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A French physician at the hospital in N'Djamena, Dr. Jancovi Roue, said that only the wounded who appeared to have a good chance of surviving had been brought in. Said he: "The rest lie in the sun, often without water, and die. I have not seen a single stomach wound here because unless a man with such a wound is treated within twelve hours, he dies. There are virtually no medical facilities in the north, and even a relatively minor wound can become serious very quickly."
Dr. Roue pointed to a man whose body was swathed in white gauze bandages. "He is blind," the doctor said. "His eyeballs were burned out by phosphorus. He has nearly 300 other phosphorus burns on his body, but he will live." The patient, Alifa Ahmed, was the only victim of the Libyan phosphorus bombing to have been brought back from Faya-Largeau, but many other civilians and soldiers are believed to have died there of phosphorus burns. Ahmed himself was unable to describe his experience because he could not speak. In another ward, Moussa Mohammed, 22, spoke stoically of the rocket wound that had cost him his right leg. Said he: "In my tribe you are taught to endure life. We have known little else but war, and we fight because we have to fight."
Moussa's words go a long way toward explaining the continuing plight of his country, one of the poorest on earth (per capita income: $60 a year). Though it is almost twice the size of Texas, Chad has only 4.6 million people, roughly divided between the black Christians and animists of the south and the Muslims of the north. Even in colonial times, the French thought of the area as comprising two separate entities: the "Useful Chad" of the south, where enough rain fell on the savanna to support the growing of cotton and wheat, and the "Useless Chad" of the north, the Beau Geste country of sand dunes and desert outposts. Soon after Chad's independence from France in 1960, civil war broke out between the black southerners and Muslim northerners. The fighting has continued ever since, with only an occasional respite. But since 1979 the contest has been between two northern Muslim warlords, Goukouni Oueddei and Habré. Neither has ever been elected to national office; indeed, there have been no presidential elections in Chad since 1962.
Goukouni and Habré were allies in the Muslim war against the south, and in 1979, when the northerners seized power, Goukouni became President and Habré his Defense Minister. The two soon quarreled, and the power struggle has gone on ever since, with Libya usually backing Goukouni and France sometimes supporting Habré. In December 1980, Habré fled to the Sudan after failing to unseat the Libyan-backed Goukouni. Soon after that, Gaddafi announced that Libya would "merge" with Chad. Gaddafi withdrew his offer, as well as his troops, in late 1981 after France and several African countries expressed their disapproval. Even Goukouni was unenthusiastic, but the withdrawal of Libyan forces made him more vulnerable than he realized. In June 1982, Habré returned to Chad with his army, defeated Goukouni and sent him scurrying across the Chari River to Cameroon in a dugout canoe.