SUMMARY

Since independence concessive governments in Chad have carried out atrocities against civilians. Usually people with the same ethnic belonging as any of the myriad of rebel groups opposing the government have been targeted in these attacks. Deliberate attacks against a certain ethnic group are used as a weapon to weaken the various rebel organizations and to strengthen its own power-base, which is usually made up of close ethnic kinsmen. Within the Government of Chad it is primarily the Army that has been the perpetrator of one-sided killings. Especially the presidential guard has carried out many of the attacks against civilians. The atrocities committed by the Chadian army include killing civilians as revenge for the coup attempts, attacking and burning of villages, and violent response to protests by students at the university in N’Djamena.

Even though most of the one-sided killings carried out by the Government of Chad has connections to armed rebellion, also deliberate attacks against civilians have taken place when there has not been any ongoing armed rebellion against the government, examples of such manner is extrajudicial and indiscriminate killings.

The Government of Chad first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 1990, when the one-sided violence resulted in at least 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached in April that year when troops attacked the town of Iriba.