Chad's Army Accused of Burning Villages for the Gold of Tibesti

How many villages must burn before we call it a war? In Tibesti, in northwestern Chad, the answer is now measured in burned-out homes, families driven onto the desert tracks, and soldiers who will not come home.

Since October 14, the Chadian army has been fighting the Miski self-defense committee. The local militia says a new government offensive on Thursday targeted a camp of young sympathizers at Wadi Goubour, leaving at least one person lightly wounded. It also accuses soldiers of setting fire to and destroying the village of Batha. For its part, a military source, quoted on October 28, acknowledges at least 72 soldiers wounded since hostilities resumed. These figures have not been independently verified. Even so, they are enough to raise the question every Chadian citizen must ask: what is really happening in this province?

What is happening is a battle for control of a resource. Miski lies about 200 kilometers from Bardaï, the provincial capital, on the border with Libya and Niger. The self-defense committee holds the locality and refuses to let the state access its mineral wealth. The subsoil of Tibesti holds significant gold reserves, and across Africa we know what that means: when gold speaks, villages fall silent or disappear.

Let us look at the facts without distorting them. A state has every right to exercise its authority over its territory. It has no right to do so by bombing encampments, torching homes, and treating entire populations as an obstacle to be eliminated. The armed militia bears its share of responsibility for this escalation. But the army, because it holds the monopoly on legitimate force, bears a heavier one. When a village burns, it is not just a military position that falls. A social contract breaks.

We must also look at what is not being said. In Chad, transparency over mining revenues remains a blind spot. Who signs the exploitation contracts? Where do the royalties go? How much gold leaves Tibesti each year, and through which channels? When a country refuses to answer these questions, it makes room for suspicion, and then for violence. The militia says it is defending its region's resources. The state says it is defending its sovereignty. Yet neither seems willing to open its books, and it is civilians who pay the price.

Let us do the exercise of memory. Chad was governed for more than three decades by Idriss Déby Itno, who came to power by force of arms in 1990. After his death in 2021, power passed to a transitional military council led by his son, Mahamat Idriss Déby. A military succession, elections held under control, and today a war in the desert where the rules of the rule of law seem suspended. A power that has never truly placed its authority in the hands of ballot boxes and courts has little legitimacy in explaining to a valley in Tibesti why it must accept force.

Tibesti is not an empty territory. It is herders, traders, and families who live off scarce water and solidarity. When the army intervenes without transparency, without independent investigation, and without guarantees for civilians, the first victims are never the militia leaders. They are the women fleeing with their children and the young men arrested because they slept in the wrong camp. A generation is growing up with a single lesson: in this country, the rifle decides who deserves to exist and who may exploit the subsoil.

Yet there is another path, and Africa knows it. Botswana built much of its prosperity on diamonds by negotiating supervised mining partnerships, reinvesting the proceeds in education and health, and keeping relatively stable institutions. Mauritius built its growth on governance, transparency, and the rule of law. These models are not perfect, but they demonstrate a simple truth: mineral wealth does not condemn a people to war. The absence of rules and oversight does.

Here is what Chad must do, and quickly. First, a verifiable ceasefire, negotiated under credible mediation, with a public timetable and independent observers. Second, a transparent investigation into the allegations of the burning of Batha and all other reported abuses, with its findings published. Third, full publication of the mining contracts, the volumes of gold extracted, and the royalties collected, within the framework of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which Chad can join or whose implementation it can strengthen. Fourth, unimpeded humanitarian access for displaced civilians. Finally, genuine political dialogue with the Tibesti communities that recognizes their rights and their local revenues, because a peace imposed at gunpoint never lasts long.

And we, Chadian and African citizens, what must we demand? We must demand that deputies hold every mining contract to account. We must demand that the African Union and the ECCAS Commission send fact-finding missions, and that human rights organizations document the forced displacements. We must demand that the national press have access to the field, and that silence not be presented as a patriotic virtue. And we must reject the old reflex that says what is happening in the north is too far away, too complex, too complicated to concern us.

It is not complicated. A state that burns the villages of its own citizens to secure a gold mine has already lost the moral battle. A government that claims to speak for sovereignty must first prove that it serves the populations it governs, not the interests that strip them bare. State sovereignty is not measured by the number of tanks sent into the desert. It is measured by the trust it inspires in its citizens.

The wounded soldiers deserve care. The civilians of Batha deserve the truth. The children of Tibesti deserve a future not written in gunfire. So let us ask the question that makes people uncomfortable: when will we demand that the gold of Tibesti serve the Chadian people, and not the impunity of those who loot it?

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL