Chad breaks off military cooperation with France

Barrot's visit to Chad was originally intended solely to visit and inspect the Sudanese refugee camps in the Chadian territory of Adré, which is constantly receiving refugees fleeing the civil war raging in Sudan. The French minister is said to have promised additional aid of 7 million euros to the Chadian government to cope with the flood of refugees.

Chad's break with France is not a priori a head-on clash between the two countries. In fact, Minister Koulamallah stressed that this process of separation has nothing to do with the one that took place successively between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger with France, in which the local governments gave French troops an ultimatum to evacuate their barracks. In the case of Chad, according to the Chadian minister, ‘we are committed to respecting all the clauses of the agreement included in the rupture section, including, of course, those relating to the notice period for their evacuation’. 


France had repeatedly defined Chad as an essential link in its military presence in Africa, an important anchorage point, which was already France's last in the Sahel strip after the expulsion of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, and comes just days after the new president of Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, urged Paris to abandon the military bases it still has in the country, citing reasons of national sovereignty.

Indeed, the sovereignty argument is the common denominator used by all the aforementioned countries that have distanced themselves from France. However, the language used by some of them has been of varying degrees of hostility. In the case of Chad, the communiqué explains that ‘the decision [to break the military agreements] was taken after a thorough analysis, which concluded that sixty-six years after the proclamation of independence of the Republic of Chad, the time had come for the country to reaffirm its full sovereignty, and thus to redefine its strategic alliances in accordance with its national interests’. On the other hand, the head of Chadian diplomacy indicated that, in agreement with his French counterpart, bilateral relations would be strengthened at all levels.

The current President of Chad, Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, does not forget that it was French troops who helped his father, Idriss Deby, to repel the rebel forces in their offensives in 2008 and 2019. Despite that help, the president was killed at the front and a military junta took power, leading to three years of transition, which ended last May with the junta-sponsored election of Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno.