President of Chad, Idriss Deby has been announced dead. A statement by the army said he died from injuries sustained on the front lines.
Reports say Parliament has been dissolved after the president died of injuries sustained in clashes. Chad’s army is currently combatting rebel forces who have launched an assault on the capital Ndjamena
The death of the president came just a day after he won a sixth term in office.
Idriss Derby was a household name in the Chadian army for over three decades before he became the President. After finishing school, he entered the Officers’ School in N’Djamena. From there he was sent to France for training, returning to Chad in 1976 with a professional pilot certificate.
He remained loyal to the army and President Félix Malloum even after Chad’s central authority crumbled in 1979. He returned from France in February 1979 and found Chad had become a battleground for many armed groups.
Déby tied his fortunes to those of Hissène Habré, one of the chief Chadian warlords. A year after Habré became president in 1982, Déby was made commander-in-chief of the army. He distinguished himself in 1984 by destroying pro-Libyan forces in eastern Chad. In 1985, Habré sent him to Paris to follow a course at the École de Guerre; on his return in 1986, he was made chief military advisor to the presidency. In 1987, he confronted Libyan forces on the field, with the help of France in the so-called “Toyota War”, adopting tactics that inflicted heavy losses on enemy forces. During the war, he also led a raid on Maaten al-Sarra Air Base in Kufrah, in Libyan territory.
A rift emerged on 1 April 1989 between Habré and Déby over the increasing power of the Presidential Guard. According to Human Rights Watch, Habré was found responsible for “widespread political killings, systematic torture, and thousands of arbitrary arrests”, as well as ethnic purges when it was perceived that group leaders could pose a threat to his rule, including many of Déby’s Zaghawa ethnic group who supported the government.
Increasingly paranoid, Habré accused Déby, minister of the interior Mahamat Itno, and commander in chief of the Chadian army Hassan Djamous of preparing a coup d’état. Déby fled first to Darfur, then to Libya, where he was welcomed by Gaddafi in Tripoli.[12] Itno and Djamous were arrested and killed.
Since all three were ethnic Zaghawa, Habré started a targeted campaign against the group which saw hundreds seized, tortured and imprisoned. Dozens died in detention or were summarily executed.[15] In 2016, Habré was convicted of war crimes by a specially created international tribunal in Senegal.[16] Déby gave the Libyans detailed information about CIA operations in Chad. Gaddafi offered Déby military aid to seize power in Chad in exchange for Libyan prisoners of war.
Déby fled to Sudan in 1989 and formed the Patriotic Salvation Movement, an insurgent group, supported by Libya and Sudan,[citation needed] which started operations against Habré, and on 2 December 1990 Déby’s troops marched unopposed into N’Djaména in a successful coup, ousting Habré.
After three months of provisional government, on 28 February 1991, a charter was approved for Chad and Idriss Déby assumed Chad’s presidency in 1991. During the following two years, Déby faced a series of coup attempts as government forces clashed with pro-Habré rebel groups, such as the Movement for Democracy and Development (MDD). Deby has been re-elected every five years with 6th term in hand before his death.
The Chadian army have since been battling a rebel group, The Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), a political and military organisation created by SG Mahamat Mahdi Ali in March 2016 in Tanua, in the north of Chad.