Tag Archives: Toyota wars

Au Revoir Tchad

Posted on by Leave a comment

The Republic of Chad, a French colony from 1900 with the defeat of Sudanese warlord Rabih az-Zubayr at the one-sided Battle of Kousssri (4,500 Sudanese casualties to 103 French), to 1960 when it gained independence, was long key to the Republic’s control of Equatorial and North Africa.

On 26 August 1940, just two months after the fall of metropolitan France to the Axis, Chad was the first French territory in Africa to break with the Vichy government and join De Gaulle’s Free French movement.

Its local garrison, the Senegalese infantry regiment of Chad (Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais du Tchad, RTST), formed the hard kernel that would become Leclerc’s 2e DB division that he would take to Paris and Germany in 1944 and 1945 and is still part of the French Army today, albeit based in Alsace, and led the annual Bastille Day parade in Paris just a couple of years ago.

Free French infantryman, native of the Chad colony, who was awarded the Croix de Guerre, in 1942. Note the tribal face scars. (NARA)

In all, some 15,000 Chadian troops would serve De Gaulle in the push for Liberation.

The Republic remembered, too, and, still patrolling the desert post-WWII, the new nation became a hub for the French Foreign Legion post-1962 after it withdrew from Algeria.

Then, after 1969 when Mummar Qaddafi/Gaddafi overthrew the Libyan king and started getting close to the Soviets, this only increased.

June 10-20, 1978 – Chad. A legionnaire from the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment (REC) in his Jeep before setting off on patrol on the Ati track. Ref.: F 78-337 L51A © Roland Pellegrino/ECPAD/Defense

June 10-20, 1978 – Chad A patrol from the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment (REC) changes the wheel of an AML 90 near the Chadian village of Alifen. Ref.: F 78-338 LC109 © Roland Pellegrino/ECPAD/Defense

When Libyan troops pushed over the line into the country from the North in 1979, the French supported Chad’s president, Hissene Habre, and over the next decade, with the help of upwards of 3,000 French troops, forced the Libyan army off Chadian soil in the Toyota Wars and Jaguar Diplomacy that followed.

Between 17 February and 26 March 1986 – N’Djamena (Chad) An F1 Mirage armed from the 5th Wing. Réf. : 1 986 072 12 06 © Patrice George/ECPAD/Defense

August 31 – September 7, 1983 – Chad Portrait of a legionnaire from the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment (REC) at the Biltine campRéf. F 83-382 LC308 Photo by Bernard Sidler/ECPAD/Défense

Libyan tanks stand abandoned in the desert after being captured by FANT (Forces Armees Nationales Chadiennes), the Chadian National Army, as troops reconquered the Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti region of Chad. The Chadian Army recaptured Faya-Largeau and Wadi Doum airport, where the retreating Libyan army abandoned many dead and a great deal of military equipment, most of it of Soviet manufacture. Libyan planes made a bombing raid on the same day in an attempt to destroy material that had fallen into Chadian hands. Between April 6 and April 10, 1987, Wadi Doum, Chad

Even with Gaddafi gone for more than a decade, the continued instability in Libya to the North, the fight against Boko Haram to the South, and the tension along the 1,400 km border with Sudan to the East, meant a continued– and even welcome– French presence in Chad. 

13 November 2014 – Chad. Caracal EC-725 helicopter in parking, as part of a jump by soldiers of the 3rd Marine Infantry Parachutist Regiment (3rd RPIMa). Ref. : 2014TMLI004_038_080 © Didier Blanchet/ECPAD/Defense. Groupement Tactique Désert Est (GTDE) a embarqué à bord d’un C130 (Hercule) en vue d’effectuer un saut au dessus du TCHAD. 3 sticks ont été formé, le C130 a ainsi effectué 3 largages sur les terres arides du TCHAD.

Now, following the election of Gen. Mahamat Idriss Déby, son of the late strongman Gen. Idriss Déby Itno (who served as Chad’s president from 1991 to 2021), apparently, the good times are over and the country is moving to “fully assert its sovereignty” and is demanding the departure of the 1,000 French troops left in the country, as it leans closer to Russia.

Chad earlier this year sent a 70-member U.S. Army SF det home from a training mission in the country, although talks were apparently looking good a few months ago to send them back. Maybe not after this. 

Notably, the French have been kicked out of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso in recent months, signaling a much smaller role for the traditional “Gendarme of Africa.”

Honneur à l’Ancien

Posted on by Leave a comment

40 years ago: A throwback to the old Le Poilu (“the hairy one”) of Great War frame is this portrait of a Légionnaire of the 1er Régiment Etranger de Cavalerie (1 REC) at the French military’s Biltine camp in the Wadi Fira region of Chad in September 1983.

Contrast him to the spit and polished white kepi-clad legionnaires in the recruiting poster behind him, which, in a place like Chad, was probably put there with some irony in mind. Réf. F 83-382 LC308 Photo by Bernard Sidler/ECPAD/Défense

The Légionnaire, whose hand is bandaged, is possibly a sapper, which, as with the Canadian army and some other forces, in the French army are traditionally allowed to grow out their whiskers, even in field conditions. The unit was deployed to Chad during the lead-up to the so-called “Toyota Wars” between Gaddafi’s Libya and the French ally over the disputed Aouzou Strip. A Cold War flashpoint of which Africa was full of in the 1970s and 80s. 

Judging from the age of the hard-bitten campaigner in the above image, he may have been a veteran of African combat going back to the French in Algeria and the Kolwezi intervention.

As for the 1st REC, the Legion’s cavalry unit was formed in North Africa just over a century ago and stood up at Sousse in French colonial Tunisia on 8 March 1921. Of the regiment’s inaugural draft of 156 troopers, 128 were exiled White Russians, most former officers and nobles of the deposed Tsar’s cossacks and guards cavalry units, a feature that earned the 1 REC the nickname of “Royal Etranger” for a generation.

I have a vintage 1 REC badge in my collection– part of my regular New Orleans rounds-– made by Arthus-Bertrand and carrying the unit’s motto: Honneur Courage Fidélité.

 

Vale, Idriss Déby, Emir of the Toyota Wars

Posted on by 3 comments

The Chadian government last week reported that recently reelected six-time president (!) Idriss Déby, 68, died of injuries following clashes with rebels in the north of the country at the weekend. Deby’s son, leader of the Presidental Guard, has been installed as the country’s leader.

The Deby government came to power in 1990 as part of a military coup while he was head of the military. Although we aren’t in the habit of celebrating African authoritarian strongmen, it should be noted that Deby was a legend of asymmetric warfare.

He was the head of the Chadian National Armed Forces (FANT) during the Toyota Wars of the 1980s.

Trained in a series of French officer schools to include the prestigious École de Guerre, Deby’s Mad Max-style troopers pulled off a French-funded Deserts Rats-esque campaign against Gaddafi’s set-piece Libyan armored columns in Chad’s northern deserts, pitting 400 Milan- and machine gun-armed technicals against T-54s– and coming out on top. 

Since literally taking office 30 years ago, Deby has remained a big friend to Paris in backing up the old colonizer’s fight against Islamists on the Continent and setting up Chad as the model of stability in the region. 

With that, there should be no surprise that France– who has long looked the other way on Chad’s intermittent border clashes with Nigeria– is supporting the Chadian military’s seizure of power following Deby’s death on the battlefield.

Speaking of which…

Chad and France have a unique bond that goes back to WWII.

On 26 August 1940, just two months after the fall of metropolitan France to the Axis, Chad was the first French territory in Africa to break with the Vichy government and join De Gaulle’s Free French movement.

With the blessing of colonial governor Felix Ebouse and Lt. Col Pierre Marchand, commander of the Senegalese infantry regiment of Chad (Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais du Tchad, RTST), the local unit, DeGaulle sent a young Major Philippe Hauteclocque (under the nom de guerre, Leclerc) who handpicked a column of 400 to strike out from the colony against the key oasis of Koufra in Italian Libya in January 1941 to aid the British push in the Western Desert.

1940 uniform of Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais du Tchad, via the Musee d’la Armee

Free French infantryman, a native of the Chad colony, who was awarded the Croix de Guerre, 1942 for combat in North Africa. Note the tribal face scars, British helmet, and fouled anchor insignia common to French colonial troops (NARA)

Leclerc’s truck-borne unit, augmented by some old armored cars and a couple of 75mm guns, kicked the Italian Sahariana di Cufra around the desert for two months and, upon victory, which was hugely symbolic to the Free French, Leclerc and his men (some 3/4ths were Africans from Chad), took the so-called “Koufra Oath,” promising not to lay down their arms until the Free French flag flew from the Strasbourg Cathedral.

Fast forward to 23 November 1944 and Leclerc, then general in charge of his own armored division of Sherman tanks and on his way to becoming a Marshal of France, liberated Strasbourg.

The Régiment de Marche du Tchad still exists in the modern French Army today, based in Meyenheim in Alsace, as a mechanized infantry unit of some 1,200 soldiers. 

Keeping that in mind, the odds of the French ever quitting Chad are somewhat lower than zero.