Destination : CHAD

The Republic of Chad is a large landlocked country in west central Africa. Formerly a part of French Equatorial Africa, Chad became independent in 1960. Since then civil war and prolonged droughts have devastated much of the country, creating serious problems, including severe food shortages. The capital is the city of N'Djamena (pop.500,000 est.). Other major cities are :Moundou (pop. 120,000), Abeche, Sarh. The official languages are Arabic and French, however, less than 5% of the population understand or speak French. Arabic is widely used in the north and central regions with Sara widely spoken to the south.

Chad, part of France's African holdings until 1960, endured three decades of ethnic warfare as well as invasions by Libya before a semblance of peace was finally restored in 1990. The government eventually suppressed or came to terms with most political-military groups, settled a territorial dispute with Libya on terms favorable to Chad, drafted a democratic constitution, and held multiparty presidential and National Assembly elections in 1996 and 1997 respectively. In 1998 a new rebellion broke out in northern Chad, which continued to escalate throughout 2000. Despite movement toward democratic reform, power remains in the hands of a northern ethnic oligarchy.

There are more than 200 ethnic groups in Chad. Those in the north and east are generally Muslim; most southerners are animists and Christians. Through their long religious and commercial relationships with Sudan and Egypt, many of the peoples in Chad's eastern and central regions have become more or less Arabized, speaking Arabic and engaging in many other Arab cultural practices as well. Chad's southern peoples took more readily to European culture during the French colonial period.

Chad is a country of 495,800 square miles (1,284,000 square kilometers). In the Saharan territories of the north, the rugged granite uplands of the Tibesti mountains have extinct volcanic peaks that reach 11,204 feet (3,415 meters). The Ennedi and Wadai plateaus along the eastern border with Sudan have peaks that reach 1,969 feet (600 meters). To the south and west, the land slopes to the featureless plain of the Bodélé depression and the Lake Chad basin. Intermittent wadis, or streams, flow into the Bodélé, and Lake Chad sometimes overflows into the depression during the rainy season. The southern part of Chad is in the watershed of, or area that drains into, the Shari and Congo, or Zaire, rivers.

The northern two thirds of the country is in the hot arid Sahara desert. Most areas receive less than one inch (2.5 centimeters) of rainfall annually. On the southern edge of the Sahara is the Sahel, a band of hot, semiarid steppe, or treeless plain, that extends from the Atlantic coast across central Africa. Here rainfall averages 10 to 20 inches (25 to 50 centimeters) annually and long droughts followed by wetter periods are common. Droughts occur in the winter, and temperatures are higher than 32° F (0° C) throughout the year. In the southern part, an area of grassland and light woods with scrub underbrush, rainfall averages 20 to 40 inches (50 to 100 centimeters) annually. The average annual temperature at N'Djamena, the capital, is 82° F (28° C).

The Sahel is a fragile ecological zone that has many prolonged droughts. The most recent were from 1968 to 1972 and from 1978 to 1982. Because of increased demand for food, marginal lands have been cultivated, and livestock are grazed on smaller areas of poorer pasture. Extensive gathering of firewood adds to the deterioration. Widespread famine in the north has become common.

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