https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChadNot to be confused with the Romanian FlagYet another officially Francophone African state of which I know nothing. Even less than the Central African Republic, which at least had the blandness of its name and Bokassa (I admit it, I admit it, the rest of the article was cribbed off Wikipedia as I will do so here). Chad is one of those states which stretch across the Sahel like Mali and Niger. Like those two countries, both also former French colonies, the country size gives no indication of its population density. The north is covered by the Sahara Desert and is thus very spacious. The three northern regions have only about 300,000 inhabitants but take up about a third of the country's 1.3 million square kilometers. The density is in all the south, although this is still a very empty country. Only 10 million inhabitants (the median age is in teens, as typical in Sub Saharan Africa) for all that space, larger than France and Spain combined. It is one of the poorest nations of the world despite or perhaps because of the fact that 96% of its exports are of oil. Subsistence agriculture and nomadic herding are still very common here. The division of North and South is strengthened by religion with 55% of the population being Muslim (mostly in the north) and 45% being Christian or other, primarily in the south. This is combination to there also being about 200 different ethnic groups. Historically the country started from a typical African pattern but has been more violent and unstable than most. The initial postcolonial regime (independence in 1960) was authoritarian, anti-democratic and favoured the ethnic group of President Francois Tombalbaye, the Sara from the south, over the rest of the country. Rebellion broke out and he was overthrown in a military coup. The military tried to deal with the rebels but were unsuccessful and a much larger civil war broke out. This eventually led to the rebels, who were primarily Northerners, take power in 1982 under Hisséne Habré. Habré's regime was even more tyrannical than Tombalbaye's and has been accused of atrocities and attempted ethnic cleansing against many Southern ethnic groups such as the Sara (24% in 2013), Hadjarai (6.7% in 2013) and the smaller Zaghawa. This is despite some of these groups being Muslims, like Habré. He also tortured and brutally murdered those suspected or found guilty of collaborating with Libya, who was frequently at war with the country at the time, regularly occupying the northern third of the country. Meanwhile the country was still at war with various internal factions representing different groups. In 1990 Habré was overthrown in a coup by Idriss Deby, a Zaghawa general in Habré's army, with support from Libya and France. In his first years in power several coups and uprisings were attempted by a veritable alphabet soup of rebel groups, none were successful but great violence continued. Deby has been accused of all the things African dictators get accused of: corruption, consistent violation of human rights, torture, regular use of violence to solve political problems, favouritism towards his ethnic group and rigging elections in his favour. This intensified from 2005 onwards with war breaking out with Sudan over the Darfur issue and Sudan's hegemonic intentions over the region. This saw a great strengthening of the rebel groups wanting to overthrow Deby. They came close to 2008 to seizing the capital, N'Djamena but were eventually repulsed. The Sudanese element of the war ended in 2010 with Deby very much still in power. He remains there in 2015 still supported by France (though the French supported Habré too for the same reasons) and the outside as a token of stability in a country that is nearly always very close to failed state status.
Below is a map of the various dialects of the Arabic language. Standard Arabic is the official language of 27 countries (more than any other language apart from English and French) and one of these is Chad (Chad also has French as official). However, spoken Arabic is divided into several dialects not all which of intelligible with each other. In Chad, the particular dialect spoken, called Chadian Arabic, is seen as particularly distinct from the other Arabic dialects spoken in the Sahel and the Maghreb. Chadian Arabic is the main trade language spoken in the country, although it exists along with tens of other languages, as in other states. About 50% of Chad's 10 million population speaks Chadian Arabic. Chadian Arabic is also spoken in a small part of North Eastern Nigeria.
