Hissène Habré ( Ḥusaīn Ḥabrī, Chadian Arabic: ; ; 13 August 1942 – 24 August 2021), also spelled Hissen Habré, was a Chadian politician and convicted war criminal who served as the fifth president of Chad from 1982 until he was deposed in 1990.
A member of the Toubou ethnic group from northern Chad, Habré joined FROLINAT rebels in the first Chadian Civil War against the southern-dominated Chadian government. Due to a rift with fellow rebel commander Goukouni Oueddei, Habré and his Armed Forces of the North rebel army briefly defected to Felix Malloum's government against Oueddei before turning against Malloum, who resigned in 1979. Habré was then given the position of Minister of Defense under Chad's new transitional coalition government, with Oueddei as President. Their alliance quickly collapsed, and Habré's forces overthrew Oueddei in 1982.
Having become the country's new president, Habré created the National Union for Independence and Revolution (UNIR) as the country's sole legal party in 1984. His dictatorship was notorious for widespread human rights abuses by his secret police, the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS). He was brought to power with the support of France and the United States, who provided training, arms, and financing throughout his rule due to his opposition to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. He led the country during the Libyan-Chadian conflict, culminating in victory during the Toyota War from 1986 to 1987 with French support. He was overthrown three years later in the 1990 Chadian coup d'état by Idriss Déby and fled into exile in Senegal.
In May 2016, Habré was found guilty of human-rights abuses, including rape, sexual slavery, and ordering the killing of 40,000 people by an international tribunal in Senegal in collaboration with the African Union and sentenced to life in prison. He was the first former head of state to be convicted for human rights abuses in the court of another nation. He died on 24 August 2021, after testing positive for COVID-19.
Early life Habré was born in 1942 in Faya-Largeau, northern Chad, then a colony of France, into a family of shepherds. He was a member of the Anakaza branch of the Daza Gourane ethnic group, which is itself a branch of the Toubou ethnic group.Sam C. Nolutshungu, Limits of Anarchy: Intervention and State Formation in Chad (1996), page 110. After primary schooling, he obtained a post in the French colonial administration, where he impressed his superiors and gained a scholarship to study in France at the Institute of Higher International Studies in Paris. He completed a university degree in political science in Paris, and returned to Chad in 1971. He also obtained several other degrees and earned his Doctorate from the Institute. After a further brief period of government service as a deputy prefect, he visited Tripoli and joined the National Liberation Front of Chad (FROLINAT) where he became a commander in the Second Liberation Army of FROLINAT along with Goukouni Oueddei. After Abba Siddick assumed the leadership of FROLINAT, the Second Liberation Army, first under Oueddei's command and then under Habré's, split from FROLINAT and became the Command Council of the Armed Forces of the North (CCFAN). In 1976 Oueddei and Habré quarreled and Habré split his newly named Armed Forces of the North (Forces Armées du Nord or FAN) from Goukouni's followers who adopted the name of People's Armed Forces (Forces Armées Populaires or FAP).R. Buijtenhuijs, "Le FROLINAT à l'épreuve du pouvoir", p. 19
Habré first came to international attention when a group under his command attacked the town of Bardaï in Tibesti, on 21 April 1974, and took three Europeans hostage, with the intention of ransoming them for money and arms. The captives were a German physician, Christoph Staewen (whose wife Elfriede was killed in the attack), and two French citizens, Françoise Claustre, an archeologist, and Marc Combe, a development worker. Staewen was released on 11 June 1974 after significant payments by West German officials. Combe escaped in 1975, but despite the intervention of the French Government, Claustre (whose husband was a senior French government official) was not released until 1 February 1977. Habré split with Oueddei, partly over this hostage-taking incident (which became known as the "Claustre Affair" in France).
Rise to power In August 1978 Habré was given the posts of Prime Minister of Chad and Vice President of Chad as part of an alliance with Gen. Félix Malloum. However, the power-sharing alliance did not last long. In February 1979 Habré's forces and the national army under Malloum fought in N'Djamena. The fighting effectively left Chad without a national government. Several attempts were made by other nations to resolve the crisis, resulting in a new national government in November 1979 in which Habré was appointed Minister of Defense. However, fighting resumed within a matter of weeks. In December 1980 Habré was driven into exile in Sudan. In 1982 he resumed his fight against the Chadian government. FAN won control of N'Djamena in June and appointed Habré as head of state.
Rule
Habré ruled Chad from 1982 until Idriss Déby deposed him in 1990. His one-party regime was characterized by widespread human rights abuses and atrocities. Habré denied killing and torturing tens of thousands of his opponents, although in 2012, the United Nations' International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Senegal to put him on trial or extradite him to face justice overseas.
Following his rise to power Habré created a secret police force known as the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), under which his opponents were tortured and executed. Some methods of torture commonly used by the DDS included burning the body of the detainee with incandescent objects, spraying gas into their eyes, ears and nose, forced swallowing of water, and forcing the mouths of detainees around the exhaust pipes of running automobiles. To track dissidents who had fled Chad, the DDS also collaborated with the Israeli, Central African, Togolese, Zairian, Ivorian and Cameroonian secret services, collectively known as the réseau mosaïque. Habré's government also periodically engaged in ethnic cleansing against groups such as the Sara, Hadjerai and Zaghawa, killing and arresting group members en masse when it was perceived that their leaders posed a threat to the regime.
Habré fled, with $11 million of public money, to Senegal after being overthrown in 1990. He was placed under house arrest in 2005 until his arrest in 2013. He was accused of war crimes and torture during his eight years in power in Chad, where rights groups say that some 40,000 people were killed under his rule. Human Rights Watch claims that 1,200 were killed and 12,000 were tortured, and a domestic Chadian commission of inquiry claims that as many as 40,000 were killed and that more than 200,000 were subjected to torture. Human Rights Watch later dubbed Habré "Africa's Pinochet.""Africa's Pinochet" or the beginning of "Africa's solutions"? Al Jazeera
War with Libya
Libya invaded Chad in July 1980, occupying and annexing the Aozou Strip. The United States and France responded by aiding Chad in an attempt to contain Libya's regional ambitions under Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi.
In 1980, the unity government signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with Libya. The treaty allowed the Chadian government to call on Libya for assistance if Chad's independence or internal security was threatened. The Libyan army was soon assisting the government forces, under Goukouni, and ousted FAN from much of northern Chad, including N'Djamena on 15 December. Libyan troops withdrew in November 1981. Without their support, Goukouni's government troops were weakened and Habré capitalized on this and his FAN militia entered N'Djamena on 7 June 1982. In 1983, Libyan troops returned to Chad and remained in the country, supporting Goukouni's militia, until 1988.
Despite this victory, Habré's government was weak, and strongly opposed by members of the Zaghawa ethnic group. A rebel offensive in November 1990, which was led by Idriss Déby, a Zaghawa former army commander who had participated in a plot against Habré in 1989 and subsequently fled to Sudan, defeated Habré's forces. The French chose not to assist Habré on this occasion, allowing him to be ousted; it is possible that they actively aided Déby. Explanation and speculation regarding the reasons for France's abandonment of Habré include the adoption of a policy of non-interference in intra-Chadian conflicts, dissatisfaction with Habré's unwillingness to move towards multiparty democracy, and favoritism by Habré towards U.S. rather than French companies with regard to oil development. Habré fled to Cameroon, and the rebels entered N'Djamena on 1 December 1990; Habré subsequently went into exile in Senegal.
Support of the U.S. and France
The United States and France supported Habré, seeing him as a bulwark against the Gaddafi government in neighboring Libya. Under President Ronald Reagan, the United States gave covert CIA paramilitary support to help Habré take power and remained one of Habré's strongest allies throughout his rule, providing his regime with massive amounts of military aid.U.S.-Backed Chadian Dictator Hissène Habré Faces War Crimes Trial in Historic Win for His Victims. Democracy Now! 2 July 2013. The United States also used a clandestine base in Chad to train captured Libyan soldiers whom it was organizing into an anti-Qaddafi force.
"The CIA was so deeply involved in bringing Habré to power I can't conceive they didn't know what was going on," said Donald Norland, U.S. ambassador to Chad from 1979 to 1981. "But there was no debate on the policy and virtually no discussion of the wisdom of doing what we did."
Documents obtained by Human Rights Watch show that the United States provided Habré's DDS with training, intelligence, arms, and other support despite knowledge of its atrocities. Records discovered in the DDS' meticulous archives describe training programs by U.S. instructors for DDS agents and officials, including a course in the United States that was attended by some of the DDS' most feared torturers. According to the Chadian Truth Commission, the United States also provided the DDS with monthly infusions of monetary aid and financed a regional network of intelligence networks code-named "Mosaic" that Chad used to pursue suspected opponents of Habré's regime even after they fled the country.
In the summer of 1983, when Libya invaded northern Chad and threatened to topple Habré, France sent paratroops with air support, while the Reagan administration provided two AWACS electronic surveillance planes to coordinate air cover. By 1987 Gaddafi's forces had retreated.
"Habré was a remarkably able man with a brilliant sense of how to play the outside world," a former senior U.S. official said. "He was also a bloodthirsty tyrant and torturer. It is fair to say we knew who and what he was and chose to turn a blind eye."
Legal proceedings Allegations of crimes against humanity Human rights groups hold Habré responsible for the killing of thousands of people, but the exact number is unknown. Killings included massacres against ethnic groups in the south (1984), against the Hadjerai (1987), and against the Zaghawa (1989). Human Rights Watch charged him with having authorized tens of thousands of political murders and physical torture. Habré had been called "the African Pinochet," in reference to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Habre would personally sign death warrants and oversee torture sessions, and was accused of personally participating in torture and rape. According to some leading experts, the tribunal that judges him constituted an "internationalized tribunal", even if it is the most 'national' within this category".