were it

1:07:23

sort of start hitting people wait a minute the CIA

1:07:25

is arming training

1:07:27

and funding these basically

1:07:30

jihadist rebels in Syria while special

1:07:32

forces and other branches of the

1:07:34

Department of Defense are arming

1:07:37

training and advising and working with You

1:07:40

know the the Kurdish forces, and they're fighting

1:07:43

each other so like it's

1:07:45

like one branch of the US you know National

1:07:48

Security State is fighting through proxies and other

1:07:50

yeah, it's probably a reasonably good analogy I

1:07:53

mean this case through a much clear economic

1:07:55

interest involved. I mean right here, but

1:07:57

yeah, I mean you do a question the French in

1:07:59

this that had different priorities. The Africanists

1:08:02

within the French administration and very

1:08:05

much opposed to Libya and you know

1:08:07

those focused more North Africa or on

1:08:10

oil and weapons contracts you know were

1:08:12

much more pro-Libyan. And then

1:08:14

when we came to power you had a left-wing aspect

1:08:16

to it as well. The left-wing elements within the Socialist

1:08:19

Party were pro-Libyan for anti-imperialist reasons.

1:08:21

Right. So real

1:08:23

quickly before we leave Tumbal Baya and I'm sorry

1:08:25

to keep you here because you're sick so try

1:08:27

not to give you too long. I

1:08:30

just have to ask you real quickly about

1:08:33

Yondo and Tumbal Baya's

1:08:36

attempt to do a kind of Mabudu

1:08:39

you know authenticity. I think it

1:08:42

was Tumbal Baya who had that

1:08:44

program called Chatitude.

1:08:47

Right. But the Yondo thing was like deadly

1:08:49

serious. I mean I

1:08:52

found an old Time

1:08:54

magazine article on it

1:08:57

and it you know describing how

1:08:59

thousands of Protestant

1:09:02

priests were forced

1:09:04

into this Yondo ritual and killed

1:09:06

that way. Can

1:09:08

you describe the Yondo thing a little bit?

1:09:11

Right. So like the death

1:09:13

toll is a bit controversial. I mean so

1:09:15

many people died. I don't know if it's

1:09:17

the thousands. Okay. All I really have at

1:09:19

the time is French embassy reporting and they're

1:09:22

very disgusted by it but they don't really seem to

1:09:25

understand it and they don't follow it that closely and

1:09:27

they don't seem to think it's a big death toll

1:09:29

but it's hard to tell. I really don't know. So

1:09:32

this is after the French intervention sort of ends. He's still French troops

1:09:34

in the country but Tumbal

1:09:37

Baya is still suffering from a major

1:09:39

economic crisis. He needs revenues. So he

1:09:42

gets closer. He reaches out to any partner who is

1:09:44

willing to give him money. That

1:09:46

includes Gaddafi actually. He

1:09:49

meets Gaddafi and essentially agrees to agree

1:09:51

to the annexation of the Azuz strip in exchange for a

1:09:55

straight on cash payment. With

1:09:58

Ubuntu he becomes very close. the

1:10:01

dictator in Zaire, which is now Congo.

1:10:04

And he gets inspired by Mbutu's policies of authenticity,

1:10:06

which is that we have to go back to

1:10:08

a real African roots. We're going to rename all

1:10:11

of our cities. We're going to rename our names.

1:10:13

We're not going to keep these Western Christian

1:10:15

names. We're going to change them all. So

1:10:17

Folsotovovai became Ngaritatambovai. Fotlami,

1:10:21

which is the capital of Chad, became Njamina.

1:10:25

Fotashamboh in the south became Saar. So

1:10:28

there's some names that changed. People

1:10:30

weren't allowed to have Western Christian names anymore.

1:10:33

And then he forced his entire

1:10:35

government and I think almost

1:10:38

the entire administration to go through this very

1:10:40

brutalized version of a coming of age ritual

1:10:42

called Yandgo, which is very specific to

1:10:44

one particular community in Chad, which

1:10:47

involves mutilation and

1:10:49

involves a

1:10:53

very kind of experiencing

1:10:56

starvation in the brush for a while

1:10:58

and that sort of thing and

1:11:00

not eating and spending

1:11:03

time under the heat. The kind of thing that you would,

1:11:05

if you had to go through it, you'd rather go through

1:11:07

when you were 14 rather than when you were 40. Well,

1:11:09

I guess that's probably true. Yeah,

1:11:12

I mean, there's something where deaths involve,

1:11:14

maybe hundreds, I don't know about thousands,

1:11:16

but this made him

1:11:18

super unpopular for obvious reasons.

1:11:22

It's also becoming very paranoid about the French. The

1:11:24

French are going to try to overthrow me. The

1:11:26

French are going to try to overthrow me. And

1:11:29

the French are a bit baffled by this. If you look at the internal French

1:11:32

correspondence, they're like, well, we don't

1:11:34

like him, but we don't have an alternative to him. So no.

1:11:38

He also assassinates kind of the one major

1:11:40

not armed group political figure

1:11:42

who could oppose him. That's kind

1:11:44

of Uchael Bono. He

1:11:46

hires a French hitman, kills him in Paris, 1973. Yeah,

1:11:50

that was a pretty weird assassination too, right?

1:11:53

It seems like the French intelligence

1:11:55

may have kind of known and done

1:11:57

nothing for whatever reason. That's a

1:11:59

whole new. dimension. This is a time when

1:12:01

French intelligence was highly politicized and not necessarily

1:12:04

following the orders of the

1:12:06

Élysée. Well, French intelligence is

1:12:08

very famous for being incredibly

1:12:10

fractured and full of rivalries.

1:12:13

There are something like

1:12:15

four agencies and they all hate

1:12:17

each other's guts. Yeah,

1:12:20

I think a lot of those problems have probably

1:12:22

been not as bad now as they used to

1:12:24

be, but certainly in the 60s and 70s and

1:12:27

even 80s, these were serious problems.

1:12:29

Not just among agencies, but within

1:12:31

the SAC and later the DJS,

1:12:34

which was the Foreign Intelligence Service.

1:12:37

So it's possible some elements of the French state knew

1:12:39

about this and other elements didn't, and that may or

1:12:41

may not have included the presidency. It's

1:12:43

really hard to know and you'll probably never

1:12:45

know. But Tumblewhite became increasingly

1:12:47

paranoid about the French, paranoid about

1:12:49

his own survival, increasingly kind

1:12:52

of violent towards

1:12:54

his own supporters. And this led to his overthrow

1:12:57

in 1975. He was overthrown by his army. And

1:13:02

a lot of suspicion the

1:13:04

French were involved. Probably the French knew it was

1:13:07

coming because some units that were involved started moving

1:13:09

a couple of days before the French

1:13:11

would have had advisors

1:13:13

with them. And

1:13:15

I did find an order from the French government

1:13:18

to not intervene when this coup was happening

1:13:20

to the local army commander, like do not intervene, only

1:13:23

intervene to protect the embassy, the embassy to the

1:13:25

threat, otherwise let things happen. So

1:13:28

it was pretty suggestive that they

1:13:31

didn't orchestrate it, but they didn't need to.

1:13:33

They weren't worried about it either, which is

1:13:35

interesting. They weren't worried about it. No, they

1:13:37

were. So he laughed like, oh, whoops. Yeah,

1:13:41

there's an anecdote you have of some general running

1:13:43

around the street and he sees some

1:13:46

top French official and he says, what should I

1:13:48

do? There's a coup going on. And he's

1:13:51

like, yeah, can you believe

1:13:53

it? There's a coup going on, like almost

1:13:55

exaggeratedly blasé about it. You know, yeah, you

1:13:57

better choose the side. I don't know. one

1:14:00

side or the other.

1:14:04

So a military council or

1:14:06

junta kind of comes to

1:14:08

power and then things get

1:14:11

then the insurgency kind of goes to a

1:14:13

new level right by 1978. Yes,

1:14:16

this is the middle of the close trip that we're talking about

1:14:18

and also one problem is you

1:14:20

have this there's one instance where the French are

1:14:22

negotiating directly with the rebels against against

1:14:25

the explicit instructions from the junta like do not you will

1:14:27

not talk to the rebels will talk to the rebels you're

1:14:29

not doing that and when it turned the

1:14:31

French did that and it delivered some ransom money to

1:14:33

the rebels and it delivered equipment to the

1:14:35

rebels the the

1:14:38

military junta got very upset

1:14:40

about this and expelled the French army so the

1:14:42

French army had to leave within a month. 1,000

1:14:46

1500 French troops just boom you had to get out and

1:14:48

get out of dodge 1975 and there's a

1:14:51

couple months after the coup. So there is a

1:14:53

parallel to what's happened more recently. But

1:14:56

what that meant was all of a sudden the

1:14:58

regime was completely exposed to you know an interventional

1:15:00

rebel offensive. There's no French security

1:15:02

guarantee there anymore. And

1:15:05

that's one of the reasons why the rebels were successful in 1977

1:15:07

because no French army in

1:15:09

chat anymore. Right. And the French returned in

1:15:11

1978 when the rebels were threatening the capital.

1:15:14

Okay, so so yeah now

1:15:17

we're sort of at the French intervention

1:15:19

and from

1:15:22

your book it sounds like but

1:15:24

I mean they did a pretty

1:15:26

large scale intervention and unlike the

1:15:28

intervention the counterinsurgency really in 69

1:15:30

70 71 which was you

1:15:33

know in the short term at least for largely

1:15:36

successful this

1:15:38

time they found real

1:15:40

resistance and they the strategy

1:15:43

was different too is more like holding

1:15:45

the line rather

1:15:47

than then destroying

1:15:49

the insurgency. Yeah

1:15:52

so the Latin and this is starting to

1:15:54

repeated two times again and also

1:15:56

in other countries essentially the intervene the

1:15:59

drew a line across the middle of the

1:16:01

country. They said, OK, rebels, you can't

1:16:03

come south. That's it. And

1:16:05

government, you have to negotiate with these guys. And

1:16:08

meanwhile, get your armed forces together so

1:16:11

you have the strength to fight the

1:16:13

rebellion later on if you need to, and the Libyans, of

1:16:15

course. But

1:16:18

what happened here was that not only does

1:16:20

this generate a lot of resentment on the government side, because they

1:16:23

said, well, look, you're not actually helping

1:16:25

us. You're just

1:16:27

preventing them from overthrowing, from reaching the capital, but you're

1:16:29

not helping us defeat the rebels, which is what we

1:16:31

really need. But

1:16:34

the other issue, and also he also said these

1:16:36

conspiracy theories about splitting up Chad with the Libyans,

1:16:38

because the rebels were backed by the Libyans. But

1:16:41

also, the issue was that the

1:16:44

French were kind of powerless, the Chadian

1:16:46

state imploded, as part

1:16:48

of these negotiations. The Chadian state reached out

1:16:50

to Hussein Habre, who had broken with the

1:16:52

rebellion, the northern rebellion.

1:16:55

He joined the southern state and then

1:16:58

immediately rebelled against

1:17:00

it. And it was

1:17:02

a massive civil war inside Jomina itself. The French are

1:17:04

sitting outside, wondering what the hell is happening, what the

1:17:06

hell can we do. They

1:17:09

tried to mediate a couple of cease fires without too much success.

1:17:12

And then eventually, the French commander, for

1:17:14

reasons that are still very obscure, just lets the

1:17:16

northern rebels into the city. And

1:17:18

that leads to an ethnic cleansing of the city,

1:17:20

essentially. And then

1:17:22

a power sharing deal between the

1:17:24

northern rebels and the former

1:17:26

southern government, which now becomes a kind of rump

1:17:29

faction. And Vukuni

1:17:31

Wade, who was one of the rebel commanders,

1:17:34

becomes the official president. But there's four main

1:17:36

rebel groups, then about half a dozen other

1:17:38

smaller groups, that all fall out

1:17:40

with each other. And this leads

1:17:42

to another major round of civil war, 1980, in

1:17:46

the capital. And the French, at

1:17:48

this point, realized they've completely lost control. There's

1:17:50

no way that they can stay. There's no reason to

1:17:52

stay anywhere. And unless they

1:17:55

want to intervene on the site of a faction

1:17:57

and help them win. But they've lost any

1:17:59

appetite. for that. So they was true.

1:18:03

And within a couple of months of them withdrawing,

1:18:05

what looks like Hissin Habari was starting

1:18:07

to win the battle in Jomina. That's

1:18:09

when the Libyan army invaded

1:18:11

Chad massively. We're talking about, you

1:18:13

know, seven to 10,000 soldiers, which doesn't

1:18:16

sound massive, but for these

1:18:18

wars. Yeah. And these were, you

1:18:20

know, these were troops equipped with, you

1:18:22

know, state of the art Soviet, you

1:18:24

know, equipment. Yeah. Yeah.

1:18:26

Kannabi was buying all the best

1:18:29

stuff anywhere he could get it. And

1:18:33

passing it on in many cases. Yeah. He

1:18:35

was very generous in that way. The Soviets

1:18:37

were not happy when he did that. Yeah.

1:18:41

They like to keep things stable generally.

1:18:43

They're very conservative to Soviets. Yeah. So

1:18:49

real quickly, can you describe it?

1:18:51

Because Nigeria enters the scene, right?

1:18:54

Or, you know, at this late 70s period, we're talking

1:18:56

about, and, and you mentioned, well,

1:18:58

and you talked about the effects

1:19:00

of, you

1:19:03

know, decline and fall, as your chapters called

1:19:05

of Central African Empire and Bokasa. Could

1:19:08

you briefly describe how that influences

1:19:10

events? Right. So Nigerian

1:19:12

role is essentially one of the mediator, they try

1:19:14

to mediate between these other factions, and they

1:19:16

kind of have two goals. They want to get the French out of

1:19:18

Chad, they want to keep the Libyans out of Chad. And

1:19:21

they also, it was a three goal, they also don't want to have

1:19:23

to be ruling Chad. And they thought the

1:19:26

French were in koots with the

1:19:28

Haboré and probably at lower levels they were.

1:19:30

But their biggest contribution to this

1:19:33

was essentially discrediting the French and

1:19:35

removing the ability of any Chadian

1:19:38

faction to call on the French for their

1:19:41

support, which all of them wanted to do. All of

1:19:44

them were trying to do, but they couldn't

1:19:46

do it so openly anymore because the Nigerians

1:19:48

essentially maneuvered them into signing an agreement that

1:19:52

rejected any kind of French presence in Chad. So

1:19:55

they played an important

1:19:57

role getting the French out of the country, essentially, but not

1:19:59

doing a very good job with the Libyans. They

1:20:02

had for a while deployed a peacekeeping force in

1:20:04

Jomino, but the, and

1:20:07

then they tried to hold some of

1:20:09

the Chadian rebel leaders hostage, and then

1:20:11

that failed because the Chadian

1:20:13

rebel leaders got the message out to

1:20:16

their fighters this is happening, and

1:20:18

they surrounded the Nigerian base in Jomino and

1:20:20

said, look, if you don't release our guys,

1:20:23

you're not getting out of Chata Live. And

1:20:26

that worked. So, yeah, Nigeria,

1:20:29

that was Nigeria's kind of big role. But

1:20:33

in terms of the Central African Republic, it

1:20:36

didn't play a direct role in Chad, but the French

1:20:38

were very always concerned about Libyan expansion

1:20:40

and subversion of their allies. And

1:20:44

they were concerned that if Libya got a

1:20:46

foothold in the Central African Republic, that would

1:20:49

massively undermine the French position

1:20:51

in Chad and the position of French allies

1:20:53

in Chad. So they

1:20:55

got very concerned when Bokassa was the leader, we

1:20:57

talked about the leader of the Central African Republic,

1:21:00

who had declared himself emperor and

1:21:02

coordinated himself in 1977 with massive

1:21:05

French financial support and political support, I

1:21:07

should add. When he started getting close

1:21:09

to Libyans, the French started to get worried because the Libyans were

1:21:11

offering him money and technical support

1:21:15

that he needed either for personal

1:21:17

reasons or for state reasons. And

1:21:20

the French, they

1:21:23

were worried about this. But the other issue is that Bokassa

1:21:26

was a completely

1:21:28

violent, paranoid man. And

1:21:30

these protests broke out in Bongi

1:21:32

in 1979. And he personally

1:21:35

participated in the repression. And we mentioned

1:21:37

this before, he personally beat schoolchildren. And

1:21:40

there was a second set of riots that broke out in April

1:21:43

or May 1979. There was a

1:21:45

curious inquiry, the French decided this is

1:21:47

a great pretext to get rid of them. And

1:21:50

then reestablish solid French

1:21:52

control over over

1:21:54

the African. Well, it's called the Central

1:21:56

African Empire during his brief reign. It

1:21:59

returned to the African Republic. public afterwards. But

1:22:01

the French were very much concerned that

1:22:04

if he stayed in power, you know, this

1:22:06

would become a foothold for the Libyans. And

1:22:08

indeed, when they overthrew him in September 1979

1:22:10

with the, they just literally sent troops

1:22:13

from top of them, when he was

1:22:15

out of the country, in Libya, actually,

1:22:17

at the time, heard the news from

1:22:19

the Libyan government that he was now overthrown.

1:22:21

You know, they installed

1:22:23

his predecessor as president, and,

1:22:25

you know, and kept a tight hold over him

1:22:27

and made sure that, you know,

1:22:30

the Libyans or anybody else would have any kind

1:22:32

of influence in Central African Republic while they were

1:22:35

there. And that was that. Right.

1:22:38

And then the Libyan intervention, the

1:22:40

endgame, which is really the endgame

1:22:42

being Habre coming to power for?

1:22:45

Eight years, eight years. Eight years.

1:22:47

Okay, yeah. And I

1:22:50

guess, well, a couple things I want to say

1:22:53

here, and we can wrap it up. But one

1:22:56

is, first of all, yeah, this,

1:22:58

this would help explain why so a

1:23:00

long time ago, one of our episodes,

1:23:03

I think it was like episode 130. I don't know, it

1:23:07

was like five, six years ago, we did a

1:23:09

series on the years of lead in Italy. And

1:23:12

the last episode of that had to do

1:23:15

with the Ustica, what's called the Ustica Massacre,

1:23:17

how a Tavia

1:23:19

flight and Italian airliner was

1:23:22

mysteriously shot down over between

1:23:29

the islands of Ponsa and Ustica, killing

1:23:31

everybody on board. And one

1:23:33

of the big theories that our Italian guests

1:23:35

put forward was that it

1:23:38

was the French had got word that

1:23:41

Gaddafi was that

1:23:43

it was a plane carrying Gaddafi, or that

1:23:46

there was actually one of Gaddafi's planes riding

1:23:50

right next to it or something and that

1:23:52

they accidentally shot down that passenger plane. And

1:23:54

that's why this story still gets covered

1:23:56

up after all these years. And

1:23:59

it just seemed At least to me kind of

1:24:01

bizarre why would France Care

1:24:04

so much back then about Gaddafi, but this

1:24:06

this explains it I mean when it when

1:24:08

it when it became clear

1:24:10

to them that Gaddafi threatened

1:24:13

their in their minds there,

1:24:15

you know kind of neo-colonial Power

1:24:18

in central Well

1:24:20

across the Sahel really Yeah,

1:24:23

they it was like enemy number one at

1:24:25

that point. So that would make more sense

1:24:28

But I guess what I wanted to say here was What

1:24:33

sort of lessons would you draw from

1:24:35

this story for? Insurgencies

1:24:41

well in certainty counterinsurgencies, you know, some

1:24:43

of the bigger ones we're seeing today

1:24:45

and or what we're seeing in

1:24:49

Africa with these kind of neo-nationalist

1:24:54

Cues that have been very

1:24:57

anti-french and to

1:24:59

some degree anti-american anti-western as well

1:25:01

Like are there lessons from this

1:25:03

story from 1960 to 1982? That

1:25:07

that we can draw or lessons from the

1:25:09

fact that every intervention

1:25:11

seemed to lead to a Whole

1:25:14

new like it opened up

1:25:17

a Pandora's box and created new or worse

1:25:19

problems every single time Yeah,

1:25:21

that doesn't see the case. Yeah The

1:25:23

civil hydraulic clear lessons from from this

1:25:26

but one thing I would say is,

1:25:28

you know supporting authoritarian governments does be

1:25:30

resentment Right and it

1:25:32

doesn't necessarily Deliver you

1:25:34

a loyal authoritarian government either right

1:25:38

And so the resentment starts at the very top and

1:25:40

this whole Throughout the style

1:25:42

of this wave of what's been described as anti-french

1:25:44

sentiment And that's and

1:25:46

the Clintons have come to power have

1:25:49

really exploited that To

1:25:51

legitimize the rule and you're not just kicking at

1:25:53

the French But also, you know point to the

1:25:56

French is being responsible for you know, all these

1:25:58

problems, right? Which is obviously a massive of

1:26:00

exaggeration, but it

1:26:03

reflects two very salient facts. One, the French

1:26:05

failed significantly to do what they said they

1:26:07

were going to do, which is to stop

1:26:09

this better jihadist groups, which fueled

1:26:11

all sorts of conspiracy theories. And

1:26:14

then secondly, they were backing

1:26:16

all of these governments that, although

1:26:19

except for Chad, were elected,

1:26:22

were not perceived as legitimate by much of

1:26:25

their populations. So

1:26:27

France was associated with illegitimate predatory

1:26:29

governments and failing to

1:26:31

do what they say they were going to

1:26:33

do vis-a-vis the jihadist and insecurity in general.

1:26:35

And during this whole time, as

1:26:37

France deployed more and more forces to the region,

1:26:39

insecurity is getting worse and worse and worse. So

1:26:43

these are that. Plus, you can add

1:26:45

on top of that the whole history

1:26:47

of colonial rule and post-colonial intervention and

1:26:49

that sort of thing. And it was

1:26:52

very easy for politicians and political activists

1:26:54

to really point the finger at France

1:26:56

and to mobilize around that as a

1:26:58

mobilizing point

1:27:02

to reject the French from the region.

1:27:04

And that's what happened. I

1:27:06

mean, when the official language at

1:27:09

the government level is on is French, and

1:27:11

you're using this French-ish

1:27:14

currency, which is

1:27:17

backed by France. So

1:27:20

essentially, it's controlled by the French Central Bank, more

1:27:23

or less. Yeah,

1:27:25

you're going to get blamed for the problems. But

1:27:29

it seems a lesson from

1:27:31

your book also and extrapolating

1:27:34

it outwards is just that counterinsurgencies

1:27:37

just rarely work.

1:27:41

I mean, it's very rare, it seems like.

1:27:43

But when they do, the cost is often

1:27:46

too high. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The future political

1:27:48

evolution of the country that you're in. Right,

1:27:51

because of all the unintended

1:27:53

consequences that come out

1:27:55

of even a successful counterinsurgency. Yeah,

1:27:58

I mean, the other issue I'd say is that the wind. This is

1:28:00

true. We saw this in Afghanistan and this is what

1:28:02

we said with Iraq too. When

1:28:04

you're intervening in defense of a regime that's

1:28:06

not viewed as legitimate and that itself

1:28:09

is predatory and corrupt, that

1:28:11

regime doesn't have too

1:28:13

many incentives to reform itself, to undertake

1:28:16

the kind of outreach and transformations

1:28:18

you need to actually undercut not

1:28:20

just the insurgencies, but to build

1:28:22

a sustainable government in the future

1:28:24

because that would be political suicide. But

1:28:26

why do it if you're protected by

1:28:29

a foreign army? There's no need to do it. It

1:28:32

creates all these disincentives for reform and change

1:28:35

and ultimately just making things worse. All right. I think

1:28:38

that's a good place to go. On

1:28:40

that depressing note, I think we can

1:28:43

wrap it up. I really appreciate you

1:28:45

coming on the show. We really appreciate

1:28:47

it Nathaniel. Great to be here. We'll

1:28:51

post links to it as well. France's

1:28:54

Wars in Chad. There are a lot

1:28:56

of amazing stories in there. I highly

1:28:58

recommend it. Again, you can read in

1:29:01

these a lot of relevant to

1:29:03

today's stories. Anyway,

1:29:07

thank you again Nathaniel for coming on the show. Thanks

1:29:09

a lot. It's been great. I really appreciate it. Thanks.

1:29:11

Bye-bye. Thank

1:29:20

you. Thank

1:29:49

you. Okay,

1:30:52

that was our talk with Nathaniel

1:30:55

Powell. We'll post a link

1:30:57

to his book, France's Wars in Chad. And

1:31:00

yeah, it was a great talk. We had

1:31:02

him on. These

1:31:06

wars, you know, some of them I even

1:31:08

kind of remember. I remember,

1:31:13

you know, I

1:31:15

remember Gaddafi's invasion of Chad

1:31:20

and the Uzu Strip. Now I know how

1:31:22

to pronounce it, the Uzu Strip. And

1:31:25

it just seems so, it seems so risk at the

1:31:27

time. And then there was that border war between

1:31:29

Egypt and Libya at the same time. And

1:31:33

yeah, it was

1:31:35

very active area for a while there.

1:31:37

Well, what I remember is a

1:31:40

really telling shift in military tactics. I

1:31:42

mean, it was the

1:31:44

first time that I remember

1:31:48

the Toyota pickup being talked about

1:31:50

as a really important firing

1:31:53

platform weapon in

1:31:57

desert wars. Pretty

1:32:01

soon the white Toyota

1:32:03

pickup became an essential

1:32:07

in every war, including

1:32:11

Islamic State. I

1:32:13

mean, that's the real chattitude,

1:32:15

is the Toyota pickup. I

1:32:18

mean, that's quite a global innovation that

1:32:20

came out of Chad in response to

1:32:22

the Gaddafi and

1:32:24

in response to the French. It was really

1:32:27

quite an innovation. Anyways,

1:32:29

thanks again to Nathaniel. Thanks

1:32:31

John, Brendan, and all of our

1:32:33

subscribers, and talk to you again soon. Okay,

1:32:36

thanks everybody. Bye.