An attack on Chad’s presidential complex on the evening of Jan. 8 was put down, with the government denouncing it as an attempt to destabilize the country. Only hours before the attack, Chad President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno and other senior officials had held a meeting with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The attack also occurred amid tensions between Chad and France, following Chad’s demand that French troops leave the country by the end of January.
“There were 18 dead and 6 injured” among the attackers, “and we suffered 1 death and 3 injured, one of them seriously,” said government spokesman and Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah, according to Hurriyet News. Koulamallah also posted a video on Facebook, surrounded by soldiers and with a gun on his belt, saying that “the situation is completely under control ... the destabilization attempt was put down.”
While a security source said the attackers were members of the Boko Haram terrorist group, Koulamallah later said they were “probably not” terrorists, describing them as drunken “Pieds Nickeles”—a reference to a French comic featuring hapless crooks, adding that the surviving assailants were “completely drugged.” Deby was in the complex at the time of the attack, according to Koulamallah.
Chad has become a member of a French military-free zone in Africa which now includes Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali (which will be joined soon by Senegal and the Ivory Coast), which have also demanded the removal of French troops. The kicking out of French troops has unnerved French President Emmanuel Macron, who, at a press conference earlier this week, accused these countries of lacking gratitude, and even made the absurd comment that the countries owe their independence to the French army. That drew a strong rebuke from Chadian authorities, who emphasized that French leaders need to respect African sacrifices. Chad asserted its pursuit of true independence, urging Macron to address France’s own problems instead. He was also reminded that native troops from Chad and other former colonies of France fought alongside their colonial masters to free France from German occupation in World War II.
