Dara - HRI

CHAD

A City’s Survival Instinct

Ana Romero

“Now they sell gasoline in N’djamena as if it were syrup,” says Abdelkhader, a taxi driver in the Chadian capital as he walks past a man sitting in the shade of a tree on the side of the road. Around him are cans and bottles of many different shapes and sizes. The taxi stops next to him and he empties the contents of one of the containers in the car’s gas tank. This has become the city’s version of gas stations after the limited number of operational gas stations were destroyed in one of the incidents of February this year.

The weekend of February 1st and for several days, the rebels had the city in suspense as they tried to bring down the current president, Idriss Déby, who had been in the government since 1990.

After urgently evacuating all foreigners living in the country, the rebels were driven back and they withdrew, but the effects of these three days are still highly visible today in the streets of N’djamena. Apart from causing the fleeing of more than 30,000 Chadians, who sought refuge in nearby Cameroon, thousands of homes were destroyed, 3,000 families became homeless, and the city’s extremely limited new buildings suffered attacks, assaults and robberies. Thousands of injured and hundreds of deaths were also brought about by these chaotic hours.

The city is in the process of recovering - the need to survive means overcoming obstacles - and gasoline continues to be sold. Although, it is sold in a way that seems ironic in a country where approximately 200,000 barrels of oil are currently extracted per day, making Chad one of the main oil producers of the continent.

Also, the presence of EU troops, EUFOR, can start to be perceived in the city streets. With a mandate for Chad and the Central African Republic, it has 3,700 soldiers from 14 different nationalities – although the majority is French – to provide protection for the local population and improve security in the country.

The Chadian population has endured a violent history since its independence in 1960, which was followed by 3 decades of civil war and several attempts by Libya to invade. On top of this, they now must also deal with the different internal conflicts that have emerged, which have caused close to 200,000 internally displaced and more than 300,000 Sudanese refugees in the east and Central African refugees in the south. This makes the population strong and accustomed to surpassing difficulties. That’s why they have recovered an old method to continue selling gasoline; as if it were syrup.

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