Chad

Biography

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

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