Foreign Policy - 1/24/2014
On the last night of november 1991, the
city of N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, was on edge. President Hissène
Habré, who had seized control of the country in a coup eight years
earlier, was in power -- but the vice was closing.
Rebels were converging on the city in Toyota pickup trucks mounted
with machine guns and packed with fighters -- turbaned against the dust
and sand, armed to the teeth, and screaming pedal-to-the-floor across
the desert. Supplied and funded by Libya, they had crossed into Chad
from their camp on the Sudanese border some 700 miles to the east, led
by Habré’s former chief military advisor, Idriss Déby.
It was an odd time, then, for a diplomatic dinner party.
The gathering was a last-minute affair organized by the wealthy and
well-connected Lebanese consul at the urgent personal request of a key
minister in Habré’s cabinet. The presence of some two dozen Chadian
elites, French businessmen, and notable expats was really just a ruse
to invite the one guest who really mattered: Col. David G. Foulds, the
U.S. defense attaché.
The minister pulled Foulds to a quiet corner. “He was chain smoking
-- extremely nervous, shaking all over,” Foulds recalled. Habré’s forces
had beaten back Déby’s rebels once before, and conventional wisdom,
including in Washington, which had long been starstruck by Habré’s
military prowess, was that they’d prevail again. But the Americans knew
little more than the optimistic picture Habré’s camp was giving them,
and the minister knew better. The rebels could reach the capital that
night, he said, much sooner than anticipated.
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