Page 180 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

THE WINTER OF ISLAM AND THE SPRING TO COME
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brought in to replace them. The former foreign minister was exiled,
and that same day the president gave the order for the arrest of the
chief justice, the minister of justice, the head of the Motherland
Association and many other prominent figures. They were brought
before the courts 35 days later. The court decided that the chief justice
should be removed from his post and exiled on the pretext that he was
not a citizen of the country. His goods were also to be seized. The
other detainees were to be kept in prison. The president then began
to use force and repression against the Islamic movement. That in
turn gave rise to a popular revolt in which a thousand people were
killed and many thousands injured. So-called special courts were
then established, and leaders of the Islamic movement and former
ministers were tried by these. Sentences ranging between 15 years to
life in prison were handed down. This atmosphere of unrest and in-
tolerance in Chad has survived down to the present day. 42

Israel's Role in Chad's Civil War
Political instability in the country grew when François
Tombalbaye, the head of state, was killed during a military coup in
1975, and the civil war that began in 1980 took on ever more serious di-
mensions. There were two sides in the conflict: the Muslims in the north
of the country, and Christians and other tribes with their own local reli-
gions in the Bantu area to the south. As in most Third World countries,
however, this was not actually a "civil" war at
all. Foreign powers actively supported the
combatants. Israel, always opposed to Islam,
headed the list of these foreign powers by
backing the Bantus in the south.
The leader of the northern Muslims was
Goukouni Oueddei. The interesting thing
though is that at the head of the southern
Christian-animist alliance was a so-called
Muslim, or rather a man of Muslim origins,
Hissène Habré Hissène Habré .