Yearbook 2013
Chad. In January, a new Prime Minister, Djimrangar Dadnadji was appointed. He had previous experience as Minister and had also been Chief of Staff with President Idriss Déby Itno.
At the beginning of the year, Chad entered the conflict in West African Mali, where the government sought help to fight Islamist rebels who have taken control of the northern part of the country. Chad’s army is in the habit of fighting against rebels at home, and about 2,000 Chadian soldiers participated in the French-led alliance in Mali.
According to Countryaah, about 30 Chadian victims were required in the fighting, more than for any other country participating in the war. President Idriss Déby Itno stated in March that Chadian forces have killed two Islamist rebel leaders, one of them Abdelhamid Abou Zeid. He was a second man in al-Qaeda in North Africa and is notorious for being the most violent commander in the region. Abou Zeid was charged, among other things. for killing a British and a kidnapped German.
When part of the army was in Mali, the situation in Chad was exploited by the rebel movement Resistance Force Union (UFR), which in March announced that it would resume fighting against the army. According to UFR, the government in Chad had not kept its promise of negotiations from three years earlier.
In May, firefighting was reported from the outskirts of the capital N’Djamena, where fatalities must have been claimed. The government also claimed that a coup attempt had been dropped, and two generals and two politicians were reported to have been arrested. The arrests were controversial, and the government’s own parliamentarians later demanded a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Dadnadji. He left office in November, and the new prime minister was named entrepreneur and economist Kalzeubet Pahimi Deubet, who was also a former minister.
In May, former President Hissène Habré’s police and security chief, who was charged with torture and murder of hundreds of opposition activists in the 1980s, was arrested. In June, Hissène Habré himself was also arrested in Senegal, where he has moved and been in house arrest since 2005. Senegal had been ordered by the UN Criminal Tribunal to bring Habré to justice.
In July, 70-year-old Hissène Habré was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture. He is considered responsible for cruel torture and the killing of tens of thousands of his political opponents in Chad in 1982–90. Assessors saw the prosecution as a milestone for African justice. It was the first time an African leader had been charged in another African country for crimes against humanity.
- According to AbbreviationFinder.org, Ndjamena is the capital city of Chad. See acronyms and abbreviations related to this capital and other major cities within this country.
A Chinese oil company, CNPC, was ordered in August to stop its oil exploration in southern Chad due to environmental offenses. According to the Minister of Oil, the company had dug the ditch where the oil was allowed to flow, and then local workers without protective equipment had to remove it.
In September, a 10-fold increase in the number of malaria cases was reported in the Salamat region in the southeast in a short time. More than 80% of patients seeking care had malaria, according to Doctors Without Borders. A quarter of all deaths in Chad are due to malaria, and the disease is said to be the most common cause of child mortality in the country.
Chad was elected for the first time in October as a member of the UN Security Council.
Chadian soldiers of the African Union peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic were killed in December in violation of other parts of the peacekeeping force. Chadians were accused of partying with the Muslim militia that overthrew the country’s government, and thousands of Chadians had to be evacuated to their homeland.