Chadian Civil War (1965–79)

Chadian Civil War (1965–1979)
Date 1 November 1965 – 15 April 1979 (13 years, 5 months and 2 weeks) Location Chad Result Overthrow of François Tombalbaye in Chadian coup of 1975.
Belligerents
FROLINAT GUNT Libya	Chad  France
Commanders and leaders
Ibrahim Abatcha † Hissène Habré Goukouni Oueddei Muammar al-Gaddafi	François Tombalbaye †
Casualties and losses
3,450 Chadians, 50 French

The First Chadian Civil War started in 1965 and ended in 1979, with riots and insurgency against Chadian president François Tombalbaye's rule, known for its authoritarianism and distrust of democracy.

By January 1962, Tombalbaye had banned all political parties except his own Chadian Progressive Party (PPT), and started immediately concentrating all power in his own hands. His treatment of opponents, real or imagined, was extremely harsh, filling the prisons with thousands of political prisoners. What was even worse was his constant discrimination against the central and northern regions of Chad, where the southern Chadian administrators came to be perceived as arrogant and incompetent. It cost Chad 3,450 Chadians and 50 French.

This resentment at last exploded in a tax revolt on November 1, 1965, in the Guéra Prefecture, causing 500 deaths. The year after saw the birth in Sudan of the National Liberation Front of Chad (FROLINAT), created to militarily oust Tombalbaye and the Southern dominance. It was the start of a bloody civil war. Tombalbaye then, to try and pacify the people, granted limited autonomy to northern Muslim leaders and released several political prisoners. These changes only added more leaders and rebels to the growing movement.

Tombalbaye resorted to calling in French troops; while moderately successful, they were not fully able to quell the insurgency. Proving more fortunate was his choice to break with the French and seek friendly ties with Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, taking away the rebels' principal source of supplies.

But while he had reported some success against the rebels, Tombalbaye started behaving more and more irrationally and brutally, continuously eroding his consensus among the southern elites, which dominated all key positions in the army, the civil service and the ruling party. As a consequence on April 13, 1975, several units of N'Djamena's gendarmerie killed Tombalbaye during a coup.

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