What’s Going on in Chad?

Rond point de l’Armée in N’Djamena, Chad. By Ismouz.

Chad’s been in the news recently primarily because of Boko Haram and the subsequent ban on the Islamic face veil. In June and July, several attacks in N’Djamena and on Lake Chad islands killed around 55 people. Despite N’Djamena’s physical proximity to Boko Haram areas in Nigeria and Cameroon, these were the first major attacks in Chad by Boko Haram following Chad’s entry into the international coalition fighting the group. These attacks have happened against a political backdrop of extreme poverty, government repression, and a history of armed conflict. Among the many problems that Chad currently faces, probably none of them alone are existential threats to Deby’s regime or the harbinger of impending mass violence, but Chad faces a uniquely toxic cocktail of political, economic, and social problems.

Social Fragmentation

Chad is 45% Christian, but since independence, Christians have been largely shut out of political power. It’s not that they’re second-class citizens, as most people besides a small elite have been shut out of political power, but even Christian elites have few political prospects.

There is also discord within the Muslim community. Historically, Chadian Islam has been dominated by Sufi sects, but recently there’s been an increase in more conservative forms of Sunni Islam, partially due to increased funding from the Gulf. The government, and its allied religious leaders, has cracked down on these forms of Islam, claiming they promote violence and are anathema to Chadian tradition (some of these religious leaders are using Boko Haram attacks to settle scores with rival Salafists, who in Chad have almost always advocated peace). While Chadian imams have traditionally preached against violence, there is a danger “moderate” Muslim authorities could become complicit in a large-scale government crackdown. Additionally, these imams might come to be seen as government puppets, lose credibility, and thereby create a power vacuum that could be filled by more radical individuals.

There is a major gap, both in terms of wealth and government attention, between rural and urban areas, leading to significant discontent and frequent clashes between farmers and pastoralists. The Toubou in Chad’s far north are particularly neglected, but they are generally disorganized and it seems unlikely they’d launch a large-scale rebellion (however some analysts worry that after the defeat of jihadist forces in northern Mali, they’ll link up with the Toubou) due to a lack of capacity and the strength of Chad’s armed forces. In these areas, traditional authorities have generally kept the peace, but when they have been weakened, either by the government or other external factors, violence and crime have generally increased.

Civil society only became a force in Chad after the ascension of Idriss Deby to power in 1990. However, it’s never become a major player for a few reasons. The government associates it with the opposition and Christians, so any activity is generally seen as a direct challenge by the government, and sometimes even a Trojan Horse by Christians to gain political power. There are few forums for political activity not organized by international NGO’s. Independent media does exist, but it only reaches a small number of people, whereas government-controlled media has a mass audience. Print media is dominated by Southern Chadians, further earning the ire of the government.

International Relations

Recently, after many years of essentially being an international pariah (partially because of his close links with Gaddafi, who was also in the process of being rehabilitated at the end of his rule), Chad has reinvented itself as a key counterterrorism partner for Western countries. This shift in policy began in 2008-2009. In the last three years, Chadian troops have served in Mali (under AFISMA), CAR, and Nigeria. In Mali, Chadian forces distinguished themselves in desert warfare, and lost around 30 soldiers. Following these losses and what Deby felt was insufficient support (diplomatic and material) from the international community, Deby chose to withdraw Chad’s forces in Mali. Chad’s intervention in CAR, however, was a disaster. Chad was accused of backing Seleka, then pulled back support from Bozize late on, and Chadian troops massacred Central African civilians. However, Chad has redeemed itself in Nigeria. It has successfully cleared large areas of Boko Haram, and has been recognized as the most effective fighting force in the conflict.

The US and France are Chad’s major allies when it comes to counterterrorism. Chad is a member of the US’ Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership and the US has been slowly expanding its presence in Chad. The US already runs many air operations in Central Africa out of N’Djamena (like assisting in the search for the Chibok girls), but is quietly moving toward establishing a more permanent base. Though Chad had previously been cited for using child soldiers (in 2010, 2011, and 2013), it controversially received a waiver in 2013 and since hasn’t appeared on the State Department’s list of countries using child soldiers. The US has trained Chadian soldiers and intermittently donates equipment to the armed forces. France bases its 3,000-strong regional counterterrorism force in N’Djamena, with 1,200 soldiers permanently stationed in Chad. France has two bases in the country. Though France has previously come to Deby’s rescue, Hollande is trying to move away from propping up strongmen and toward fighting terrorism, securing borders, and supporting small teams that can prevent hostage-taking or free hostages.

Chad’s relationship with Sudan is also crucially important. Chad and Sudan were de facto enemies, and supported rebels (the JEM and various Chadian rebellions, respectively). In 2006 and 2008, rebellions sponsored by Sudan almost overthrew Deby (requiring French support in 2008). However, in 2010, the two governments came to an agreement, and ceased supporting cross-border rebel groups. The alliance was solidified by the marriage of Deby to the daughter of Musa Hilal, a key player in the Sudanese government in Darfur (who has since defected from the NCP, so that’s a relationship to watch). Without Sudanese support, it’s highly unlikely an insurgency would have the capacity to seriously challenge Deby, and since 2010, there’s been no renewed insurgencies or problems with Sudan.

Chad has also had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with Nigeria recently. While Buhari has cautiously welcomed Chadian help in fighting Boko Haram, he has been careful not to give them too much credit or leeway. Both countries have reported there is little to no coordination between their forces in the fight against Boko Haram.

Government Structure

Since independence, governance in Chad has been kleptocratic and reserved for a small elite. Deby’s regime is also quite repressive. Opposition MP’s only have a few seats in parliament and the judiciary is loyal to Deby. Opposition politicians and government critics are routinely arrested. A democratic opposition does not really exist; opposition leaders may make perfunctory statements about democracy, but they would likely implement a similar system of governance, only they’d be the beneficiaries..

To prevent alternate power bases from developing, Deby frequently reshuffles his cabinet and military leadership. The Deby regime is heavily dependent on Deby’s Bila-Bideyet clan, which is a sub-group of the larger Zaghawa, who have filled many key positions in the security forces and government. Furthermore, some of his family members hold top positions. Beyond ethnic ties, the government is heavily reliant on patronage to buy fealty.

That patronage is largely funded through oil revenues, which only began flowing in the early 2000’s. Oil has had a major effect on the Chadian political scene. It has allowed Chad to dramatically strengthen its military, which prior to 2008 was poorly equipped and trained. The strength of the army has allowed Deby to disregard calls for reform, repress domestic opposition, and gain international prestige (and more money) through its participation in international counterterrorism efforts. A big reason all of this was possible was the stronger position in which Deby found himself. He faced serious armed challenges in 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, but since then, excluding a 2013 coup attempt that may have been invented by the regime, the government has appeared much more in control.

Oil revenues have been used for development, but these projects have mostly happened in urban areas to the benefit of the elite. The lack of benefits provided by oil revenues to the urban poor, rural populations, and oil-producing region has prompted protests, but these have been repressed. However, the number and intensity of protests may increase in the run-up to the April 2016 presidential election if no tangible economic benefits are provided to most of the population.

Recent Boko Haram Attacks and Government Response

Four suicide attacks in June and July in N’Djamena killed about 55 people. The perpetrators were widely suspected to be Boko Haram after the group threatened Chad in its released videos. In response, the Chadian government launched airstrikes against Boko Haram targets in Nigeria, attacked Boko Haram militants on Lake Chad islands, banned the full face veil (the niqab/burqa because one of the bombers was wearing the garment), and arrested suspected Boko Haram members (and unidentified “foreigners”). Religious leaders publicly supported the decision, but they probably didn’t have much of a choice. In the short-term it’s unlikely this leads for widespread support for Boko Haram, but Chad does risk alienating more conservative Muslims with its heavy-handed and probably ineffective tactics. Additionally, it’s unclear to what degree the regime will use the Boko Haram threat to crackdown on non-jihadist opponents.

Key Things to Watch

• Inter-Zaghawa tensions: Probably the biggest threat to the Deby regime is a coup by Zaghawa allies, and any public break between Zaghawa elites and Deby could be a sign of an impending coup. Many Zaghawa are unhappy with Deby for his abandonment of the JEM in Sudan, who were mostly Zaghawa. Additionally, many elites, including some in his own family, seek to improve their position, and it’s unclear if patronage will mollify them. While Chad’s newly-strong army means an insurgency is unlikely to topple the government, a coup could happen either with the collusion of the armed forces or be timed to take place while they’re largely deployed in northern Nigeria. The last coup took place just before troops were about to come home from Mali. A coup probably wouldn’t descend into mass violence, but given the number of well-armed troops and foreign interests at stake, it’s possible.
• Protests: Protests haven’t lead to major unrest under Deby’s rule, but it’s conceivable. Trade unions have organized medium-sized demonstrations in the past, and recently, partially because of Boko Haram, the prices of basic goods have spiked. This has caused smaller, more sporadic protests, but they could become larger as the election approaches. If protests do break out, it’s worth identifying the leaders and how the government responds.
• Relationship with Sudan breaks down: There haven’t been any outward signs of the deterioration of the Sudanese-Chadian détente, but such a deterioration would have negative consequences on both sides of the border. It’s likely Sudan would sponsor another insurgency, but given the Sudanese regime’s relative weakness and the ease with which Chad put down the 2009 attempt, it might be a flash in the pan. However, there are still 350,000 Darfuri refugees in eastern Chad, and they would likely be in the middle of any conflict. Any accusations of support for proxy groups could be a sign the alliance is collapsing.
• Boko Haram: At the moment, Boko Haram poses only a sporadic threat in Chad. However, if the group were able to launch more regular attacks and/or control territory due to popular support or unforeseen government weakness, the Deby regime would likely respond with massive violence, and that is something to watch for. At the moment, however, the government’s own repressive actions present a similar degree of danger as Boko Haram.

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Cultural Knowledge and a Little Luck: Surviving Boko Haram

A couple of weeks back, Al Jazeera published the testimony of Apagu, a Christian, 16-year-old Nigerian girl who was kidnapped by Boko Haram and subsequently escaped to Cameroon. I really encourage everyone to read it, if only to understand what she, and many other women, have gone through. Beyond the emotional weight of the interview, Apagu’s story provides a fascinating insight into the physical, cultural, and social terrain that people in warzones have to navigate to survive.

The first obstacle Apagu had to overcome was the physical environment around her. Both before and after her spell in captivity, she had to walk long distances, find food and water, and remain hidden from Boko Haram fighters. The physical inability to flee, either because of environmental factors or physical weaknesses, creates a whole new set of possible choices. For Apagu, had she been unable to escape her captors, her choice would have been between accepting marriage to a Boko Haram fighter and death.

The physical environment of a warzone dictates the possibilities available to civilians, but cultural and social relations are largely what determine who survives. Reading Apagu’s testimony for the first time, I was struck by the number of times she almost died. These near-death experiences weren’t from falling into a swollen river or being bitten by a snake. Rather it was that saying the wrong thing to the wrong person or wearing the wrong set of clothing in the wrong place would have meant almost certain death. Apagu had to perform some delicate cultural dances, and individuals without a deep knowledge of the social cartography would have had little chance.

Her survival, more than anything else, was dependent on the help of the people around her. Without the aid of friends and strangers, she never would have escaped the Boko Haram compund in the first place. Previous literature has emphasized that environments of mass violence feature three types of people: perpetrators, bystanders, and victims. Stopping mass violence can be achieved through activating bystanders to protect victims from perpetrators.

Apagu’s story shows that there’s more to the narrative; individuals float between the three categories and the victims have significant agency. On the one end, some of Boko Haram’s member were more cruel than others, and in some moments, they were as much bystanders as perpetrators. On the other, Apagu could not have survived without the help of others, who by becoming active bystanders risked victimhood. But there were also some, like those in the village Palam (who helped them find the way to Cameroon), who would have killed Apagu if they thought she was a Boko Haram member. These constantly-shifting roles doesn’t fit traditional conceptions of unarmed actors in warzones, but it is line with work like Kalyvas‘ and Kaplan‘s that sees civilians as crucial in both the persecution of others and their own protection. Protection and persecution operate through small-scale social networks, in which the two behaviors are mutual. Most people can choose to inform on each other, or to steer each other away from harm. No group has absolute power, and no group is powerless. Even when individuals choose to become perpetrators, civilians, like Apagu, still sometimes find the strength to run, hide, and survive.

Civilians who do live through mass violence, as I’ve written before, tend to do so without the help of anyone beyond their local communities. International politics might influence the environment, and aid might cushion the fall, but when it comes down to the experience of proximate physical violence, civilians are relying on their friends, family, and neighbors. And even when these social networks are strong, and civilians successfully navigate the physical and social landscapes, survival is rarely possible without luck. Communities play a role in shaping mass violence, but they often can do little more than respond and adapt. Subsequently, not everyone, even those who are well prepared, will survive. Apagu came closest to death when she was spotted after her escape by a Boko Haram fighter, but mercifully he didn’t have a gun, and she was able to escape. That civilians need such luck, and that so many do not have it, is tragic.

2015 Mass Atrocity Forecasts

In my last post, I looked back on how my predictions fared in 2014. While there are a couple different ways to measure success, all in all I was a little under 50%.

Here are my predictions for 2015. Like last time, I’ll not do a simple yes/no, but rather a percentage of how likely a mass atrocity is to happen. By mass atrocity, I mean 1,000 deaths caused intentionally by a discrete combatant group against another discrete noncombatant group. I’m including more countries than I did last year, and hopefully this will offer more accurate forecasts.

• Nigeria (95%)
• Iraq (95%)
• Syria (95%)
• Pakistan (75%)
• Afghanistan (70%)
• South Sudan (70%)
• Sudan (65%)
• Mexico (55%)
• CAR (50%)
• North Korea (50%)
• Somalia (30%)
• DRC (30%)
• Libya (25%)
• Gaza (25%)
• Cameroon (20%)
• Ukraine (10%)
• Rwanda (10%)
• Lebanon (10%)
• Burundi (5%)
• Yemen (5%)
• Chad (5%)
• Guinea (5%)
• Kenya (5%)
• Ethiopia (5%)
• Burma (5%)
• Eritrea (5%)
• Zimbabwe (5%)
• Mali (5%)

Explaining my forecast for each of the 28 countries here would be tedious and probably unnecessary, so I’ll skip it. However, I’ll select a few countries where my risk prediction doesn’t generally line up with the consensus in the atrocity prevention community.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram has probably already committed a mass killing in 2015, and across the border in Cameroon, Boko Haram is also active, though the chances of a mass atrocity are lower if not insignificant.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are not countries on the traditional atrocity prevention agenda, but that has more to do with uneasy relationship between anti-atrocity advocates and the U.S. military than the countries’ risk. Their respective Taliban’s both committed atrocities last year, and it seems likely that trend will continue.

In Mexico, it’s never a question of absolute casualty figures but how those casualties are categorized. Because there aren’t clear numbers on how many cartel members die as opposed to civilians, it’s hard to know whether more than 1,000 are killed by a specific drug cartel, even if thousands will almost certainly die in 2015.

In the DRC, like Mexico, more than 1,000 are highly likely to die. However, the splintered nature of armed groups in the country’s east means I think it’s more likely than not no single group will kill 1,000 civilians. The situation’s not dissimilar in Libya, where there is rampant violence, but it is committed by a myriad of militias.

Israel probably committed a mass killing in Gaza last year, and while confrontations between Hamas and Israel seem to operate on two or three year cycles, there’s still a decent chance Israel ‘mows the grass’ again this year.

While Rwanda is often praised as one of Africa’s most efficient governments, this sheen of good governance masks a political powder-keg. Whenever the elite coalition Kagame has built fractures, the struggle to fill the resulting power vacuum will likely result in mass violence. The same principle applies in Zimbabwe and Eritrea.

Finally, Burundi and Burma are two countries that have been high on the atrocity prevention agenda that I rated at only 5%. In Burundi, it seems the government has repressed the opposition enough that ruling elites are unlikely to be threatened during the 2015 election. There are some parallels here with Burma. While the treatment of the Rohingya minority is horrendous, it seems Burma’s elites have settled on forcing emigration rather than initiating a mass killing, which would be more politically risky.

Structure, Ideas, and the Functioning of Social Change

In August, Waging Nonviolence published an article on how same-sex marriage in the United States went from being a political impossibility in the late 1990’s to a political inevitability today. In regards to the manner of the victory, the authors Mark and Paul Engler write, “Rather than being based on calculating realism — a shrewd assessment of what was attainable in the current political climate — the drive for marriage equality drew on a transformational vision. It was grounded in the idea that if social movements could win the battle over public opinion, the courts and the legislators would ultimately follow.” For them, same-sex marriage is sweeping the country now not because of an abundance of political money, effective lobbyists, and committed lawmakers, but because “average” Americans changed their opinions on its morality. When it came time for them to vote on the issue, political figures had to listen to the (democratic) will of the people.

In a very different article a few weeks earlier, Jim Sanders made the case that the success of the Boko Haram insurgency in northeastern Nigeria is because the group’s strategy does not conform to the government’s expectations. Group’s imagined contexts (or in other words, a worldview) set the boundaries for which strategies are possible, and the context in which Boko Haram sees itself is very different from Nigeria’s, “They have created their own reality, an amalgam, as John Campbell says, of twenty-first century technology and esoteric (medieval) Islamic texts, which they hold up as guiding documents.” Boko Haram has not sought to engage in traditional electoral politics, formal or informal. For Sanders, Boko Haram is “postmodern” because its strategy derives from a significantly different belief system, rather than, as Mark and Paul Engler put it, “…a shrewd assessment of what was attainable in the current political climate…”

Both articles make claims on how change can happen. For Sanders and Englers, political structures (by structures I mean a set of political relationship that are not all horizontal) can be shaped entirely by ideas. For this thesis on the functioning of change to hold true, the assumptions that power is diffuse and that horizontal relationships based in ideology have the capacity to change vertical relationships based on authority without needing a weakness in those structures must also be true. In short, Sanders and the Englers are implicitly arguing that ideas are the basis of how society is organized (or at least can be), rather than the logic of bureaucratic politics.

These claims align broadly with postmodern theories of power and change. Foucault, for example, writes in Power/Knowledge that power is, “…localized here nor there, never in anybody’s hands”. Gene Sharp’s theory of power, which may or may not be generally classified within the postmodern school, shares many similarities with Foucault (Mark and Paul Engler devote an entire section of their article to detailing Sharp’s theory of power). Sharp makes the important insight that power is relational. By that, he means that “power” exists only in individuals’ relations to each other, rather than being a monolithic force that exists within institutions and governments. Sharp’s project in describing power is demonstrating how social movements can accumulate it and ultimately overthrow regimes. He uses the metaphor of pillars of support, which activists seek to knock over, by gaining allies, one at a time.

The problem with postmodern theories of power, and by extension the two articles I’ve cited above, is that they tend to minimize the ability of structures to attain and wield power. Let me explain (with examples first, theory second). Sanders and the Englers argue that ideas are the primary driver for achieving the change they describe. However, both articles sell themselves short by failing to highlight the effects of structures on ideas in their respective scenarios. Though Boko Haram’s strategy is a result of an imagined context quite different from others’ expectations, the context it imagines can’t be disentangled from political structures, or to say it differently, structure and ideas form a feedback loop. By this I mean that Boko Haram’s military force has created a balance of power (which creates a political structure) that gives Boko Haram’s ideas space to exist. The counterfactual here is that if Boko Haram could not muster the military power to evict the Nigerian government from much of northeastern Nigeria, its ideas would be inconsequential in terms of social change, and would probably not exist in their current, outrageous form.

Initially I found Mark and Paul Engler’s thesis to be quite convincing, but after putting it on my Facebook wall, fellow Swarthmore alum Jonah Wacholder pointed out some of its holes. Jonah wrote, “Everything about the fight to achieve same-sex marriage, from its choice as a goal to the (successful) tactics used to achieve it, was grounded in a series of pragmatic political judgments…[same sex-marriage advocates] kept marriage litigation out of the federal courts until 2009. They accepted civil unions in multiple states. They compromised on religious exemptions to bring in recalcitrant state legislators. They deliberately adopted a public relations strategy that focused on same-sex couples that met the norms of conventional respectability as thoroughly as possible.”

Therefore, while proponents of same-sex marriage did try to shift public opinion, they also calculated their strategy to partially conform to structural constraints. This dual theory of change was both top-down and bottom-up. It sought to both change the structure that ultimately determined the status of same-sex marriage while influencing the norms that informed the structure’s thinking. Whether transformational change on same-sex marriage was possible without engagement with the concentrated power of political structures is impossible to know for sure. However, the fact that advocates assumed focusing solely on moving public opinion was sub-optimal implies ideas alone couldn’t substitute for working to alter political structures and political ideas.

The implication I see here is that seeking to achieve change solely with ideas, which can be defined as horizontal power relations, overlooks the strength of political institutions and structures. This brings me back to Gene Sharp. He would argue that structures are simply the accumulation of person-to-person relationships, and therefore vulnerable to change through the same tactics as individuals. However, this neglects why structures are powerful in the first place. The structures exist because of the strong quality of relationships between individuals in those structures, which are not only based on ideas. Bureaucratic politics play a strong role in determining the cohesion of structures, and this force is more impervious to alteration from outsiders. Sharp is not naive in the need to wield power and leverage support to achieve political change, but I would argue that in not distinguishing between power relationships based on ideology and power relationships based on structure and authority, he fails to fully describe what makes political institutions resilient to change. In terms of change, political institutions are usually more successful at removing pillars of support from activists than vice versa.

In some cases, significant social change can happen primarily through the power of ideas. While the fight for same-sex marriage was about both responding to structural opportunity and norm diffusion, ideas played an important role. Jonah again, “We’re succeeding for homophobia (at least sometimes, for some people) because the political tactic of coming out is brilliant and extremely powerful when you have a group that exists in every family and every socio-economic category. (Successful same-sex marriage advocacy leverages this by connecting the same-sex couples who want to marry to people the audience knows and has emotional commitments to, or could imagine knowing and having emotional commitments to.)”

In some movements, like same-sex marriage, the role of ideas (and public opinion) can have an out-sized effect of determining outcome. However, in most cases attempting to disentangle ideas from structure/opportunity is a futile endeavor: focus only on ideas and you’ll never achieve change, focus only on structure, and you have no rationale for achieving change. The only answers are imperfect.

The Girls That Brought Themselves Back

The #BringBackOurGirls campaign began with a crescendo of indignation, only to fade as those paying attention quietly accepted that the girls were probably never coming back.  Since then, good news in northeastern Nigeria has been hard to come by.  Fortunately, that changed two days ago.  U.S. media outlets began reporting that approximately sixty-seven women kidnapped by Boko Haram in mid-June escaped their captors and fled to safety over the weekend.  It seems that these are not the individuals originally kidnapped in mid-April, but the news nonetheless is a bright spot in an exceedingly bleak saga.

The recent history of online humanitarianism seems defined by a number of sponsored campaigns that find traction very briefly, punctuated by the occasional cause célèbre–sometimes sponsored, sometimes not–that lingers in the public imagination.  #BringBackOurGirls was the first landmark campaign since Kony 2012 able to permeate into political, humanitarian, celebrity, and public circles.  The campaign, though less centralized than Kony 2012, was likewise able to achieve concrete policy changes.  The US sent a team of consultants to aid the Nigerian government, while the public pressure forced the Jonathan administration to acknowledge the kidnapping had taken place and launch a search effort.  Even though, unlike most humanitarian campaigns, #BringBackOurGirls successfully altered policy, the policies themselves have had no discernible effect on status of the kidnapped women.  Additionally, the campaign risked increasing the domestic and international support for a brutal counterinsurgency strategy that has killed thousands of civilians.  #BringBackOurGirls has succeeded in providing some degree of democratic accountability where it is sorely lacking in Nigeria, but it has failed to achieve its primary objective.

Despite the international cooperation, the extensive search effort, and a willing public, the kidnapped women themselves proved the most able to ensure their own survival.  Those cast as the least powerful did the most good.  The concept is simple, really.  Those at risk of violence have both the most motivation to protect themselves and the information to make it happen.  Outside forces face political, logistical, and financial barriers to civilian protection, which even solid intelligence often cannot surmount.  This incident should give us pause about the wisdom and effectiveness of top-down humanitarian interventions, especially in politically and geographically remote areas.  It is not that outside solutions have no place in global humanitarianism; such an attitude would amount to throwing out hands up in the air.  However, we must remember that the most effective actors at pursuing civilian protection are also the likely victims of violence.  Aiding them to do what they are able to do most effectively, rather than working to save their lives from the outside and without their assistance, is usually the best we can do.