One for Gaddafi

By William E. Smith

The U.S. and France fail to stop a Libyan advance

Rising as suddenly as a Sahara sandstorm, the little war in the Central African nation of Chad turned increasingly ominous and ugly last week. With the help of intensive Libyan bombing raids, rebel forces seized the northern town of Faya-Largeau (pop. 7,000). In the process, they reduced much of the mud-and-brick oasis to rubble. As many as one-third of the Chadian government's 3,000 soldiers were reported to be dead, wounded or captured, and hundreds more were stranded in the north. Others, retreating before what the government called "murderous nonstop" Libyan air strikes, proceeded to set up a new defense line some 200 miles to the south.

In an effort to check Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi's expansionist aims, President Reagan had dispatched $25 million worth of military aid, two AWACS electronic surveillance planes, eight F-15 fighter escorts and a reconnaissance plane to the area. After some hesitation, French PresidentFranc,ois Mitterrand agreed last week to send 300 elite paratroopers as "trainers" and "advisers." But given the size of the Libyan commitment, which included 2,500 ground troops and impressive airpower, the limited U.S. and French assistance failed to turn the tide. In a press conference after the fall of Faya-Largeau, Reagan indicated that the Administration would not be sending further help for the time being. He noted that the U.S. could not play the role of "world policeman," and urged France to take the lead in Chad. "It is not our primary sphere of influence," the President said. "It is that of France."

Chadian President Hissene Habre, too, looked to France for aid, particularly air support to offset the dominance of Libyan aircraft over northern Chad. Said Information Minister Soumalia Mahamat: "French airpower is indispensable against Libyan airpower." He also appealed for the use of French combat forces. "If French troops are here merely as instructors," he argued, "it doesn't matter whether there are 1,000 or 100,000."

Many government soldiers who escaped the final assault of the Libyan and rebel forces on Faya-Largeau were fleeing across the desert toward the eastern town of Abeche and the capital city of N'Djamena, 400 miles to the southwest. Evidence of the scale and intensity of the Libyan air raids could be seen in N'Djamena's public hospital, to which some 140 soldiers had been brought. They had been flown out of Faya-Largeau at night when government forces could still use the town's unpaved airstrip. Evacuation of the injured ended abruptly when Libyan bombing raids put the airstrip out of action. After that, the wounded died amid the ruins of the town that, in the seesaw fighting for control of the north, they had actually recaptured from their enemies only ten days earlier.

A French physician at the hospital in N'Djamena, Dr. Jancovi Roue, said that only the wounded who appeared to have a good chance of surviving had been brought in. Said he: "The rest lie in the sun, often without water, and die. I have not seen a single stomach wound here because unless a man with such a wound is treated within twelve hours, he dies. There are virtually no medical facilities in the north, and even a relatively minor wound can become serious very quickly."

Dr. Roue pointed to a man whose body was swathed in white gauze bandages. "He is blind," the doctor said. "His eyeballs were burned out by phosphorus. He has nearly 300 other phosphorus burns on his body, but he will live." The patient, Alifa Ahmed, was the only victim of the Libyan phosphorus bombing to have been brought back from Faya-Largeau, but many other civilians and soldiers are believed to have died there of phosphorus burns. Ahmed himself was unable to describe his experience because he could not speak. In another ward, Moussa Mohammed, 22, spoke stoically of the rocket wound that had cost him his right leg. Said he: "In my tribe you are taught to endure life. We have known little else but war, and we fight because we have to fight."

Moussa's words go a long way toward explaining the continuing plight of his country, one of the poorest on earth (per capita income: $60 a year). Though it is almost twice the size of Texas, Chad has only 4.6 million people, roughly divided between the black Christians and animists of the south and the Muslims of the north. Even in colonial times, the French thought of the area as comprising two separate entities: the "Useful Chad" of the south, where enough rain fell on the savanna to support the growing of cotton and wheat, and the "Useless Chad" of the north, the Beau Geste country of sand dunes and desert outposts. Soon after Chad's independence from France in 1960, civil war broke out between the black southerners and Muslim northerners. The fighting has continued ever since, with only an occasional respite. But since 1979 the contest has been between two northern Muslim warlords, Goukouni Oueddei and Habre. Neither has ever been elected to national office; indeed, there have been no presidential elections in Chad since 1962.

Goukouni and Habre were allies in the Muslim war against the south, and in 1979, when the northerners seized power, Goukouni became President and Habre his Defense Minister. The two soon quarreled, and the power struggle has gone on ever since, with Libya usually backing Goukouni and France sometimes supporting Habre. In December 1980, Habre fled to the Sudan after failing to unseat the Libyan-backed Goukouni. Soon after that, Gaddafi announced that Libya would "merge" with Chad. Gaddafi withdrew his offer, as well as his troops, in late 1981 after France and several African countries expressed their disapproval. Even Goukouni was unenthusiastic, but the withdrawal of Libyan forces made him more vulnerable than he realized. In June 1982, Habre returned to Chad with his army, defeated Goukouni and sent him scurrying across the Chari River to Cameroon in a dugout canoe.

Goukouni and his 3,000-man army began their comeback two months ago. With the help of Libya, they quickly seized a third of the country's territory, including the towns of Abeche and Faya-Largeau. The following month, fortified with a new shipment of French arms, Habre's forces retook the two towns. They were on the verge of turning Goukouni's retreat into a rout when Gaddafi entered the war with troops and airpower.

If they were left to their own devices, the Chadians could probably fight on indefinitely without causing undue concern to the outside world. But they have rarely been left alone. Gaddafi, who seized a strategic portion of northern Chad known as the Aozou Strip a decade ago, has dreamed of creating an Islamic empire that would span Africa from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. France is highly sensitive to any Libyan intrusion into French-speaking Africa, particularly if it might affect such valued allies and trading partners as Ivory Coast, Senegal and Zaire. The U.S. opposes any extension of Libyan power, which would inevitably be followed by a strengthening of Soviet influence. A special concern is that Gaddafi has long sought to destabilize two stalwart U.S. allies, Egypt and the Sudan.

Washington and Paris have not reacted particularly harmoniously to the rising crisis in Chad. The U.S. provided military assistance but expected France to contribute both combat troops and airpower. Mitterrand, however, has been more reluctant than his predecessors to become involved in the shifting sands of the Saharan war. Before his election in 1981, he opposed interventions by Presidents Charles de Gaulle and Valery Giscard d'Estaing in the affairs of France's former colonies. In addition, Mitterrand knows that French moves into Chad in 1968 and 1978 were costly operations that had little lasting effect. A particular irony is that on both occasions Habre was a leader of the rebel forces that France opposed. Mitterrand is also hesitant to become involved in an open fight with Libya, a trading partner with which France has managed to maintain correct relations.

As Mitterrand pondered his options, French and U.S. military officials discussed a possible joint military operation, which would include use of the AWACS planes. The White House misunderstood a French suggestion about helping defend Faya-Largeau, not realizing that the French had made contingency plans but no final decision. A senior State Department official later admitted, "The White House was naive. No French political leader said, 'We are going to [defend] Faya.' " As U.S. pressure for French support continued, French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson declared testily, "We do not submit to American desires, and we have no reason to act only with the Americans or systematically with the Americans."

By the end of the week, however, as the military situation in Chad worsened, the French sent in some 300 troops from bases in Cameroon, the Central African Republic and southern France. Then, after Libyan aircraft continued to bomb government outposts, the French dispatched a company of paratroops from the capital to Abeche, a clear sign that they were slowly stepping up their commitment to Habre's government.

Whether the French presence will be sufficient to create a stalemate in the seven-week-old war will depend on what Gaddafi does next. Western intelligence sources put the number of Libyan troops in Chad at 2,500, while Goukouni has perhaps 3,000 men in his ragtag army. But those combined ground forces are backed by aircraft and heavy weapons, including as many as 400 tanks and armored vehicles on the outskirts of Faya-Largeau, which the government of Chad is unable to match. The Libyan air force has a base for its fighters in the Aozou Strip and at least one squadron of Soviet-built Tupolev-22 bombers based at Sabha in central Libya.

On the other hand, a Libyan ground offensive would be extremely difficult to carry out; the roads are bad in the best of times and impassable in heavy rain. The hope of most Western observers in N'Djamena is that Gaddafi will be content to occupy the northern third of Chad and press for a new Chadian government that would be more to his liking. In a television interview late last week, Gaddafi blandly denied that he was providing the Chadian rebels with anything but "moral" support, and called for negotiations between the rival forces in Chad.

Given Habre's hatred of Goukouni and the Libyans, the Chadian President would be disinclined to negotiate with either. But with a third of his army lost, his fate is as closely bound to the decisions of his foreign mentors as Goukouni's is to the whims and ambitions of Gaddafi.

If the Libyans and the rebels push southward, as they appear ready to do, and if the French avoid direct involvement in the conflict, Habre's government will surely fall. On the other hand, if Gaddafi should decide to keep his troops in northern Chad, the country could face de facto partition. That might be a relatively painless solution to the present crisis, but it would set a dangerous precedent for an unstable continent where the rule has long been to honor the boundaries inherited from colonial times. --By William E. Smith. Reported by John Borrell/N'Djamena and Thomas A. Sancton/Paris

With reporting by John Borrell, Thomas A. Sancton This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.