Dying from wounds suffered as he directed the fightback against rebels who had swept south across the Sahara from their Libyan safe haven, Chad’s President Idriss Déby Itno was a soldier to the last.
The manner of his death was in keeping with a career that had begun in the officer corps, accelerated by a stint at the École de Guerre defence college in France. Later, he launched his own revolt, to depose the dictator Hissène Habré in 1990.
Ever since, he had ruled with a strongman’s firm hand. Chad had the formal structures of a multi-party democratic state. But real power was concentrated firmly at the top, and Déby brooked no serious opposition over his three decades in power.
And several times he faced down rebellions, sometimes helped by the military intervention of his ally France – which maintains a major regional base in the Chadian capital N’Djamena.
