France’s Wars in Chad: Military Intervention and Decolonization in Africa

Examining the continuous French military interventions in Chad in the two decades after its independence, this study demonstrates how France’s successful counterinsurgency efforts to protect the regime of Francois Tombalbaye would ultimately weaken the Chadian state and encourage Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to intervene. In covering the subsequent French efforts to counter Libyan ambitions and the rise to power of Hissene Habre, one of postcolonial Africa’s most brutal dictators, Nathaniel K. Powell demonstrates that French strategies aiming to prevent the collapse of authoritarian regimes had the opposite effect, exacerbating violent conflicts and foreign interventions in Chad and further afield. Based on extensive archival research to trace the causes, course, and impact of French interventions in Chad, this study offers insights and lessons for current interveners - including France - fighting a ‘war on terrorism’ in the Sahel whose strategies and impact parallel those of France in the 1960s-1980s.