A disputed presidential election in Chad last week is making few global headlines, but poses new risks to African and international efforts to reverse the Sahel region’s spreading instability, conflict and human displacement. Chad is centered in the world’s largest belt of military rule: six nations across Africa that have suffered armed coups since 2020. Among them, Chad is the first to hold elections to restore civilian rule. But a string of setbacks to a fully credible vote has yielded a contested result that risks further domestic conflict and a narrowing of popular legitimacy for the next government, led by the incumbent transitional president, Mahamat Idriss Deby.

Type: Analysis

Global Elections & Conflict

As military coups and violent insurgencies have spread across Africa’s Sahel over the past decade, U.S. policy has professed to recognize and address their interconnections across the region, notably through the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership. Yet this effort remains insufficient to meet the scale and complexity of the violence and the underlying failures of governance.

Type: Analysis

Violent Extremism

The United States has not traditionally viewed the Sahel as a region of vital interest, whether in terms of security or from an economic or business perspective. This has led to a pattern of reactive involvement shaped by the circumstances of specific events rather than proactive commitments. This pattern reveals the lack of a comprehensive strategy for the volatile Western Sahel region, which includes Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. In April 2022, President Joe Biden announced that the US government would advance the “U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability” in coastal West Africa by prioritizing a partnership with Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Togo.

Type: Report

Civilian-Military Relations;  Democracy & Governance;  Peace Processes;  Violent Extremism

Le 17 décembre, les Tchadiens voteront lors d'un référendum visant à approuver une nouvelle constitution pour le pays, près de trois ans après le début d'un processus de transition politique prolongé, parfois agité. On s’attend à ce que le référendum constitutionnel ouvre la voie à la candidature du Président Mahamat Déby aux élections présidentielles de 2024, après avoir dirigé le pays depuis 2021, et un ajustement du système de gouvernance tchadien vers un État unitaire non-fédéral, avec en théorie une décentralisation et autonomie territoriale plus accrue.

Type: Analysis

Democracy & Governance