Chad (redirected from Tchad)

Chad (chăd, chäd), Fr. Tchad, officially Republic of Chad, republic (2005 est. pop. 9,826,000), 495,752 sq mi (1,284,000 sq km), N central Africa. Chad is bordered by the Central African Republic on the south, Sudan on the east, Libya on the north, and Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria on the west. Ndjamena is the capital and largest city. Administratively, there are 14 prefectures.

Land and People

The terrain in the south is wooded savanna; it becomes brush country near Lake Chad. The only important rivers are the Chari and the Logone, both of which flow into Lake Chad and are used for irrigation and seasonal navigation. Northern Chad is part of the Sahara Desert; areas of the mountainous Tibesti region there are 11,000 ft (3,353 m) high. The country has no railroads and few all-weather roads.

Chad comprises two distinct, and often hostile, population groupings. In the south, where the bulk of the population is concentrated, live sedentary agricultural peoples, including the Sara, Massa, Ngambaye, and Moundang; most are Christians, but some follow traditional religions. In the north are seminomadic and nomadic Muslim peoples, including Arabs, Tuareg, Hadjerai, Fulbe, and Toubou. French and Arabic are the official languages, but more than 100 languages and dialects are spoken throughout the country.

Economy

Chad's landlocked position, poor transportation network, inadequate natural resources, and ongoing political turmoil have severely hampered economic development. The economy is based primarily on sedentary subsistence agriculture and nomadic pastoralism. The best farming zone is in the south, where rainfall is sufficient for the cultivation of cotton and peanuts (the country's leading cash crops) for export and some subsistence crops, including millet, sorghum, rice, cassava, and yams. Cattle, sheep, goats, and camels are raised, and there is fishing in Lake Chad. During drought periods, Chad requires food aid to meet necessary levels.

Natron and uranium are the country's chief minerals, and petroleum is produced in the southern Doba basin, which is connected by pipeline with the Cameroonian port of Kribi. Industry is limited to food processing and the production of textiles and light consumer goods. Imports—largely machinery, transportation equipment, industrial goods, petroleum products, and foodstuffs—generally outweigh exports, mainly cotton, cattle, textiles, and fish. Chad is a member of the Franc Zone. Its chief trading partners are France and other European Union countries, Cameroon, and South Africa.

Government

Chad is governed under the constitution of 1995. The executive branch is headed by a president, who is elected by popular vote for a five-year term. Members of the 125-seat national assembly are popularly elected for four-year terms.

History

Traditionally, the region around Lake Chad was a focal point for trans-Saharan trade routes. Arab traders penetrated the area in the 7th cent. A.D. Shortly thereafter, nomads from North Africa, probably related to the Toubou, entered the region; they eventually established the state of Kanem, which reached its zenith in the 13th cent. Its kings converted to Islam, the religion also practiced by the successor state of Bornu. The Wadai and Bagirmi empires arose in the 16th cent.; they warred with Bornu and in the 18th cent. surpassed it in power. By the early 1890s all of these states, weakened by internal dissension, fell under the control of the Sudanese conqueror Rabah el Zobaír.

French expeditions advanced into the region in 1890, and French sovereignty over Chad was recognized by agreements among the European powers. In 1900, French forces defeated Rabah's army, and by 1913 the conquest of Chad was completed; it was organized as a French colony in French Equatorial Africa and remained under military rule. Chad was later linked administratively with Ubangi-Shari (now the Central African Republic), but in 1920 it again became a separate colony. It was granted its own territorial legislature in 1946. In the French constitutional referendum of 1958, Chad chose autonomy within the French Community. Full independence was attained on Aug. 11, 1960, with Ngarta Tombalbaye as the first president.

Tombalbaye steadily strengthened his control over the country, and by 1965 it had become a one-party state. Chad suffered severely from the W African drought of the late 1960s and 1970s. Discontent among northern Muslim tribes with the increasing power of Tombalbaye's southern-dominated government evolved into a full-scale guerrilla war in 1966. French troops helped battle the revolt, which ended in 1973. However, the main Muslim guerrilla group, the Chad National Liberation Front (FROLINAT), figured prominently in fighting between Chad and Libya throughout the 1970s and 80s. During this period, Libya occupied various parts of Chad and supplied FROLINAT (which initially did not oppose Libyan expansionism) with arms.

Tombalbaye was killed in a coup in 1975. In 1979 a coalition government headed by Goukouni Oueddei, a former rebel from the north, assumed power, ending control of the government by southern Chadians, but he was overthrown in 1982 by the forces of former prime minister Hissène Habré. In 1987, the combined forces of FROLINAT and the Chadian government (with French and U.S. military aid) drove Libya from the entire northern region with the exception of the Aozou Strip and parts of Tibesti; in 1994 the International Court of Justice rejected Libya's claims and returned the area to Chad.

In 1990, Idriss Déby, leader of the Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS), overthrew the government and promised democratic reforms and a new constitution. A national democracy conference in 1993 established a transitional government with Déby as interim president and called for free elections within a year. Armed rebel groups continued to challenge the government, which, for its part, repeatedly postponed the elections. Multiparty presidential elections were finally held in 1996; Déby was returned to office, and the MPS also triumphed in the 1997 legislative elections.

The late 1990s saw renewed fighting in the north and other parts of the country. The president was again returned to office in 2001 in a disputed election, and the following year the MPS again won the legislative elections. A peace accord was signed with rebels in the north in May, 2002, but fighting erupted there again in Jan., 2003. The same month the government signed a peace agreement with rebels in E Chad, and in the following December a new peace agreement was signed with the northern rebels.

Fighting between local rebels and government troops and militias in Darfur, Sudan, which began in early 2003, has driven tens of thousands of refugees into E Chad. There also have been clashes between Chad's army and the Sudanese militias, and Chad has accused Sudan of backing former Chadian rebels to fight against Sudanese rebels. Chad also has received refugees from the Central African Republic, 30,000 of whom fled a coup there in 2003 and smaller numbers that were displaced by banditry in 2005.

In May, 2004, Chad's national assembly approved a constitutional amendment that ended the two-term limit on the presidency, allowing Déby to run for a third term in 2006. The amendment was approved in a referendum in June, 2005. Desertions (Sept., 2005) from the Chadian army increased the number of rebels based in Darfur, and in December there was fighting between the rebels and the army in E Chad. Chad again accused Sudan of backing the rebels and called for international intervention in Darfur.

In Dec., 2005, the national assembly voted to allow the government to use oil revenues that were to be set aside, under an agreement with the World Bank, for poverty reduction projects and future uses. Chad said the change was necessary because of national financial difficulties, caused in part by the rebellion in the east. In response, the World Bank halted loans to Chad and froze a Chadian oil escrow account, but an interim agreement, reached (Apr., 2006) after Chad threatened to halt oil production, allowed Chad access to the escrow account. A new agreement on poverty reduction projects was signed with the World Bank in July. Oil revenues also were a source of friction with foreign consortium producing the petroleum. In Aug., 2006, Chad threatened two foreign companies with expulsion until they agreed to pay a renegotiated tax bill, and the president called for Chad to be a partner in the consortium.

Meanwhile, the assembly voted in Jan., 2006, to postpone its elections for a year, until 2007, citing financial problems as the reason. Some observers, however, believed that the real reason for the postponement was to assure Déby of support in the national assembly. An agreement (Feb., 2006) between Chad and Sudan that was intended to end cross-border incursions had little immediate effect on the fighting in the region. In Mar., 2006, government forces foiled a coup plot against Déby, whose position seemed increasingly uncertain. The following month Chadian rebels mounted a drive that reached into the capital before it was defeated.

Déby was reelected in May, but the opposition boycotted the vote and denounced the election and the official turnout figure of 61% as frauds. The security situation remained unstable, with continuing militia incursions from Sudan into Chad and attacks by Chadian rebels in Chad, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. In November, in the southeast, Chad also endured attacks by Arabs on non-Arab Chadians. That same month the government agreed to the stationing of a proposed UN peacekeeping force on its side of the Sudan border, but three months later the government said it would not allow any military peacekeepers to be stationed in its territory. The signing, in December, of a peace agreement with one group of rebels did not fundamentally alter Chad's deteriorated security situation. Fighting with the rebels continued sporadically into 2007. A clash with rebels in Apr., 2007, led to fighting between Chadian and Sudanese troops after Chadian forces crossed the border in pursuit of the rebels.

Bibliography

See H. D. Nelson, ed., Area Handbook for Chad (1972); J. A. Works, Pilgrims in a Strange Land: Hausa Communities in Chad (1976); M. P. Kelley, State in Disarray: Conditions of Chad's Survival (1986); T. Collelo, Chad: A Country Study (2d ed. 1990); S. C. Nolutshungu, Limits of Anarchy: Intervention and State Formation in Chad (1996); M. J. Azevedo and E. A. Nnadozie, Chad: A Nation in Search of its Future (1997); S. Decalo, Historical Dictionary of Chad (3d ed. 1997); M. J. Azevedo, Roots of Violence: A History of War in Chad (1998); J. M. Burr, Africa's Thirty Years' War: Chad, Libya, and the Sudan, 1963–1993 (1999).

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Chad

 officially Republic of Chad

Country, north-central Africa. Area: 495,755 sq mi (1,284,000 sq km). Population (2005 est.): 9,157,000. Capital: N'Djamena. The Sara are the largest ethnic group, making up about one-fourth of the total population; other groups include the Kebbi, Kanem-Bornu, Tangale, Fulani, and Gorane. Arabs, including a number of peoples, represent a single ethnic group. Languages: French, Arabic (both official), Fula, Sara. Religions: Islam, Christianity, traditional beliefs. Currency: CFA franc. The landlocked country's terrain is a shallow basin that rises gradually from the Lake Chad area in the west. The basin is rimmed by mountains, including the volcanic Tibesti Massif to the north, rising to 11,204 ft (3,415 m) at Mount Koussi. The lowest elevation, 573 ft (175 m), is in the Djourab Depression. Chad's river network is limited to the Chari and Logone rivers and their tributaries, which flow from the southeast into Lake Chad. The economy is agricultural; gold, uranium, and petroleum reserves have not been fully exploited. Chad is a republic with one legislative body; its chief of state is the president, its head of government the prime minister. About AD 800 the kingdom of Kanem was founded, and by the early 1200s its borders had expanded to form a new kingdom, Kanem-Bornu, in the north. Its power peaked in the 16th century with its command of the southern terminus of the trans-Sahara trade route to Tripoli. About this time the rival kingdoms of Baguirmi and Ouaddaï (Wadai) evolved in the south. In the years 1883–93 all three kingdoms fell to the Sudanese adventurer Rabih al-Zubayr, who was overthrown in 1900 by a local ruler under French protection. Extending their power, the French in 1910 made Chad a part of French Equatorial Africa, and it was made an overseas territory in 1946. The country achieved independence in 1960 but has had decades of civil war despite frequent intervention by France and Libya, resulting in political instability and a lack of economic development.

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A piece of paper that is punched out on a punch card, paper tape or on the borders of continuous forms. A chadded form is when the holes are cut completely through, which is typical of punch cards. In a chadless form or in chadless paper tape, the chads are still attached to one edge of the hole.

Chads on the Floor!
In the U.S. presidential election of 2000, people were up in arms over the extra chads on the floor where several Florida counties were recounting the vote. The punched holes (chads) are supposed to fall out of the cards when they are punched. The fact that some chads were still hanging but the additional handling caused them to fall away later was perfectly natural. Why nobody informed the officials that this was normal was as ridiculous as the antiquated voting equipment.

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(jargon, printer)

chad - /chad/ (Or "selvage" /sel'v*j/ (sewing and weaving), "perf", "perfory", "snaf"). 1. The perforated edge strips on paper for sprocket feed printers, after they have been separated from the printed portion. The term perf may also refer to the perforations themselves, rather than the chad they produce when torn. 2. (Or "chaff", "computer confetti", "keypunch droppings") The confetti-like bits punched out of punched cards or paper tape which collected in the chad box. One of the Jargon File's correspondents believed that "chad" derived from the chadless keypunch.