Chad

Chad is a country at the crossroads of northern and central Africa. Chad is a landlocked country bordering Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon to the southwest, Nigeria to the southwest (by Lake Chad) and Niger to the west. Its population is 16 million, of which 1.6 million live in the capital and largest city of N'Djamena. Chad has several regions: the desert zone in the north, the arid Sahel belt in the center, and the more fertile zone of the Sudanese savannah in the south. Lake Chad, after which the country is named, is the second largest wetland in Africa. The official languages ​​of Chad are Arabic and French. More than 200 different ethnic and linguistic groups live here. Islam (51.8%) and Christianity (44.1%) are the main religions practiced in Chad. Starting from the 7th millennium BC, the human population in large numbers migrated to the Chad basin. Towards the end of the 1st millennium AD, a series of states and empires emerged and fell in the Sahelian belt of Chad, each focusing on control of the trans-Saharan trade routes that passed through the region. France conquered the territory by 1920 and incorporated it into French Equatorial Africa. In 1960, Chad gained independence under the leadership of François Tombalbai. Resentment over his policies in the Muslim north erupted in a protracted civil war in 1965. In 1979, rebels took over the capital and ended the hegemony of the South. The rebel commanders then fought among themselves until Hissen Habré defeated his rivals. The Chad-Libyan conflict erupted in 1978 with the Libyan invasion, which ended in 1987 with a French military intervention (Operation Épervier). Hissen Habré, in turn, was overthrown in 1990 by his general Idriss Debi. In 1991, with the support of France, the modernization of the National Army of Chad began. Since 2003, the crisis in Darfur in Sudan has spilled over the border and destabilized the country. Already poor, the nation and people have struggled to accept the hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees who live in and around camps in eastern Chad. While many political parties participated in the Chadian legislature, the National Assembly, power was firmly in the hands of the Patriotic Salvation Movement during the presidency of Idriss Debi, whose rule was described as authoritarian. After the FACT rebels assassinated President Deby in April 2021, the Transitional Military Council, led by his son Mahamat Deby, took over the government and dissolved the Assembly. Chad continues to suffer from political violence and repeated coup attempts. It is the least developed country and one of the lowest in the Human Development Index. Chad is one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world; most of its inhabitants live in poverty as shepherds and farmers. Since 2003, crude oil has become the country's main source of export earnings, displacing the traditional cotton industry. Chad has a poor human rights record, with frequent violations such as arbitrary imprisonment, extrajudicial executions and restrictions on civil liberties by both security forces and armed groups.