FROLINAT
FROLINAT was an insurgent rebel group active in Chad between 1966 and 1993.
History
Origins
The organization was the result of the political union between the leftist Chadian National Union, led by Ibrahim Abatcha, and the General Union of the Sons of Chad, led by Ahmed Hassan Musa. An Islamist, Musa was close to the Muslim Brotherhood. The UGFT remained autonomous within the new group under the banner of the Liberation Front of Chad. The union and group flag was agreed upon at the Nyala Congress in Sudan between June 19 and June 22, 1966.Abatcha was proclaimed Secretary-General, while another cadre of the UNT, Abou Bakar Djalabou, was designated to lead the delegation that would represent the movement abroad. A committee was also selected at the congress, composed of thirty members taken equally from the UNT and the FLT. The front was composed exclusively by Muslim northerners, and there was to be no attempt to create a link to the southern expatriates in the Central African Republic.
The movement's official program, also approved at the Nyala congress, proclaimed the rejection of secession, confessional politics, and ethnic discrimination, and stated that neocolonialism should be fought in order to "regain the total national independence of our fatherland". A coalition government, national and democratic, was to be formed, and all political prisoners freed. All foreign troops were to leave, and support was to be given to national liberation movements, and a foreign policy of positive neutrality sought. The economic objectives were quite vague: wages would be raised, arbitrary taxes abolished, and the land given to the tillers. In conclusion, "The document was so vague and so general, it could have been written for any country under the sun."
As the FROLINAT was originally composed of few members, it relied on the fact that the Chadian state was already in disarray; the southern-dominated government despised and bypassed Muslim traditional leaders, and already in 1963, the most important northern politicians had been arrested, and all important positions in the Chadian Armed Forces and in the local governments were held by non-Muslim southerners. To cite Sam Nolutschungu, "Everyone knew that the regime was corrupt, cruel, arbitrary, and absurd."
This discontent already existed in November 1965 after the bloody Mangalmé riots and gave way to a number of loosely-knitted peasant revolts in central and eastern Chad, that rapidly spread from Mangalmé and nearby Batha Prefecture to Ouaddaï and Salamat prefectures, where in February 1967 the prefect and his deputy were killed.
In the BET Prefecture of northern Chad, by 1965 unrest had started expanding. So when Abatcha, with seven North Korean trained companions, penetrated Eastern Chad in November 1966, he could count on a territory that was already in full revolt.
Musa and the most conservative elements of the FLT pulled out of the FROLINAT at the end on 1966, but a dualism was always present between the socialist, anti-imperialist, even Pan-African UNT element and the more conservative and regionalist UGFT tradition. Another element of division consisted in the dualism between the two original areas of the rebellion, Kanem and the East: Kanem mainly attracted support from Chadians who lived in Egypt and the Central African Republic, the east mainly from Sudan.
The combined forces of the two groups began in the same year to operate in the mid-east of the country, under the direct command of Abatcha. Shortly after, in March 1968, a lieutenant of Abatcha, Mohammed Taher, instigated a mutiny by the Daza Toubou of the National and Nomadic Guard of Aouzou, which was evacuated by the national army in September. Taher had already recruited militants among the Teda Toubou in the Borkou, and shortly after the Aozou mutiny obtained the support of Goukouni Oueddei, an influential figure among the Teda of the Tibesti and son of the derde of the Toubou, Oueddei Kichidemi. This extended the insurgency to the north and the Toubou nomads, adding a new element of complexity to the rebellion and bringing support to the movement from Chadians living in Libya, and especially students at the Islamic University of Bayda.
Dissensions
On February 11, 1968, Abatcha was killed in combat and a battle for succession ensued, in which two candidates were assassinated and a third was forced to escape to Sudan. In the end, Abba Sidick emerged victorious. A moderate left-wing intellectual and a former minister under François Tombalbaye, he became the new 1970 secretary-general of FROLINAT, and established the headquarters of the organization in Tripoli.Abatcha's death did not make the situation easier for the government, nor did the formation in 1969 of two separate FROLINAT armies. The First Liberation Army of the FROLINAT, la Première Armée, a loose coalition of warlords active mainly in central Chad, engaged in hit-and-run tactics, a faction-ridden force whose groups often fought among themselves and engaged in banditry. The Second Liberation Army, la Deuxième Armée, which operated in the north, and was composed mainly by Toubou. After the death of Mohammed Taher in 1969 the Second Army came under the control of Goukouni Oueddei.
These divisions did not much help the Chadian government; Tombalbaye's authority in the central and northern parts of the country was limited to a patchwork of urban centers, often connected only by air. This forced the Chadian president to ask in 1968 for French intervention, on the grounds of military accords between the two countries. French President Charles de Gaulle accepted in 1969, and military intervention began on April 14 with Opération Bison.
When Siddick made it in 1971, a call for the union of the different groups he was opposed by Goukouni Oueddei and Hissène Habré, who commanded the Second Liberation Army of the FROLINAT, renamed Command Council of the Armed Forces of the North in February 1972. Only the first army of the FROLINAT, operating in eastern and centre-eastern Chad, remained loyal to Siddick. Another armed faction that emerged was the Volcan Army, built by Muhammad Baghlani, a FROLINAT group with an Islamist tendency.
In 1969, Chadian President, François Tombalbaye, appealed to France for help. As a result, a French mission arrived with ample powers to reform the army and the civil service and to recommend the abolition of unpopular laws and taxes. Also following their recommendations, the judicial powers of traditional Muslim rulers were restored. Another conciliatory move was the liberation in 1971 of many political prisoners and the formation of a more balanced government, including many more northerners than before. The result of these moves was positive; the insurgents were confined to the Tibesti and the French started retiring their troops, which had played a key role in the years 1969-1971. Certain to have defeated the FROLINAT, Tombalbaye left the reforms in the summer of 1971 and accused some of the recently freed political prisoners of having attempted a coup d'état with the help of Libya. In reaction, Libyan president Muammar al-Gaddafi officially recognized Abba Siddick's FROLINAT, offering him economic and logistic support. The Libyans then began to occupy the Aouzou strip.
The manifestations of student rioting in November 1971 caused the destitution of the Chadian Chief of Staff, general Jacques Doumro; his position was occupied by colonel Félix Malloum. In 1972, Tombalbaye jailed hundreds of political opponents and to block his enemies initiated a policy of gestures towards Libya and France. Libya reduced its support for Siddick and infighting exploded between the first army of the FROLINAT and Habré's FAN. The first army won assuming control of Ennedi, while the FAN retired to the Borkou and Tibesti. The kidnapping at Bardaï of a French archaeologist, Françoise Claustre, by Habré's forces clouded the relations of the latter with France.
In June 1973, Tombalbaye jailed his Chief of Staff General Malloum. A political opponent, the liberal Outel Bono, was on the verge of forming a new political party when he was assassinated in Paris and Tombalbaye was accused of the crime. The president lost support within his party, the Chadian Progressive Party, causing Tombalbaye to replace it with a new one, the National Movement for the Cultural and Social Revolution, and to start an Africanization campaign. The colonial names of some cities were changed with autochthonous names: Fort-Lamy became N'Djamena, Fort-Archambault became Sarh, among others. He himself changed his name from François to Ngarta. An element of this Africanization was the introduction of yondo initiation rites proper of the Sara for all those who wanted to obtain positions in the civil service and the army, rites that were seen as anti-Christian. This, with forced "voluntary" mobilization of the population in agricultural campaigns, mined his support in the south. He also lost the support of the army by arresting many young officers whom he accused of planning a coup: as a result, Tombalbaye was killed and overthrown by a coup on April 13, 1975. He was succeeded by Félix Malloum as head of the Supreme Military Council. The new government included many northerners, but southerners retained a majority. Notwithstanding some popular measures, the government could not satisfy the people's demands. The capital saw new student strikes and the trade unions were suspended. In April 1976, there was an unsuccessful attempt to kill Malloum, and in March 1977, a mutiny by units army in the capital was suppressed by the execution of its ringleaders.
After the death of Tombalbaye, FROLINAT had continued its dismemberment. A group active in the east, the FLT, entered in the new government of N'Djamena in July. Oueddei Kichidemi returned from his exile in Libya in the summer of 1975; his son Goukouni Oueddei remained there instead. Habré and Goukouni had formed the CCFAN with the design to unite all the northern elements of the FROLINAT under their banner, but now the situation was heavily embroiled by the affair Claustre, which brought France to negotiate directly with the rebels and not sustain Tombalbaye's successor, Malloum, who reacted by asking the 1,500 French troops in Chad to leave the country.