PROSECUTING HISSENE HABRE: ESTABLISHING A FACTUAL BACKGROUND OF THE RISE, RULE AND FALL OF HISSENE HABRE

Bridget Rhinehart*

Nearly 25 years after the fall of Hissène Habré and his regime, the fear, oppression and widespread violations of human rights endured by Chadians from 1982 to 1990 may now come to light. This paper contextualizes the judicial proceedings against Hissène Habré through the pre- and post-colonial landscape that shaped to Habré’s rise to power and by establishing a relevant factual background of the events that took place and alleged crimes committed from 1982 to 1990 under the Hissène Habré regime.

1. – a Country Overview

Chad is a landlocked central African nation home to just over 11 million people.1 The capital of Chad, N’Djamena, is located in Central to Southwest Chad and is home to more than one million people, leaving the remainder of Chad largely rural.2 The official

* Program Manager in humanitarian response at Save the Children USA, Washington, D.C. (U.S.A.). This paper was written during a research assistantship at the Arcadia Center for East African Studies in Arusha (United Republic of Tanzania) in 2011 and recently updated for the purpose of this publication.

1 United Nations, “World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision,” Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat (http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm). 2 United Nations, “Chad,” United Nations Statistics Division Country Profiles (http://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crName=CHAD).

A.A. YUSUF (ed.), African Yearbook of International Law, 343-374. © 2014 African Foundation for International Law, Printed in The Netherlands. 344 Bridget Rhinehart are French and , although the Nilo-Saharan language, Sara, is widely spoken in the South.3 The religious composition is Muslim (55%), Christian (35%) and Animist (10%).4 Having gained independence from in 1960, Chad has struggled with political, social and economic development. It remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with 55% of the population living below the poverty level and 36% in extreme poverty, many of whom are concentrated in rural areas.5 As of 2013, Chad ranked 184 out of 187 on the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI), with no recorded growth on the HDI scale from 1980 to 2000.6 Prior to 2002, Chad’s economy was primarily agricultural with an extremely low GDP of US $225 per capita. Much of the development in Chad’s economy in recent years is attributed to the growth of the oil industry since 2003. Pertinent to the political history of Chad, is its extraordinary range of ethnic diversity, with more than 200 ethnic and linguistic groups.7 These ethnic groups can be divided into three zones through Northern, Central and Southern Chad. The Toubou (also known as the Gorane), Hissène Habré’s ethnic background, and the Zaghawa live in the Saharan North and are known for their important part in Chad’s civil war (1965-79). The Toubou can be divided into “two politically important”8 groups – the Teda Toubou (Northwest) and the Daza Toubou (Central-North). The second group, the Zaghawa are a nomadic tribe that span across the Chad- border and are known for their part in the rebellion that overthrew Habré and as current

3 D.D. Cordell, “The Society and Its Environment,” in Th. Collelo (ed.), Chad: A Country Study, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990, pp. 33-86, esp. p. 54. 4 U.S. Department of State on Chad. 5 World Bank, “Chad” (http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/external/countries/africa ext/chadextn/0). 6 United Nations, Human Development Statistical Tables, United Nations Human Development Reports (http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/). 7 R. Silva, J. Klingner and S. Weikart, State Coordinated Violence in Chad under Hissene Habré, Report by Benetech’s Human Rights Data Analysis Group to Human Rights Watch and the Chadian Association of Victims of Political Repression and Crimes, February 2010, p. 9 [hereinafter State Violence] (http://www.hrdag.org/about/chad.shtml). 8 J. Fearon and D. Laitin, “Chad” Stanford University (July 2006) p. 2 [hereinafter Fearon and Laitin].