This article was written by Mukhtar Usman Janguza: A London based Africa and Middle East public affairs, security, social and economic commentator. He blogs at janguzaarewa.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter @JanguzaArewa
The Lesson of History and the Influence of Geography
(Chadian soldiers gathered near the
Nigerian town of Gamboru after retaking the town, 1 February 2015. AFP)
On Thursday morning, January the 29th, news percolated
through social media that Chadian forces, with the tacit consent of the
Nigerian government, had crossed the international frontier and recaptured
Malam Fatori – a north-eastern Nigerian town that had been
captured by Boko Haram in October last year. This was a watershed moment. For
the first time in Nigeria’s 54 years as an independent country, foreign troops
are conducting major military operations inside the country. Similarly, with
Chad’s intervention, the war against Boko Haram has entered a new phase, and
possibly presages a wider
regional intervention – the balance sheet of which can only be
properly assessed in the fullness of time.
So why did Idriss Deby send Chadian troops into Nigeria? How are we to
make sense of this bold gambit?
N’Djamena’s
Paramount Ruler: The Enduring Quest for Security
The desire for security is said
to be the primary driver of state behaviour in
international politics. For autocratic states, like Chad, this drive is often subsumed
under the all-consuming quest for regime security. Threats to political
stability in dictatorships often produce a clarity of action that is lacking in
other spheres of governance. Thus the deteriorating security environment around
the Lake Chad area, and the long-term threat this poses to the Deby regime’s
stability and survival, is probably the most salient and perhaps the main
trigger for Chad’s intervention.
The Lesson of History
(Chadian troops on patrol after beating
back a rebel assault on N’Djamena in three days of brutal fighting. In the
background, the smouldering ruins of the central market; a silent testament to
the perils of insecurity confronting Chad’s rulers. (Benedicte
Kurzen/New York Times)
The abode of rest (English translation of N’Djamena) has historically been anything but for Chad’s paramount rulers. The
immense challenges of “broadcasting
state power” to the periphery and achieving internal primacy
over a country that is vast, “desperately
poor and locked in perpetual strife” has often concentrated
their efforts – and in many cases consumed them. Francois Tombalbaye, the first
President was killed in a coup d'état in April 1975; after close to a
decade-and-a-half of one-man rule, punctuated by rebellions and the onset of
what became a 14
year Civil War. Jérémie Ngansop, a Cameroonian journalist, famously
gave this gripping
account of his demise:
Tombalbaye … died weapon in hand. He had, in effect, fought to the
last cartridge against his attackers, aided by only a few faithful members of
his praetorian guard. Everyone had let him down.
Whilst Tombalbaye’s successors have so far been spared his grisly end,
none have however so far left power under auspicious circumstances. They were
either forced out in a coup, or resigned under the pressure of events.
Idriss Deby himself, the current incumbent and Chad’s longest lasting
President so far, ascended power in December 1990 on the crest of a rebellion
against his predecessor. And in his two-and-a-half decades in power, he has
faced his fair share of unrests and revolts. In the last decade alone Deby has
survived a coup plot in March 2006, and the attempts of Sudan-backed rebels to unseat him by storming the
capital in April 2006 and February 2008 – the second attempt precipitating French military
intervention to beat back the rebel offensive.
This violent past forms the historical backdrop and “lifeworld” that shapes Deby’s political outlook. But this
doesn’t tell us much about why Chad’s political leadership decided to move decisively against Boko
Haram. For that, we must turn our gaze to geography.
The Influence of Geography
Boko Haram’s unwavering determination to carve out a transnational
Shari’ah governed state in the region, its expanding reach, and Nigeria’s
floundering efforts to contain the spill over from this growing regional threat
has obviously unnerved Nigeria’s neighbours – none more so than Chad.
One look at a map of the Lake Chad region and some geographical realities
quickly foreground themselves. N’Djamena is much closer to Nigeria’s Borno
state, the locus of Boko Haram’s insurgency, than Nigeria’s own capital, Abuja.
N’Djamena is about 200 miles away, as opposed to Abuja which is just under
three times that distance. In fact, of the four countries abutting Lake Chad
(Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria), Chad’s capital is the closest to the
insurgency’s epicentre. The same is true for Maiduguri, the capital of Borno,
and the Mandara mountain range, often referred to as Boko
Haram’s stronghold.
Unlike Abuja, which only serves as Nigeria’s seat of political power,
N’Djamena is also Chad’s major economic and commercial nerve-centre. With a
limited road network – much of it unusable during the rainy season – and no
railways to stitch such a massive country land-locked into a unified economic
space, parts of Chad are often more culturally and economically linked to
neighbouring countries than they are to other parts of the country. Thus the
capital city and its surrounding region are oriented towards Nigeria and
Cameroon due to Chad’s reliance on those two countries for its access to the
Atlantic Ocean. This dependence on Nigeria and Cameroon for Chad’s vital access
to the ocean, and Nigeria’s economic weight in the region, has made the two
countries Chad’s “main
commercial partners”. Consequently, Boko Haram’s growing insurgency
and the group’s plundering of trade routes in Nigeria and Cameroon has badly
affected Chad’s commerce.
An added factor in trying to understand the gravity of the threat posed
by Boko Haram to Chad is the proximity of the group’s growing operational reach
to the $4 billion Chad-Cameroon
pipeline project which ships oil from Chad’s Doba basin in the south
of the country to the port of Kribi on Cameroon’s Atlantic coast. Whilst the
Doba basin oil fields and much of the pipeline infrastructure are closer to
Chad and Cameroon’s eastern borders with the Central African Republic (CAR)
than they are to their western borders with Nigeria; if left to grow unchecked,
it is not implausible the Boko Haram could eventually set its sights on such a
strategically vital infrastructure to Chad’s economic security.
Yet another added layer are the dangers of an “arc of
instability” linking Nigeria’s restive north-east to the two Sudan via Cameroon and
CAR – all troubled neighbours of Chad – through which insurgents, jihadists and
weapons can move at will igniting, supporting, and reinforcing rebellions
across the Sahel, West Africa and Central Africa. A nightmarish vision for any
political leadership; especially one for whom the perils of insecurity are a
near-permanent presence. The “Islamic State” group’s incipient polity in the
Levant – Boko Haram’s ideological and operational model – is a searing reminder
of the capacity of determined insurgents to break open and reorder fragile
state systems, much like the one in which Chad is nested.
These are perilous geographical realities which to my mind Idriss Deby
could not ignore. For a country with an enduring history of rebellions and
instability – often stoked and inflamed by external troubles – it is rational
that the “perfect Machiavellian
Prince”, as he has been described, has perhaps decided
that it’s better to fight abroad than wait for the conflagration to reach home.
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