The Aouzou Strip conflict between Chad and Libya, 1978-1987

Aouzou Strip is a strip of land along the Chad-Libya border, located in the Sahara Desert. This region is named after the oasis town of Aouzou, which is the principle population center in the region. The strip runs along the entire (now Chadian) side of the boundary and is approximately 100km wide.

Historically, this region was not under any meaningful jurisdiction. The locals tribespeople are nomadic Tebu, following the availability of water (Menas, 2014). In the Aouzou Strip, water availability is sporadic, and wells tend not to hold water all year. The oasis itself provides water for small plantations of date palms and vegetables during what little rainy season exists. The international boundaries in the region were established by agreement between the colonial powers France (Chad) and Italy (Libya). The territory, originally held by France, was awarded to Italy after World War I (Hodder, Lloyd & McLachlan, 1998).

Histories of the Belligerents

Libya gained independence from Great Britain in 1951. It declared this independence as a kingdom. The UK, still recovering from the Second World War, did not contest the declaration, as Libya had no meaningful wealth at the time. Oil was discovered in 1959, almost immediately making Libya a wealthy state, and this wealth allowed it to begin building a military. The military would launch a coup in 1969 under Muammar Qaddafi. Libya built an air force base in the south to defend its frontier, at Maaten al-Sarra.

Libya's population base is in the north, along the Mediterranean Coast. The southern desert is inhabited by Berber tribes, but it sparsely populated as it has little water. The southern frontier, therefore, was not subject to heavy Libyan occupation, to the point where even its military commanders had little knowledge of the area.

Chad gained its independence from France in 1960, with the power base being in the more populous south of the country. By 1965, the country was in a state of civil war, fighting mainly between Muslims and the government forces. That conflict dragged on for years, crippling Chad economically, even more than it already was. By 1979, Chad had very little central authority. France was in the process of washing its hands of Chad at the time, and Libya decided to become involved in the conflict, in support of the Muslim groups from the north of Chad. There had been some prior involvement of Libya in Chadian politics and conflict, but the country's involvement at this time drew a strong response from Chadian forces, who had some French support against Libya. The Aouzou Strip at this time gained attention because it was seen as the base of Libyan incursions into Chad. Chadian forces became unified in their opposition to Libyan involvement in the internal conflict and began engaging with Libya in the north.

Chad is demographically diverse, with dozens of prominent ethnic groups. Geographically, the north is in the Sahara Desert and very sparsely populated. The oasis town of Aouzou is one of the biggest population centers with only a few thousand people. The Sahel belt has more people and the south, in the savannah area, is where most of the people in the country live. While Chad is split religiously, the Christian population is entirely in the south while northerners are Muslim, or tribal. Arabs from Libya seldom visited the north of Chad, which had slightly better links with the African areas to the south, a factor that was critical in the direction of the conflict.

Basis of Claims

France had ceded the strip in 1935 as part of a package for Mussolini to feed his dreams of empire while maintaining allegiance to the Allies, with whom Italy had fought in the First World War. Evidently, the strip was itself created by the geography of the area, where there are two physical borders, almost identical in appearance and the French and Italians had different interpretations of which was which. The French border became de facto during World War Two, when the French used its Chad colony as a base of operations against the Italians in the desert (Jacobs, 2011).

The specifics of ownership of the Aouzou Strip were unclear. Chad based its claims to ownership on the 1955 Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourliness, and produced evidence of a series of exchanges that it believed showed that the territory was part of the French colony at the time. Libya argued that the 1955 agreement was the product of coercion, as it was a weak, newly-independent nation, negotiating with a colonial power. The Libyans argued that a 1972 agreement between Chad and Libya was specific and clear that the Aouzou Strip belonged to Libya. The interwar agreement between France and Libya provided little clarification -- the treaty did give the strip to Italy, from whence it would naturally have passed to Libya, but Italy never occupied the strip. Thus at the time there was a de facto vs. de jure argument to be made. Libya eventually occupied the strip, but Chad in the later proceedings at the International Court of Justice was given the territory based on the 1955 agreement (Menas, 2014).

Aouzou Conflict

Libya, already stung by a series of defeats in 1987, renewed its efforts to take back territory from the Chadians. At this point, the French were ceasing their air support, and that allowed the Libyan Air Force to turn the tide again, and Libya pounded the FANT positions, and settlements in the region. French President Mitterand had withheld air support in response to the taking of Aouzou, which was against his wishes (Nolutshungu, 1995). In a matter of weeks, Libya recaptured the town, the Chadians unable to withstand Libyan air superiority without the support of the French.

The Chadians knew that without French air support, they would never defeat the Libyans as long as the Libyans had an air presence in the region. They knew that they were superior on the ground to the Libyans, because of their knowledge of the terrain, but needed Libya's air advantage to be neutralized. Thus, the Chadians, led by the country's President, determined to attack the Libyan air base at Maaten al-Sarra, which was well inside Libyan territory, far beyond the Aouzou Strip. The Chadians took the base on September 5, 1987, having launched a surprise attack. The Libyans had been expected Chadian forces to attack Aouzou to try to take back that town, so were not expecting an assault on their air base, which was located well within Libya.

The battle or Maaten al-Sarra was the last battle of the conflict. Libya knew that it could not win on the ground, and without its air base it needed to cut its losses. The armed component of the dispute was over, with a ceasefire being signed a few days later, and the issue of the Aouzou Strip was taken to the International Court of Justice for resolution.

International Court of Justice

After the open conflict, Libya and Chad signed in August 1989 the Framework Agreement on the Peaceful Settlement of the Territorial Dispute, but were unable to come to a final resolution of the status of the Aouzou Strip even after several rounds of negotiations. The status of Aouzou went before the International Court of Justice at the request of both nations. Chad argued that the 1955 agreement gave them the territory, while Libya countered that a later agreement in 1972 gave it the territory. The ICJ "found that the boundary between Chad and Libya had been defined by the Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourliness. In March 1994 both governments agreed to be bound by the ruling of the ICJ and began working out the practicalities of implementing the ruling. All Libyan forces withdrew from the Aouzou Strip. Border posts were established. In theory, all of the landmines were to be removed but this seems to not be the case.

The United Nations was tasked with observing the Libyan withdrawal and restoration of normality to the Aouzou Strip. The United Nations Aouzou Strip Observer Group (UNASOG) was founded and verified that Libya had withdrawn from the region, thereby officially ending the conflict once the UNASOG approved that the operations had been completed (UN, 2001).

Analysis

Libya, under Qaddafi, held a view desiring broad-based Arab unity, but the Aouzou Strip is believed to be distinct from that sentiment. Qaddafi's policies with respect to Chad essentially were related to the agreement in 1972, to which Qaddafi was party. This gave Qaddafi a personal interest in the Aouzou Strip in particular, and that colored his involvement in the Chadian civil war and later on in Chad's domestic politics (Naldi, 1989). Libya, having tremendous oil wealth, was easily able to influence domestic affairs in Chad, a very poor country. Qaddafi tended to favor actors depending on their position about the Aouzou Strip, so it appears that this particular area of land was especially interesting to Qaddafi.

A number of reasons for this interest have been speculated, including exploration of the region for oil and uranium, or simply as a means to gain access to the African interior (Jacobs, 2011). While the former might have some logic, the latter seems particularly odd. The Aouzou Strip is in the middle of the desert, and can sustain little life beyond that of the nomadic Tebu peoples. It is, in essence, the gateway to nothing. Aouzou town is not connected to any paved roads -- there are none in the Strip -- and nor are there rivers or railways. From a transportation perspective, it is not an access point to Africa. Even in a geopolitical sense, where taking the territory might be construed as a foothold for future military expansion, the logistics of this are dubious, and claim to anything further would not flow from the Aouzou Strip. Even when Qaddafi was becoming involved in Chadian politics, that seemed to have more to do with Aouzou than a genuine desire to take over Chad.

Yet, Qaddafi was one of the major catalysts for the conflict. Aouzou was under Libyan control for most of the conflict. When France negotiated the "red line" with Libya, Aouzou and much of the rest of northern Chad was ceded to Qaddafi and his Chadian allies. It was only when Qaddafi broke a ceasefire in 1984, and angered his allies, that the Chadians turned against him with the help of the French (Jacobs, 2011). It has never been recorded what precisely Qaddafi did to cause this to occur, but it was sufficient to unify the other stakeholders in the region against him, leading to the Toyota War.

The role of France is another interesting dynamic. The Aouzou Strip Dispute was not, truly, a proxy war, but rather France entering halfheartedly into conflict with Libya. After France's colonies gained their independence, France has continued to maintain influence in those nations, including Chad. Poor and without significant resources, however, Chad received little French attention at the time. French colonies in general with left with stronger ethnic stratification, which was ultimately correlated with lower interethnic competition and fewer instances of ethnic conflict (Blanton, Mason & Athow, 2001). Thus, the French legacy in Africa was more in line with strong dictatorial leadership. While there were some ethnic and religious undertones to the civil war -- especially religious -- the conflict with Libya seemed more about territory.

France's intervention in the conflict, it could be argued, was necessary to help stabilize a conflict that was being dictated by external Libyan influence. It has been argued that stronger European presence, a kind of neo-colonialism, can bring stability to Africa's conflict zones (Pfaff, 1995). France was protecting its interests, but also supporting its allies from the south of the country against the Muslims. Thus, France was not initially going to side with the northern Chadians, until all Chadians united against Qaddafi. For its part, France had brokered the ceasefire that created the Red Line, and only lent its military support to the Chadians after Libya broke a ceasefire. The behavior of Mitterand in abandoning support for Chad after it seized Aouzou was curious, and could have brought the conflict back to the Red Line had the Chadians not been as creative in their strategy. France perhaps sought to not take sides too much, perhaps to appear on the side of law, but ultimately its soft support for Chad resulted in more casualties before the conflict was over, and France ceasing its air support premature, given that Aouzou was given to Chad by the ICJ, based on an agreement that France had made.

Ultimately, this conflict is curious in that it seemed to serve no real purpose. The Aouzou Strip seemingly has no strategic or monetary value. The conflict was being managed by France, with the north of Chad under Libya's control. The Chadian factions were weak throughout the conflict, vassals of either France or Libya for the most part. There was a paper disagreement, in terms of who owned the Strip, but ultimately the conflict was more about the people involved. When the dimension turned away from the different Chadian factions, it became apparent that there was some ego involvement from Qaddafi, as he believed that he had an agreement giving him the Aouzou Strip. Whether the Strip was supposed to be a bulkhead or a buffer is not entirely clear, but Qaddafi appeared to have personal involvement. Even after losing at Maaten al-Sarra, Libyan forces held Aouzou town until the final ICJ judgment and subsequent implementation agreement.

Conclusion

With no history of conflict between the primary belligerents, a battleground of no strategic or economic importance, and not even local tribal conflict undertones, the dispute over the Aouzou Strip has the overwhelming narrative of pointless conflict. Such conflicts often come down to personal factors. The territory had been subject of dispute for much of the 20th century, but with little genuinely at stake, there was no particular reason to engage in hot conflict over Aouzou. As a result, there were multiple agreements and negotiations between the parties, but open conflict over the region did not erupt until the late 1970s. It erupted in the context of the Chadian civil war, but Libya's involvement in that conflict was driven by Qaddafi and what he thought was an agreement giving Libya the Aouzou. The French always seemed to be reluctantly involved in the conflict, with rather soft support lent to Chadian forces and the deciding battle of the conflict fought without the French at all.

If one were to look for a cause, it might lie in the personal choice of Qaddafi. As dictator, he likely had little reason to score political points at home. Perhaps he needed to keep his military fresh, or perhaps he genuinely believed that there were uranium in Aouzou. Whatever the reason, the Libyans and their allies controlled the territory and could have kept it, had the Chadians not turned on Libya. Once that occurred, could have simply walked away, but there may have been some face-saving necessary. Yet, when Maaten al-Sarra was taken, face would have been lost anyway. Libya perhaps had bigger issues to attend to by that point. So the Aouzou Strip dispute goes down in history as, apparently, finished, an example of successful use of negotiation and mediated peace processes. But ultimately, it was a pointless conflict whose exact driving forces may not be entirely known.