HUNDREDS of people staged a rally in N’Djamena on Friday to support a Chad government call last week to scrap military cooperation with former colonial power France.
Up to 500 people carrying placards that read “bar France” gathered at the N’Djari stadium draped in the country’s colours, an AFP journalist said.
“After 60 years of cooperation, we don’t need the French military, we have an army, we can defend our country,” Abdel daim Abdallah Ousmane, secretary general of the Higher Council for Islamic Affairs, told AFP at the protest.
“Our demonstration is peaceful. We are not France’s enemy and France is not an enemy of Chad,” he added.
The demonstration was approved by authorities. Rallies in the streets of the capital were forbidden, although authorities did not prevent small groups from gathering.
A first demonstration of hundreds took place Thursday in the eastern commercial hub of Abeche, according to the Chad Infos public broadcaster.
France has about 1,000 troops in its last military foothold in the Sahel. But Chad announced on November 28 a decision to end a defence accord with Paris mainly dating from independence in 1960.
A special committee organised to oversee the “historic mission” of ending the accord met for the first time Thursday, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.
The end of the accord “marks a firm determination to regain sovereignty in national defence matters”, the statement said.
It also reflects waning French influence in the region.
France was forced in 2022 and 2023 to remove troops from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger after military takeovers there that have seen the countries become closer to Russia.
Chad’s leader General Mahamat Idriss Deby has also sought closer ties with Moscow in recent months, but talks to strengthen economic cooperation have yet to bear concrete results.
The landlocked nation faces a potent threat from Boko Haram and other militant groups.