Desert Upheaval

Time to flee in a canoe

After two years of spasmodic fighting, the climax to Chad's civil war came last week with surprising speed. Some 2,000 shock troops loyal to former Defense Minister Hissene Habre, 39, advanced from north and east on the dusty capital of N'Djamena. When the rebels appeared, the armies of President Goukouni Oueddei beat a confused retreat. Stranded, with only a few loyal soldiers left, Goukouni fled ignominiously into exile by boarding a canoe to cross the Chari River into Cameroon. By sundown, the three-year reign of Goukouni was over and Habre, who received support from Egypt and Sudan, was ensconced in the presidential palace.

Habre's victory was assured when Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi snubbed Goukouni's last-ditch plea for assistance. In 1980 Gaddafi dispatched 4,000 troops to N'Djamena to salvage Goukouni's regime. One year later, Goukouni asked Gaddafi to withdraw his forces in favor of a three-nation peacekeeping contingent sent by the Organization of African Unity. Gaddafi assented, apparently because he will begin a one-year stint as chairman of the O.A.U. in August and did not wish to give his peers any pretext to boycott his anointment.

For his part, Habre faces the daunting task of trying to reconcile ten private armies in a beleaguered nation of 4.6 million known for ethnic chaos. Since gaining independence from France in 1960, Chad has been racked by violent rivalry between nomadic Muslims in the north and Christians and animists in the south. Even as Habre, like Goukouni a Muslim northerner, tried to consolidate his regime last week, there were ominous rumblings from southern tribesmen threatening to secede. -

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