Chad, officially the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon to the southwest, Nigeria to the southwest (at Lake Chad), and Niger to the west. Chad has a population of 20 million, of which 1.6 million live in the capital and largest city of N'Djamena. With a total area of around 1,300,000 km2 (500,000 sq mi), Chad is the fifth-largest country in Africa and the twentieth largest nation by area.
With over 200 ethnic and linguistic groups, the official languages are French and Arabic, with French being the lingua franca and language of government and education. Islam (55.1%) and Christianity (41.1%) are the main practiced religions.
Beginning in the 7th millennium BC, humans moved into the Chadian basin in great numbers. By the end of the 1st millennium AD, a series of states and empires had risen and fallen in Chad's Sahelian strip, each focused on controlling the trans-Saharan trade routes that passed through the region. France conquered the territory by 1920 and incorporated it as part of French Equatorial Africa. In 1960, Chad obtained independence under the leadership of François Tombalbaye. Resentment towards his policies in the Muslim north culminated in the eruption of a long-lasting civil war in 1965. In 1979 the rebels conquered the capital and put an end to the south's hegemony. The rebel commanders then fought amongst themselves until President Hissène Habré defeated his rivals. The Chadian–Libyan conflict erupted in 1978 which stopped in 1987 with a French military intervention. Habré was overthrown in turn in 1990 by his general Idriss Déby. With French support, a modernisation of the Chadian National Army was initiated in 1991. From 2003, the Darfur crisis in Sudan spilled over the border and destabilised the nation. Already poor, the nation struggled to accommodate over a million Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad.
While many political parties participating in the National Assembly, power lay firmly in the hands of the Patriotic Salvation Movement during the presidency of Déby, whose rule was described as authoritarian. After Déby was killed by FACT rebels in April 2021, the Transitional Military Council led by his son Mahamat Déby assumed control of the government and dissolved the Assembly. One of the world's least developed countries, Chad remains plagued by political violence and recurrent attempted coups d'état. Chad ranks the 4th lowest in the Human Development Index and is among the poorest and most corrupt countries. Most of its inhabitants live in poverty as subsistence herders and farmers. Since 2003 crude oil has become the country's primary source of export earnings. Chad has a poor human rights record.
In the 7th millennium BC, ecological conditions in the northern half of Chadian territory favoured human settlement, and its population increased considerably. Some of the most important African archaeological sites are found in Chad, mainly in the Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti Region; some date to earlier than 2000 BC.
For more than 2,000 years, the Chad Basin has been inhabited by agricultural and sedentary people. The region became a crossroads of civilisations. The earliest of these was the legendary Sao, known from artefacts and oral histories. The Sao fell to the Kanem Empire, the first and longest-lasting of the empires that developed in Chad's Sahelian strip by the end of the 1st millennium AD. The power of Kanem and its successors was based on control of the trans-Saharan trade routes that passed through the region. Increasing Islamisation of Kanem was evident from the 11th century onwards, and Kanem had developed into a literate society by the 12th century, when the scribes of the empire are recorded to have developed an original script style, the barnāwī.
Kanem's expansion peaked during the long reign of Mai Dunama Dabbalemi (c. 1221–1259), leaving the empire as the most powerful state in Central Africa by the time of his death. By the end of the 14th century, internal struggles and external attacks had torn Kanem apart. Finally, around 1396, the Bulala invaders forced Mai Umar Idrismi to relocate the imperial centre to Bornu.
Two other states in the region, the Sultanate of Bagirmi and the Wadai Sultanate, emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries. Bagirmi adopted Islam during the reign of Abdullah IV (1568–1598) and was in a tributary relationship with Kanem-Bornu in the 17th and 18th centuries, and then with Wadai in the 19th century. Wadai, initially non-Muslim, was taken over early in the 17th century by Abd al Karim, who established an Islamic sultanate. Muhammad Sabun (1804-1815) established a new trade route to the north and minted his own currency, and Muhammad Sharif (1843 - 1858) subjugated Bagirmi and successfully resisted French colonization. These two states never extended their control to the southern grasslands except to raid for slaves. In Kanem, about a third of the population were slaves.
French colonial period (1900–1960)
French colonial expansion led to the creation of the Territoire Militaire des Pays et Protectorats du Tchad in 1900. By 1920, France had secured full control of the colony and incorporated it as part of French Equatorial Africa. French rule was characterised by an absence of policies to unify the territory and sluggish modernisation compared to other French colonies.
The French primarily viewed the colony as an unimportant source of untrained labour and raw cotton; France introduced large-scale cotton production in 1929. The colonial administration was critically understaffed and had to rely on the dregs of the French civil service. Only the Sara people of the south were governed effectively; French presence in the Islamic north and east was nominal. The educational system was affected by this neglect.
The French administration's focus on cotton led to the formation of a precarious underclass of poorly-paid rural workers, a decrease in food production and even to famines in some areas. Tensions between farmers and elites culminated in the 1952 Bébalem massacre by colonial authorities.
After World War II, France granted Chad the status of overseas territory and its inhabitants the right to elect representatives to the National Assembly and a Chadian assembly. The largest political party was the Chadian Progressive Party (French: Parti Progressiste Tchadien, PPT), based in the southern half of the colony. Chad was granted independence on 11 August 1960 with the PPT's leader, François Tombalbaye, an ethnic Sara, as its first president.
In 1962 Tombalbaye banned opposition parties and established a one-party system. Tombalbaye's autocratic rule and insensitive mismanagement exacerbated inter-ethnic tensions. In 1965 Muslims in the north, led by the National Liberation Front of Chad (French: Front de libération nationale du Tchad, FRONILAT), began a civil war. Becoming gradually more erratic, Tombalbaye's regime alienated even his southern base of support, notably through the forced introduction of yondo (ritual scarring) for public servants and the 1973 assassination of expatriate dissident Outel Bono in Paris. Tombalbaye was overthrown and killed in 1975, but the insurgency continued. In 1979 the rebel factions led by Hissène Habré took the capital, and central authority in the country collapsed. Armed factions, many from the north's rebellion, contended for power.
The disintegration of Chad caused the collapse of France's position in the country. Libya moved to fill the power vacuum and became involved in Chad's civil war. This ended in disaster in 1987; the French-supported President Habré, evoked a united response from Chadians of a kind never seen before and forced the Libyan army off Chadian soil.
Dictatorship of Habré (1987–1990)
Habré consolidated his dictatorship through a power system that relied on corruption and violence with thousands of people estimated to have been killed under his rule. The president favoured his own Toubou ethnic group and discriminated against his former allies, the Zaghawa. His general, Idriss Déby, overthrew him in 1990. Attempts to prosecute Habré led to his placement under house arrest in Senegal in 2005; in 2013, Habré was formally charged with war crimes committed during his rule. In May 2016, he was found guilty of human-rights abuses, including rape, sexual slavery, and ordering the killing of 40,000 people, and he was sentenced to life in prison.