Suchergebnisse

On the last nigh of November 1990, the city of N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, was on edge. President Hissene Habre was in power -- but the vice was closing. Rebels were converging on the city in Toyota pickup trucks mounted with machine guns and packed with fighters. Throughout the 1980s, the man the CIA had dubbed the 'quintessential desert warrior' had been the centerpiece of the Reagan administration's covert effort to undermine Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi, who had become an increasing threat and embarrassment to the US with his support for international terrorism. Despite persistent and increasingly alarming reports of extrajudicial executions, disappearances, and prison abuse carried out by Habre's regime, the CIA and the State Department's Africa bureau had secretly armed Habre and trained his security service in exchange for the dictator's commitment to ruthlessly pound the Libyan troops then occupying northern Chad. Habre killed some 10,000 Libyan soldiers, but Qaddafi remained in power for another two decades. Adapted from the source document.