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Chad: Taking the lead in the war on Boko Haram

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By David Bruckmeier: 

Idriss Deby, President of Chad. Photo: Rama
Chad’s President Idriss Déby. Photo: Rama 2010

Chad has emerged as a key player in the war against Islamist group Boko Haram. The liberation of the Nigerian town of Gamboru by Chadian troops on February 3 is the latest example of the Central African country’s increasing assertiveness in regional security matters. Beyond fears of a spillover of the violence to his own country, President Idriss Déby is seeking to establish Chad as a regional force and bolster his own power by making himself an indispensable partner in the fight against terrorism.

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The ground offensive in Gamboru, in which over 200 Boko Haram fighters were reportedly killed, followed several days of air raids against the militants and is the latest in a string of successful strikes by Chad against the Islamist group. As Boko Haram has stepped up its attacks in recent weeks, so Chad has stepped up its military presence in neighbouring countries: Chadian troops now operate in Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria. On 29 January, Chadian forces drove the Islamists out of the Nigerian town of Malum Fatori after attacking their positions from across the border in Niger. In mid-January, Chad deployed its military to Cameroon to assist its neighbour in fending off Boko Haram’s incursion into its territory and recapture Baga, the Nigerian border town ravaged in a massacre earlier that month.

It is unclear whether Nigeria had been consulted before Chad’s advances into its territory. Statements by Nigeria’s defence spokesman following reports of Chad’s recapture of Baga suggest that the Nigerian government was caught off guard. The very fact that Nigerian officials had to point out that Chad’s interventions did not constitute a violation of Nigeria’s sovereignty speaks of the unease many in the country feel with Chad’s growing influence. Although Nigeria was quick to emphasise the two countries’ close cooperation in the fight against the Islamist group, Chad’s unilateralism puts Nigeria in an awkward position, as it lays bare the weakness of the African behemoth’s own response to Boko Haram and its partners’ lack of confidence in its ability to solve the conflict.

Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has been accused of underestimating the threat posed by Boko Haram, allowing a localised rebellion to develop into an insurgency that threatens to destabilise the entire Lake Chad region. When nearly 300 girls were abducted from a school in Nigeria’s Borno State in April 2014, it took the government nearly three weeks to acknowledge that the kidnapping was not a conspiracy fabricated by political rivals. In early January, Chad temporarily pulled its forces from the regional military coalition against Boko Haram, in part over frustrations with its partners’ lack of action. It has since pledged troops to a new multinational joint task force (MJTF) backed by the African Union, but has not wasted any time waiting for it to become operational.

Chad’s President Idriss Déby is increasingly nervous that the conflict, which has claimed over 13,000 lives in north-eastern Nigeria and recently spread into northern Cameroon, may spill over into Chad. Its capital N’Djamena sits right at the border with both countries. Chad is already feeling the heat from the developments in its neighbourhood: thousands of Nigerian and Cameroonian refugees have fled to Chad in the wake of the recent attacks, and in a video message released on 20 January, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau explicitly threatened attacks on Nigeria’s neighbours. Many of Boko Haram’s fighters are ethnic Kanuri from Chad. With the greatest threats to Déby’s power traditionally having come from foreign-backed Chadian rebels, he is keen to keep them at a distance. It is understood that he supported the Séléka rebels that ousted François Bozizé, then president of the Central African Republic (CAR), in 2013. Many of the Séléka rebels were former Chadian and Sudanese fighters involved in the failed 2006 and 2008 rebellions, and Déby may have been supporting them in CAR in an attempt to move them away from the Chad-CAR border region where they had fled after the rebellions.

Moreover, the Lake Chad Basin holds significant, largely untapped oil reserves. Chad’s oil production has surged in recent years, and the country hopes to double output by 2016. If Boko Haram makes inroads in Chad, these ambitions, and Déby’s presidency, could be put in danger. Oil revenues have helped build one of Africa’s most potent militaries, crucial to the staying in power of one of Africa’s longest-serving rulers whom some regard as a dictator.

Déby himself rose to the presidency with French assistance in a coup in 1990 and has survived several Sudanese-backed attempts to overthrow him. By promoting his country as an anchor of stability in a region mired in conflict and taking the lead in the war on Islamist terror, he hopes to secure regional and international support and legitimise his ambitions of staying in office beyond the end of his term in 2016. As so often, then, the issue comes down to a trade-off between stability and democracy.

His strategy seems to be bearing fruit: in an earlier display of its military muscle, Chad’s army contributed substantially to France’s 2013 Operation Serval against Islamist rebels in northern Mali, earning it much praise for its efficiency and professionalism. In return, France provides Chad with military assistance and has chosen N’Djamena as the headquarters of Operation Barkhane, its permanent counter-terrorism operation in the Sahel region. France has come to Déby’s aid before. With the Sahel shifting back into the focus of French Africa policy and Chad’s resolute engagement in the war against Islamist terrorism, France has a strong interest in keeping its closest ally in the region in power. Likewise, Chad’s neighbours may grind their teeth at its unilateralist leanings, but its military strength makes them dependent on it for their security.

Chad’s recent interventions against Boko Haram mark a breakthrough in the fight against Boko Haram. Although arguably motivated more by President Déby’s survival instinct than solidarity with its neighbours, Chad’s determined military action has substantially weakened the militants. However, it is clear that a long-term solution to the conflict is only possible if its underlying causes are addressed – the disenfranchisement of the Nigerian electorate from the country’s elites, particularly in the underdeveloped northeast, massive regional inequalities, as well as religious and ethnic divisions. These are all issues that only Nigeria itself can tackle.

Crucially, though, Chad’s action is putting pressure on neighbouring countries to follow suit and may serve as a wake-up call to Nigerian voters and politicians ahead of the presidential elections on February 14. For Chad itself, its new role will likely have the opposite effect. As Déby’s power grows, so shrink the prospects for a peaceful transition of his country to democracy and a fairer distribution of oil revenues in the near future.

David Bruckmeier is an MA Student in International Relations at King’s College London. He is particularly interested in African affairs.

Following France: a new formula for military intervention

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By Jackson Webster:

French soldiers in Bamako, Mali. September 2013. Photo: MINUSMA: Marco Dormino (creative commons)
French soldiers in Bamako, Mali, in September 2013. Photo: MINUSMA: Marco Dormino (creative commons)

Since the end of the Cold War, American and European military forces have struggled to find a new purpose. Today’s military policy choices are driven by two conflicting philosophies.

The first is continued concentration on the maintenance of large conventional forces by NATO powers. Accompanying this maintenance of hard power capability is its frequent application since the mid-1990s in long-term military commitments to unconventional conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. Interventions of arguably limited success from Lebanon to Afghanistan, Iraq to Somalia are the most publicised and perhaps most controversial feature of many NATO member states’ foreign policies.

The second, more populist realm of thought is one of reluctance. Western voters, and consequentially the politicians which cater to them, speak vehemently against expensive wars on foreign soil. The Bush and Blair administrations were defined largely by their overseas entanglements, not by their domestic or diplomatic policies. If the West is to reconcile its competing paradigms concerning interventions and military action, it must look to a place that military thinkers rarely consider: France.

Over the past decade, Paris has slowly reasserted itself, primarily in Northern Africa and the Sahel, through a number of relatively quiet and relatively successful military interventions. French military capacity is often ignored in popular discourse; Paris’ capabilities include one of the world’s most modern naval and air forces and an average overseas deployment of 30,000 troops at any given time. France’s continued military presence in a number of outlying former colonial states affords Paris power-projection capabilities far beyond ‘France-Métropole’.

The causes of recent French military ventures have differed greatly from case to case, but they share three essential characteristics. Firstly, Paris generally pursues actions which receive global diplomatic approval. Both the Libyan and Malian interventions were sanctioned by UN resolutions and France achieved diplomatic consent for action from regional powers: the Arab League in the case of Libya and Nigeria, Chad, and Niger in the case of Mali. By exercising this kind of restraint, Paris is able to add political legitimacy to its applications of hard power in a way that American-style unilateral military deployments have not.

Secondly, the interventions themselves have been carried out by small numbers of elite forces with specific, tactical goals. French forces conduct combat operations with little pomp and circumstance. The press was initially not allowed to follow French special forces into the tribal Toureg regions of Mali and was only allowed to cover in earnest the insertion and departure of French forces in Bamako. Furthermore, French troops are generally not sent abroad for nation-building purposes. Paris gives its forces tactical objectives and withdraws once security is achieved.

Thirdly, and most importantly, Paris has only sought intervention when a viable power structure exists to take over once the presence of French troops has stabilised the situation. Due to the previously discussed sparse press coverage, France’s interventions are typically less concerned with performing a political stunt and instead focus on the limited goal of stability and security. This is most clearly exemplified by the choice to intervene in Chad in 1983-84, not on the basis of humanitarianism, but with the goal of ending violence and stabilising the local security situation. François Mitterand’s intervention in Chad saw a rapid deployment of 3500 French troops to draw a ‘line in the sand’ at the 16th parallel across which neither Libyan nor Chadian forces would be allowed to perform military operations.

The crucial aspect of Paris’ military adventures has been the viability of an exit strategy. American interventions in Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq predated a clear understanding of strategies of limited warfare. In these examples, conventional forces were deployed with no ultimate vision for the operation beyond an initial conventional victory. This resulted in the all-too-familiar American exit strategy of first declaring victory, then unceremoniously ending the intervention, such as Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ blunder in Iraq.

With each case for post-colonial France, Paris has allowed for a locally-driven exit strategy. In Chad, the French ‘line in the sand’ created a de facto ceasefire line and quickly ended the conflict, preserving the sovereignty and stability of both states involved. In Mali, French troops are being replaced by ECOWAS forces and the Malian government in Bamako has successfully remained in power.

The French formula of low profile, low-troop commitments, exit-viable interventions should be the future of Western conventional military operations. These recent examples are especially appropriate to examine as the Syrian Civil War enters its fourth bloody year, and as the coalition attacks on ISIS have proved insufficient thus far. When the choice to avoid ground intervention in Syria is eventually examined by the academics of the future, the analysts will have to ask themselves what kind of forces would have been appropriate and if a viable exit strategy was ever possible. Many criticise the very institution of military intervention, but if Western military forces are to be worth the significant resources required to sustain them, policy-makers will have to assess how best to apply their tools at hand to assure stability in the international order.

Jackson Webster is a student of International Relations at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.