Currently over 400 Chadians have been detained in the streets of Libya for retaliating against the Libyan government due to poachers from Ajdabiya. In early September four men from Ajdabiya were arrested in Chad, convicted for entering the country illegally and poaching a rare species of antelope native to chad. This isn’t surprising considering Libya has been a part of the rising poaching problem going on in the north-eastern part of Chad for years, according to the UN Sudan and Libya killed over 4,000 elephants in Chad between 2002 and 2010. However, Chadians started to retaliate and protest the poaching directly to the Ajdabiyan Government soon after the poaching occurred. This protesting soon led to over 400 Chadians being arrested in the streets of the Libyan city by the Ajdabiya brigade, led by Ayoub Issa al-Ferjani. Libya’s forgein ministry has stated that they have started to negotiate with Chad in order to release the four men, claiming that they entered Chad ‘mistakenly’.
Chad and Libya have had a former history of fighting and clashing. Chad and Libya had a 9 year conflict from 1978-1987 that consisted of a series of military campaigns in chad. This conflict led to the 1978 Chadian civil war between the anti-Libyan chadian factions and the pro-Libyan chadian factions. In 1987 the Toyota war broke out on the border between Northern-Chad and Libya. The Toyota war led to a Chadiadian victory and Expulsion of Libyan forces in Chad. Since these conflicts the countries have been tense with each other and Chad has been strict when it comes to libya. Knowing this complicated history between the two countries gives you more insight into the situation at hand. When you apply the past of the two you can come to understand why the Chadians became so defensive over their territory and were willing to retaliate against the Libyan government and get arrested in order to protect their country’s name and land.
This article shows how two countries’ conflicting histories can still carry on in the people of that country. Even if the countries themselves have not had a recent conflict the people still remember the past. This relates back to the Russian and Ukrainian war that we’ve talked about in class. Russia believes they have an authority over Ukraine and is trying to take back what they believe is theirs because they owned the country once before. Chad is defensive over its territory and offensive when it comes to Libya because they don’t trust them due to their long standing conflicts.