The Third World War: The Untold Story

Violence was no stranger to the African scene, as we shall see if we examine what was happening elsewhere during the early 1980s. Much of this violence had occurred because Libya had attempted to set up a Saharan hegemony to incorporate Chad, Niger and the Sudan, and even to link up with Ethiopia, so that Egypt could be encircled and isolated. Fortunately for Libya, and indeed for that part of Africa as a whole, things did not develop exactly as the Libyan leadership had planned. In the first years of the 1980s, however, if revolutionary zeal, large oil revenues, weak, irresolute or distracted neighbours and unlimited arms supplies from the Soviet Union could be said to be the right ingredients for indulging insatiable ambition, Libya was clearly on to a good thing. Chad had an army of three infantry battalions and a few guns and mortars; Niger had an even smaller army, but was still rich in uranium; Sudan, it was true, had respectably sized armed forces, but many of them were deployed in the troublesome southern areas of the country and to the east near the border with Ethiopia, both to maintain security there and to keep an eye on Eritrean guerrillas. In any event, Sudan's 250 tanks and forty combat aircraft looked puny enough compared with Libya's estimated strength of 3,000 tanks and over 400 MiGs and Mirages. Moreover the air mobility lent to Libya's twenty-five battalions of infantry, Pan-African Legion and Moslem Youth by the transport squadrons of Hercules aircraft and over 100 troop-lifting helicopters would make easy the concentration of superior forces against Sudan.

Libya had soon recovered from the temporary setback in Chad at the beginning of 1982 when the OAU peacekeeping force had replaced its own troops there. The Libyan regime persuaded those who controlled the principal Arab tribes in Chad to form an uneasy alliance with the leader of the main rebel forces in the eastern provinces near the Sudanese frontier. Thus with two of the three private armies on its side, Libya was still able to deploy some of its own troops at Abeche and continue to harass the Sudanese, all with a view to subverting the rule of Sudan's President. This subversion was directed not only from Chad but also from Ethiopia. To the west of Chad, Libya's sponsorship of the Tuaregs had resulted in continued fighting between its so-called Islam legions and Niger's small army.

All these manoeuvrings, designed to isolate Egypt and create Libyan hegemony over the Sahara, were brought to an end in 1983 as a result of action against Libya by Egypt itself which removed the Libyan military regime once and for all. The effect of its fall was generally beneficial. Libyan troops, who had not relished the experience or the prospect of being hideously and agonizingly mutilated by the savage tribesmen of Niger and Chad, were allowed to return home to the far more agreeable duties of garrisoning their own country. The Sudan-Chad border quarrels were patched up and the border itself policed by OAU patrols. Niger settled down under its military ruler, looking to Algeria and France for further assistance both with its security and its economy — indeed Libya's interference there had facilitated some degree of rapprochement between these two countries. Sudan was able to concentrate more on its internal difficulties in the south, while keeping an eye on the activities of Ethiopia and further cementing good relations with Egypt. Somalia's position was strengthened, while the Egyptian-Libyan axis, as we have seen in the last chapter, helped to give great impetus to growing Arab unity and a peaceful settlement in Palestine.