Chad Grapples With Militants

Tides of Turmoil: Chad Grapples with Militants, a Refugee Crisis, and Land Fights Chad Kiskawa Dine used to be a village in the Lake Chad region in western Chad. Now, it is a ghost town, torn apart by floods and attacks by militants. “We lived peacefully, but as the water rose, Boko Haram’s attacks by canoe increased in the region. So, one morning in December 2024, we decided to flee,” Mahamat Abakar Sidick, the former chief of the village, told Le Monde. “That very evening, the jihadists took over our hamlet, then the army came and burned everything (to drive them out). The Chadian soldiers control the land, but the terrorists rule the water.” Communities along the banks of Lake Chad are among the main targets of Boko Haram, an insurgent group that formed in northeast Nigeria in the early 2000s, aiming to impose a strict form of Islam in the region, Le Monde noted. It is also very active across Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, which all border Lake Chad. Military operations carried out by the countries bordering Lake Chad weakened the insurgency but did not eradicate it. In Chad, however, the group thrives by “taxing” those in the region, or forcing them to pay ransom for kidnapped family members. At the same time, Boko Haram and its Islamic State offshoot, the Islamic State – West Africa Province (ISWAP), battle for control of the area, leaving residents caught in the middle. Residents say the real danger is the vacuum left by security forces – a gap in which rival insurgents, not the state, now set the terms of daily life, the African Report wrote. Analysts attribute the failure to eradicate Boko Haram to the fact that in Chad’s Lake province, where half of the population lives below the poverty line, the promise of a steady income enabled the insurgency to attract young people otherwise with no prospects, fueling its endless war and highlighting the government’s inability to secure jobs for the region’s youth. Climate change also plays a role in this conflict, they add: As water levels rise in some parts of the Lake Chad region, flooding farmlands, it becomes easier for jihadists to move around. Meanwhile, Boko Haram launches its attacks from difficult terrain, like forests, mountains, and swamps, where regular armies struggle to intervene effectively. “This security vacuum is the space in which Boko Haram’s parallel governance and illicit economy thrive, making the crisis a truly regional one that no single country can solve alone,” Richard Atimniraye Nyelade from Ottawa University wrote in the Conversation. “The result is a conflict system that crosses borders, mixes ideology with profit, and outlasts purely military responses.” Climate-related insecurity is also fueling herder and farmer conflicts in southern Chad, where land and water scarcity, climate degradation, and population growth are intensifying competition for natural resources, Amnesty International explained. A new Amnesty International report described seven episodes of violence between herders and farmers between 2022 and 2024 that left at least 98 people dead and more than 100 injured, and destroyed more than 600 homes in four provinces. According to the report, higher temperatures, desertification, and shrinking pasturelands in central Chad pushed herders to settle in southern provinces, where grazing conditions are better, JURISTnews explained. Farmers, facing declining soil fertility and seeking to expand cultivated areas, often encroach on herders’ corridors, restricting access to pastures and water. Many clashes, like one in Sandana in February 2022, are triggered by herders’ cattle entering farmland. “We have lost everything: our fields, our houses, our animals,” a victim in Sandana told Amnesty International. The report added that many clashes are fueled by “neo-herders” – military leaders and entrepreneurs who buy large herds. Amnesty also warned that weak government responses, with authorities intervening too late or not at all, and widespread impunity for perpetrators are increasing tensions and driving reprisal attacks. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, in eastern Chad, eight-year-old Mousa Bakr, a Sudanese refugee from el-Fasher, plays football with a sock ball while staying at the Tine transit refugee camp. Mousa escaped the ongoing conflict in Sudan between the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which created the world’s worst displacement crisis. More than four million Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries since the start of the civil war in April 2023, including 1.2 million to Chad. Tens of thousands more are believed to be waiting to enter eastern Chad, where about a third of the country’s 21 million people already need humanitarian assistance, Al Jazeera reported. The large number of refugees has exacerbated competition for food, shelter, and water, leading to occasional disputes between refugees and locals over dwindling supplies. The influx has driven down wages, especially in domestic work, doubled rents, and worsened unemployment and poverty, in turn increasing crime, insecurity, and xenophobia, with many residents blaming newcomers for rising costs and scarce jobs, the International Crisis Group explained. “Even before the 2023 violence, Chad was struggling with shortages of health workers, hospitals, and supplies,” Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris explained. “The arrival of hundreds of thousands since then has exerted significant pressure on a system that was almost grinding to a halt.”