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Whether the French presence will be sufficient to create a stalemate in the seven-week-old war will depend on what Gaddafi does next. Western intelligence sources put the number of Libyan troops in Chad at 2,500, while Goukouni has perhaps 3,000 men in his ragtag army. But those combined ground forces are backed by aircraft and heavy weapons, including as many as 400 tanks and armored vehicles on the outskirts of Faya-Largeau, which the government of Chad is unable to match. The Libyan air force has a base for its fighters in the Aozou Strip and at least one squadron of Soviet-built Tupolev-22 bombers based at Sabha in central Libya.
On the other hand, a Libyan ground offensive would be extremely difficult to carry out; the roads are bad in the best of times and impassable in heavy rain. The hope of most Western observers in N'Djamena is that Gaddafi will be content to occupy the northern third of Chad and press for a new Chadian government that would be more to his liking. In a television interview late last week, Gaddafi blandly denied that he was providing the Chadian rebels with anything but "moral" support, and called for negotiations between the rival forces in Chad.
Given Habré's hatred of Goukouni and the Libyans, the Chadian President would be disinclined to negotiate with either. But with a third of his army lost, his fate is as closely bound to the decisions of his foreign mentors as Goukouni's is to the whims and ambitions of Gaddafi.
If the Libyans and the rebels push southward, as they appear ready to do, and if the French avoid direct involvement in the conflict, Habré's government will surely fall. On the other hand, if Gaddafi should decide to keep his troops in northern Chad, the country could face de facto partition. That might be a relatively painless solution to the present crisis, but it would set a dangerous precedent for an unstable continent where the rule has long been to honor the boundaries inherited from colonial times. —By William E. Smith. Reported by John Borrell/N'Djamena and Thomas A. Sancton/Paris