Idriss Deby
The name Idris conjures up visions of a tall, dashing Englishman. Unless you’re from Chad, where the mere mention of the name is enough to make you shudder as it belongs to iron-fisted leader since 1990, Idriss Deby.
At least that was the case until last week. On 19 April 2021, Deby died from injuries sustained on a visit to frontline troops who were battling rebels in the north.
To help make some sense of all this, it may be useful to have a look back at his life and times.
A Place: Chad
Chad gained independence from France in 1960. However, in true democratic style there hasn’t been a change to the Presidency through an election since then. Succession seems to be achieved by political “capture the flag”: the incumbent is killed and the successor tries to hold power for as long as he (it’s always HE) can.
Chad has a whole lot of neighbours. Image courtesy of The Financial Times
A Star is Born
Debz was born on 18 June 1952 in a village in northern Chad — essentially the armpit of the country. His father was part of the Zaghawa community, a Muslim ethnic group of camel and sheep farmers. All of this meant that Debz was certainly not on the fast road to wealth, health and power early on in life.
And, given that civil disobedience in the form of armed rebellion and attempted coups wasn’t exactly rare in Chad, it’s not surprising that Debz chose soldiering as a career.
As it turned out, he was pretty good at it. Debz entered the army in the 1970s, while Chad was engaged in civil war. After training in France, he returned to the country in 1978 and backed Hissène Habré, a rogue warlord, who would go on to become President.
A younger, unpolished Hissene Habre. Image courtesy of Celeste Hicks / The Trial of Hissene Habre
In 1983, just a year after Habré became President, Debz was named Commander-in-Chief of the army. He would later ascend to Chief Military Advisor. Pretty big deal.
A Coup Unfolds
Given the circumstances of Chad, it wasn’t long before Habré began to suspect that Debz was plotting to overthrow him. Which, look…wasn’t totally untrue but it was wrong of Habre to just assume.
The real tea, though, is that a rift had begun forming between the two because of the increasing power of the Presidential Guard. The Presidential Guard was a specialised unit of the meanest, toughest army bros whose only job was to guarantee the President’s safety — a fairly difficult job in a place like Chad.
The Presidential Guard came to be dominated by soldiers from Habré’s tribe: the Daza. This, coupled with the privileges these dudes were afforded like shiny new guns and state of the art vehicles, probably rubbed Debz the wrong way.
At the same time, Habre was responsible for widespread political killings, systematic torture, arbitrary arrests and ethnic purges including of the Zaghawa. Incidentally, in 2016, Habre was sentenced to life for human rights violations, including sexual slavery and executing 40,000 people.
Hissène Habré, leaving a Dakar courthouse in 2015. Image courtesy of Seyllou/Agence France-Presse.
Not exactly pleased with the massacre of his people, Debz led an already fomenting revolution, providing it what it needed: organisation, cohesion, direction, swag.
Debz whipped this ragtag squad of disorganized civilian soldiers into an efficient fighting force armed to the teeth to beat the living daylights out of Habre and his minions. And after making light work of the Presidential Guard, Debz ascended to the presidency.
A Dictator is made
As President, Debz packed his government and armed forces with members of his Zaghawa clan. This is pretty standard dictator practice, to be honest, but a bit questionable when your tribe represents just over 1% of the population.
And just like seeing someone wearing a multi-coloured scarf over a suit jacket on a blazing summer day, it wouldn’t take a genius to observe that something was wrong here.
As he grew more comfortable in the new role, Debz’s megalomania grew too. It became common for him to perform unnecessarily vain antics like shutting down public roads when driving through town. This, of course, wasn’t exactly the sort of behaviour that endeared him to the public.
Idriss Deby in 1984. Image courtesy of Japan Times.
And yet, that frustration was never reflected in the polls. Debz won every presidential race he ran in, often with as much as 88% of the vote.
But these totally real numbers from these totally free and fair elections didn’t reflect the views of all Chadeans. Indeed, during his reign, Debz survived more assasination attempts than there are Fast and Furious movies.
When many men wish death upon you, you have two options: write a song about it or refuse to back down. Being the G that he was, Debz preferred the latter. After one close shave with death, Debz appeared in public, dressed in his military fatigues. This was a clear but subtle reminder that he was still a legendary army man and would unapologetically lay the smack on anyone who even sniffed at him the wrong way.
And this didn’t just go for his countrymen.
Debz was as generous at dishing out vitriol to anyone he didn’t agree with as a multimillionaire talk show host at Christmas. His foreign policy, if you could call it that, was characterised by a series of quarrels with other countries and their politicians, particularly frenemy and (until fairly recently) fellow tyrant, Omar Al Bashir.
A Mess
Our boy’s personal life was equally chaotic. Having been married several times, Debz fathered 12 kids…that we know of. In fact, Debz was involved in so many marriage ceremonies that he reportedly didn’t even bother showing up for some of them.
Not like this mattered. His most recent and youngest bride, Hinda, claimed to have always had a crush on Debz, despite being “friendly” with his son who was a college classmate (what in the Lori Harvey?!).
Idriss and Hinda Deby. Hinda was the President’s 13th wife. We think. Image courtesy of Business Insider
By most accounts, though, this seemed to be a marriage of convenience. Debz certainly stood to gain political clout by receiving support from Hinda’s minority Arab tribe. Not to mention that everyone knows that the cure for a mid-life crisis (as Debz was suffering) is a new car or a new wife. Or both, in Debz’s case.
Also, Debz’s brother was married to Hinda’s aunt which technically meant they were related but we won’t go down that rabbit hole. What does seem apparent, is that the marriage could also have been an early building block of a family dynasty. This conspiracy was fuelled by Hinda’s appointment as a cabinet Minister soon after the wedding.
Meanwhile, Debz’s son, Brahim, was rumoured to be next in line to succeed the big man. This dude was a complete tool who reportedly humiliated ministers by slapping them in public.
This mentality may or may not have contributed to his murder in France in 2007. His killers allegedly forced him to inhale the white powdery from a fire extinguisher before discarding his dead body in a parking garage.
“Shall we get croissants after this?” French police at the murder scene of Brahim Deby, wondering what in the heck just happened. Image courtesy of RFI.
To add to an already complex family dynamic, Debz’s nephews, Tom and Timan Erdimi, who were once part of his inner circle defected and formed a rebel movement. They joined a clique of disgruntled youthies and this unholy alliance later orchestrated a (failed) coup.
A Question: But How?
With enemies both inside and outside his family, you may be wondering how exactly Debz held onto power for so long. Well the simple answers might be: oil and geography.
First, oil.
When Chad discovered oil in the early 2000s, it cut a deal with the World Bank. The government promised to use the revenues to reduce poverty and to build a pipeline in exchange for the institution’s assistance. Noble indeed.
Debz opens part of the pipeline linking Chad to Cameroon’s Atlantic coast in 2003. Image courtesy of AFP.
But we know that with great oil comes even greater corruption.
No real surprise, then, that 5 years later, Chad reneged on the deal and diverted most of its oil revenues towards funding its army. Given Debz’s penchant for international squabbles, this was kind of understandable.
Strangely though, all this investment wasn’t enough to stop armed rebels from storming the capital in another attempted coup shortly afterwards.
Whatever money was left over after buying sniper rifles, night vision goggles and water-proof gumboots was used for the high priority task of rewarding cronies. After all, Lamborghinis weren’t going to drive themselves.
Debz’s government was so good at being corrupt that in 2006, Chad won Forbes magazine’s much envied accolade: The World’s Most Corrupt Nation.
Ironically, Debz launched a nationwide anti-corruption campaign in 2012. The program unearthed almost $50 million in embezzled funds. Not much was done to punish the culprits, but I suppose it was good to know where all that money was going. Receipts, you see.
The second reason Debz retained power for so long was location, location, location. To fully understand why, we need to appreciate who Chad’s neighbours are: Sudan, Libya, the Central African Republic, Nigeria and Niger. Not exactly the suburbs.
Because of the history of violent conflict in this area, Western powers need a stable base from which to carry out their anti-terrorist operations. Chad provides this.
As a result, “the international community” has largely turned a blind eye to reports of human rights abuses, corruption and general misgovernance for fear of destabilising the cownthry. And also because who cares about poor black and brown people when oil and geopolitics are at stake?
Ironically, if the official government line is to be believed, this special arrangement is precisely what led to Debz’s death.
Debz and French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee presidential palace in 2019. Macron hailed Debz as a “courageous friend”, which is extremely sketchy, all things considered. Image courtesy of AFP.
A Strange Death
In February 2021, Débz announced that Chad would send 1,200 soldiers to battle al-Qaeda linked groups on the border between Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso alongside French troops.
In the same month, security forces tried to arrest opposition leader Yaya Dillo Djérou, ahead of the April elections. Djérou claimed that the army goons killed 5 members of his family in the process. The government denied this, clarifying that they’d only killed 3 people. Which really helps..
Anyway, Debz won the election (as usual) with just over 79% of the vote. Instead of celebrating the victory, Débz visited his soldiers on the frontlines. While this seems weird, it’s actually not unusual for Heads of State to visit troops. And considering that Debz was a military dude through and through, it’s not all that surprising that gunshots and explosions were how he chose to celebrate a sixth term in office.
What is surprising, though, is how close he was able to get to the actual gunfights. Too close, apparently.
On Sunday 18 April 2021, Debz was reported to have been mortally wounded. He was promptly airlifted to the capital, where he succumbed to his injuries and died on 20 April 2021.
Once again, this is the official government line. Take it with as much salt as you see fit. And certainly, the swift and slick announcement that the Presidency will pass to Debz’s son, a 4 star army general, does raise eyebrows.
Idriss Déby’s son, Mahamat, ( known as ‘Kaka’ — no confusion with the football player) is likely to take over from him. Image courtesy of Associated Press.
A Lesson
Now that he’s gone, it would be fairly easy to conclude that Debz was an utterly brutal and ruthless super-soldier who stone-cold bulldozed everything in his path and maintained a tyrannical ice-grip on power thanks to agents who snapped necks for him in dark corners across the country and who finally got what was coming to him.
And sure, that would be true.
But it’s important to remember that he also did a few good things.
He advocated for progressive environmental policies. He promised to introduce presidential term limits (didn’t follow through on it, but at least he promised).
He legalized political parties in 1992 (he was kind of the reason they were illegal in the first place but that’s neither here nor there). He also entered into agreements with the IMF to carry out economic reforms — and we know that’s ALWAYS a good thing (wink).
If there’s a moral to the story, its probably that if you live by the bullet, you’ll likely die by it too. Oh, and if you’re a politician, don’t got chasing battles, stick to the election rigging and corruption you’re used to.
Sources
President Idriss Déby of Chad killed on visit to front line
Chad’s president Déby killed ‘on the frontline’
Africa | Chad leader’s son killed in Paris
Chadian president’s son found dead near Paris apartment
Chad’s Ex-President, Sentenced to Life, Given Temporary Reprieve From Prison (Published 2020)
