An Imposed and Eerie Peace

Libyan troops bring calm--and the threat of new war

Libyan Strongman Muammar Gadaffi last November dispatched tanks and troops into neighboring Chad, defeated one faction in that country's sputtering civil war and announced a "merger" of the two nations. Since then tremors of anxiety have reverberated across West Africa. Last week a meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa was marked by angry attacks against Libya's "aggression" in Chad. Many West and Central African leaders fear it is only the first step toward a consummation of Gadaffi's long-range ambition to establish an Islamic sub-Saharan republic stretching from Senegal to the Sudan. Despite diplomatic pressures on Gadaffi to withdraw his troops, however, the Libyan presence in Chad is growing. Last week Nairobi Bureau Chief Jack White traveled to Chad by crossing the Chari River in a dugout canoe and reached the war-ravaged capital of N'Djamena. His report:

Defending the role of his Libyan allies not long ago, Chad's provisional President Goukouni Oueddei boasted that since the Islamic legion had intervened, "peace and calm" had been restored to N'Djamena after nine months of bloody civil strife. Indeed, with the .exception of an occasional gunshot or the roar of a Libyan jet fighter wheeling overhead, within the capital an eerie quiet reigns. The bulk of the residents who fled N'Djamena when fighting broke out between Oueddei supporters and the rival forces of former Defense Minister Hissene Habre do not seem convinced that the danger is past. Each morning, canoes ferry thousands of women across the muddy, slow-moving Chari River from the Cameroon village of Kousseri to market their wares in Chad. Their bundles include huge stocks of emergency food doled out by international relief agencies at their sprawling refugee camp. At sunset, the women return to Cameroon, carrying bundles of clothing recovered from their abandoned homes. Relief workers say that the women fear being robbed and raped by Libyan soldiers who patrol N'Djamena at night.

The city was devastated by mortar and automatic weapons duels. Sunlight leaks through bullet holes in the roof over an outdoor bar at the Hotel Chadian, as guests sip drinks beside an empty swimming pool. Traffic winds slowly through the rubble-strewn commercial district along Charles de Gaulle Avenue, where office buildings and foreign embassies were not so much blasted apart by heavy shelling as nibbled to bits by machine-gun fire. The most macabre reminder of the fighting is scattered along several hundred yards of a dried-up stream bed behind Habre's former headquarters: clumps of human skeletons, many with their hands bound by elastic cords. Government officials say they were prisoners and innocent city dwellers butchered by Habre's forces as they retreated before the Libyan onslaught last December.

Libyan influence is more felt than seen. In the markets, small groups of Libyan soldiers in fatigues or civilian technicians wearing Castro-style caps barter for elaborately decorated Chadian daggers and other trinkets. Virtually the only buildings in town that are being reconstructed are the Libyan embassy and bank. No one is allowed to approach the airport, where Soviet-built MiG-23 and MiG-25 jet fighters are based, or the closely guarded garrison, where up to 7,500 combat troops, supported by Soviet T-54 tanks, are bivouacked. Diplomats say that Libya is providing funds for Chad government salaries and essential services.

On the heels of protests from neighboring countries and from some of the eleven factions that constitute the unwieldy Transitional Government of National Unity, official talk of the proposed "merger" with Libya has almost disappeared. "Nobody even mentions it any more," says a Western diplomat. Indeed, Chad has requested that the U.S. and other Western powers, who withdrew their representatives when the fighting broke out last year, reopen their embassies as soon as possible. But many countries appear reluctant to do so because they do not wish to give even tacit approval to a Gadaffi takeover. The Organization of African Unity has called on Libya to withdraw its troops so that an agreement worked out in 1979, calling for fresh elections supervised by a pan-African peacekeeping force, can be carried out.

Nevertheless, Gadaffi seems determined to maintain his foothold in Chad, where his forces have been steadily encroaching for nearly a decade. Since 1973 Libyan troops have occupied the Aozou strip, a uranium-and manganese-rich area astride the Chad-Libyan border. On Libyan maps, the zone is known as Southern Libya. It was Tripoli's annexation of the strip that led to the original split between Habre and Oueddei, both northern Muslims who had been allied against the southern Christian government headed by General Felix Malloum. Habre, who had previously received arms from Gadaffi, resisted the Libyan incursion, while Oueddei became Gadaffi's new favorite. Even that relationship has been severely strained at times. In 1979, when Oueddei protested against further Libyan encroachments on his country's territory, Gadaffi placed him briefly under house arrest in Tripoli. Over the years, Gadaffi has provided arms and other assistance to virtually every one of Chad's numerous warring groups, like a cautious gambler spreading his bets. For the moment, at least, his wagers seem to have paid off.

Rumors are flying around N'Djamena to the effect that Vice President Wadal Abdelkader Kamougue, the present leader of Chad's comparatively prosperous south with its sizable Christian minority, is being encouraged by France to secede from the arid, impoverished northern region. At the same time, Habre's well-disciplined force of 1,500 men is regrouping near the town of Abeche, 400 miles northeast of the capital, where they are receiving assistance from both the Sudan and Egypt for a protracted guerrilla war. After 16 years of combat. Chad's 4.5 million people are bracing for yet another round of strife.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.