Chad, a country in north-central Africa, borders a lot of active geopolitical areas - Niger to the West, Libya to the North, Sudan to the East - but is scarcely discussed itself. I'm not really knowledgable enough to give anything like a decent history, but the recent gist is that the country was ruled for three decades by Idriss Déby until he was killed in battle in 2021 while fighting northern rebels. Idriss was part of a few wars - such as the one against Gaddafi in Libya, and also the Second Congo War. While he was initially elected democratically in 1996 and 2001, he then eliminated term limits and just kept on going.
After his death, Chad has been ruled by his son, Mahamat Idriss Déby. In early May 2024, elections began which were meant to result in the transition from a military-ruled goverment to a civilian-ruled one. Needless to say, Mahamat won the election - with 61% of the vote. Both father and son have been on the side of the French and the US, whereas the opposition is against foreign colonizers and has attempted to put pressure on the government in numerous ways to achieve a more substantial independence. France maintains a troop presence in Chad, and it's something of a stronghold for them - when French troops were forced out of Niger, they retreated to Chad. However, it's not clear even to the people inside Chad what precisely the French are doing there. I mean, we know what their presence is really for - imperialism and election rigging - but in an official sense, they don't seem to be doing much to help the country materially. What is clear is that they like to intervene on behalf of the ruling regime and against rebels a whole lot - the most interventions by France in any African country, in fact.
The United States, so keen on human rights and democracy in so many places around the world like Russia, Iran, and China, have - for some strange reason! - decided for the last 30 years that they can live with a couple dictators and wars in the case of Chad. In fact, various American state propaganda firms like the ISW and Washington Post have warned the current government about the Wagner Group interfering with the country and spreading anti-Western sentiments as in the rest of the Sahel.
Things are very tough for Chad. They are among the poorest countries in Africa and host about one million people fleeing from nearby conflicts, which is a pretty large number when Chad has a population of about 17 million.
With the French Empire fading, they are beginning to run out of places to retreat to in Africa. Macron, in January, said that his defense council had decided to reduce troop presence in Gabon, Senegal, and the Côte d'Ivoire, though has maintained troop levels in Chad and Djibouti. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet from France, anti-empire sentiments are boiling to the surface in New Caledonia/Kanaky, which is unfortunate for the French military as they really need that island, both for the massive nickel reserves, but also as an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Pacific just in case a conflict with China pops off.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Chad! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
I'd recommend looking at the comparative case of Zimbabwe, where the former settler colony of Rhodesia was liquidated more thoroughly than that of the case of South Africa in dismantling apartheid. This included a process of land reform that, while nowhere as successful and comprehensive as that in socialist states, still managed to touch on, what I'd call, the fundamental bottom line of Western imperialism in a way that was largely unprecedented in the whole African decolonial experience with just a few exceptions like Gaddafi's Libya and Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal.
In South Africa, the end of that obscenely vile system was a victory, but the issue I've come to realize over the years is that Western imperialism is an onion where there's layers and layers of "fluff" as defence before you peel back a layer that really touches the ultimate bottom line. It's like the Ukraine War where the West makes a stand right in the former heartland of the Soviet Union and plays it up as "existential" to them to obfuscate that there are so many layers of their defence that one could peel away before anyone reaches a fundamental bottom line for the Western existence, like the decolonization of Turtle Island. This is the real substance that 500 years of Western imperialism have accomplished.
To put it plainly, South African apartheid was a "nice to have" in terms of sustaining the interests of Afrikaaner settler colonialism but not a genuine "must have." That latter is the multi-generational socioeconomic entitlements they've carved out for themselves during the period of overt settler colonialism that the ANC largely have left untouched but which retains a significant amount of the Afrikaaner asymmetric power in South Africa. The portrayal in the West of the South African experience as an achievement that the Global South should be "satisfied with" to use as a role model serves to obfuscates that there needs to be socioeconomic redistribution and land reform to actually cross a genuine Afrikaaner red line.
In a sense it's like conceding that I can longer beat the shit out of you, but you still have to live out on the street while I occupy your former house. And even if I eventually let you in your former house, you can't go upstairs. And even if I eventually let you go upstairs, I still have the sole name on the property deed. And even if I eventually let you have your name on the property deed, I still control the finances. On and on, etc, until you reach the bottom line of finally being able to kick out the occupier from your house entirely.
Through this, the South African model is that you get to make out giving up some perversely lopsided entitlement like "I can't beat the shit out of you" as some great equalizer when there's still so much more to go before you genuinely are affected. The intent is to pile endless layers of extraneous concessions (and act like each one is existential) so that the real concession is impenetrable to reach. Even if reaching it is impossible, however, it should be still conceptualized in decolonial efforts what is truly the bottom line.
Land Reform in Zimbabwe
"Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myth and Realities" by Ian Scoones et al. (a neoliberal work which, while hilariously playing up the World Bank's support for land reform as "good-intentioned" and not disengenuous, is still overall useful) illustrates how the much maligned Zimbabwe government through its land reform process "highlighted one potential path for countries unable or unwilling to deal with the unequal inheritance of apartheid or colonialism." At first, there was the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement drafted with Britain, lasting for 10 years, which was played up as a "crucial capitulation" even though "no major agrarian reforms was on the cards; this was all going to be 'carefully planned,' designed to increase 'farming efficiency.'"
This was the song and dance of the endlessly layered "onion" of "concessions" put into practice, where there was a "all (i.e. 'including' Britain) acknowledged that land reform had to be a central plank of post-Independence policy, but options were severely constrained" 'c'est la vie-style' shrugging of shoulders skit by Britain. During this period, "the new government played by the rules, keen to gain international confidence and encourage 'reconciliation' with the white farming community" and "white farmers were seen as a 'protected species' for much of the early 1980s." At the end of the 80s when the Lancaster Agreement was set to expire, it was already clear "by the mid-1980s that the great plans for mass resettlement were not going to happen" and that there was "every sign that the British government is striving behind the scenes to perpetuate Lancaster House beyond April 1990 and so prevent significant land reform from taking place."
By 1998, the Mugabe government signed off the acquisition of 2m ha which, despite following 'fair market values' for compensation, "sent shockwaves through the diplomatic and aid communities," who "saw this as an aggressive act" and the typical "IMF threatened to withhold a tranche of new payments due in 1999" gimmick routine. This kicked off the "Jambanja" period of generally spontaneous and largely decentralized "land invasions" in a 2 year period of radical land reform by locals and war veterans, which the West is still unable to pin as either a "peasant-led movement" or "orchestrated by the top."
Even here, however, as of their report in 2010, the process in the large commercial agriculture sector went from, in 1980, "6000 farmers, nearly all of them white" to "2300 white-owned commercial farmers still operating." So, even Zimbabwe's land reform, which has been commonly portrayed as apocalyptic chaos in Western media and scholarship to dissuade other Global South countries from emulating it, still retained a significant legacy of settler colonial control after its most volatile phase. As such, the framing of such a narrative in the West for a country which, after 20 years of the British "we support your struggle, but it's complicated" pantomime act, decided to largely cut through to near the core of the concessional "onion" is therefore deliberate.
As such, the cause of Palestinian liberation is one that will need to contend with the same trap which South Africa was ensnared by and which the Zimbabwe example shows the agonizingly long process of both misdirection and slander involved in combatting it.
Scones, I. et al. 2010. "Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myth and Realities."
I mean Zimbabwe has not been a great success post Mugabe. There are over a million Zimbabweans living in South Africa right now because the socioeconomic situation is not great. That's 6-7% of the entirety of the Zimbabwean population living in South Africa and sending money home. If Zimbabwean unemployment was measured by the same criteria as South Africa measures it's unemployment, over 90% of Zimbabweans would be considered unemployed as they work in the informal economy or as subsistence farmers. There are more Zimbabweans living in South Africa than there are Zimbabweans employed in the formal Zimbabwean economy! Zimbabwe only produces 2.5 GW of electricity for an entire country of 16 million people. South Africa produces 40 GW for 60 million people, and still struggles with regular rolling electricity blackouts. Those aren't myths, those are the facts. I live in South Africa and know Zimbabweans desperately trying to provide for family back home, and better themselves.
This does not mean that policies like land reform are not needed, they desperately are. I'm saying that trying to make a comparison between South Africa and Zimbabwe in which the Zimbabwean route is preferred is not a great argument, when there are more Zimbabweans living in South Africa than there are Zimbabweans working in the formal Zimbabwean economy. There is plenty to criticize about the South African approach post apartheid, including how much power the white minority held onto and the sub-imperialist relationship between South Africa and it's neighbours. Policies like land reform and economic restructuring need to be done, but the pitfalls Zimbabwe experienced need to be avoided if possible. At the end of the day we exist in the current economic system and have to develop under it. China has had for instance, great success in developing under the conditions of global capitalism.
This is not a great argument. Land reform is a necessary step towards socioeconomic sovereignty but it does not guarantee economic prosperity. This is akin to blaming the hardships of Cuba's heroic revolutionary struggle to its own decision of committing to socialist land reform rather than the economic blockade by American imperialism in response to its national liberation. Ian Scoones et al.'s work, in fact, explicitly challenges the "myth" that "Zimbabwean land reform has been a total failure."
I don't disagree that such a line of argumentation is definitely the predominant narrative regarding Zimbabwe nor with the depiction of its current socioeconomic conditions, but such an assessment needs to contend with the question of the chicken and the egg.
It's a question of whether Zimbabwe's contemporary problems (as much as it can be attributed to its land reforms) dialectically come principally from its non-socialist and rather haphazard land reform process and the Mugabe government's mishandling or whether there is a predominant issue of the Western sanctions, foreign and IMF/World Bank divestment and economic ostracization that Zimbabwe faced following its decision to uphold the Jambanja period 'land invasions' which are the primary contradiction in determining its contemporary struggles.
The historical and contemporary severe poverty of Haiti is also not "a myth," but the source of its material conditions principally stemmed from the counter-revolutionary reaction from Europe who sought to punish and make an example of the first independent black state in the New World and the only successful enslaved uprising in recorded history. The Haitian state was not recognized by any 19th century world power and France, following the Bourbon Restoration, imposed a huge indemnity that made destitute any possibility of Haitian prosperity.
This is what happened to Zimbabwe, which was punished just as Haiti was two centuries ago, for demonstrating a model towards sovereignty by an independent black state:
The concluding tangent about China is wildly off the mark, however. China's own socialist land reform process was the largest redistribution of wealth in human history and the foundation of China's success stems from its near total eradication of imperialist influence under Mao, which was imperative to the success of Deng's Reform and Opening Up. As Zhou Enlai famously articulated:
As such, the outcome of Zimbabwe's national process does not invalidate the example it demonstrated, as Ian Scoones et al. note, which was that it "highlighted one potential path for countries unable or unwilling to deal with the unequal inheritance of apartheid or colonialism" in the form of settler expropriation and land reform. There is no world where you can have your cake and eat it too in the context of land reform: no settler is going to shake your hand and give you a smile when you kick them off your land and write a glowing letter back to the European metropole about you.
Thus, by nature of the Western reaction, this could not be a clean or thorough process and it did not end in economic success, but such is precisely the "fait accompli" which committing the ultimate form of property re-appropriation from legacy settler colonialism is made to perform and designed to suffer under in the contemporary global conditions of Western hegemony.
But that's exactly my point. China had one of the most successful land reform programs in history under Mao, with the implementation of the principle that agricultural land is not a commodity and not privatised , but rather that it remained the property of the nation represented by village communes and only the use was given to rural families.
Mao drew lessons from some of the mistakes the USSR made which led to the peasant insurrection and Lenin recognising the private property of the beneficiaries of land distribution. Mao based the increasing presence of the Communist Party on a solid alliance with the poor and landless peasants (the majority), maintained friendly relations with the middle peasants, and isolated the rich peasants at all stages of the war, without necessarily antagonizing them. The success of this policy prepared the large majority of rural inhabitants to consider and accept a solution to their problems that did not require private property in plots of land acquired through distribution. Mao thus succeeded where the Bolshevik Party had failed: in establishing a solid alliance with the large rural majority. This also prevented China from experiencing a Kulak like phenomenon.
This is why Chinese land reform under Mao was so successful, as the capitalist road is based on the transformation of land into a commodity. So by ensuring that agricultural land is not a commodity, Mao set China up for success by avoiding the capitalist trap. This is what I mean when I say that other countries should look to China as an example. I am not arguing against land reform, I am arguing for it, but while avoiding some of the pitfalls Zimbabwe experienced. Sorry for any misunderstandings.
No need to apologize between comrades. I get your point: the Zimbabwean land reform is flawed, in various aspects, and the economic conditions of the country are not exactly great despite having gone through these reforms. Your first response construed Zimbabwe's land reforms to its current economic woes, which is a perspective I took issue with, as it puts the cart before the horse. It is misleading and does not invalidate the choice to undergo through its reforms as there is no cause to believe land reform alone guarantees economic prosperity or that the failings of Zimbabwe's reforms are solely due to its own mishandling rather than the reprisals it received from global imperialism. Even the comprehensive socialist land reforms of Czechoslovakia led to an economic slump that was used as a pretext for the infamous reactionary uprising. This does not mean that Czechoslovak land reforms caused its later economic underperformance.
The important thing I've been emphasizing is the material conditions underpinning Zimbabwe's land reforms. Zimbabwe is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the Maoist guerilla forces of the fascist Rhodesian occupation era were subsumed, akin to the acquiescing of the communists to the ANC in the South African experience, under what eventually became the Mugabe government. Furthermore, the goal of land reform in a non-socialist context is principally the redistribution of market power. This is the difference from socialist landform which is aimed at the eradiction of rentier and landlord classes, the equal distribution of wealth and dissolution of landed class privileges to create the material conditions for establishing collective and public land ownership. In terms of Zimbabwe, the intent was to break the hold of the settler colonial commercial landowners and to atomize 1 large farm into 50 smaller farms. The intent was not any of those that propel a socialist reform.
To expect a non-socialist state to conduct a more socialist manner of land reform is unrealistic. Post colonial governments across the Global South which have had their socialist revolutions suppressed are led by national bourgeoisie. The outcomes of socialist land reform is against their class interests.
The question then turns to whether market-based land reform like Zimbabwe is worth pursuing nonetheless. Zimbabwe's example proves such a program form is possible so is the answer that it should be rejected and that the populace must wait for a socialist revolution in order to do a much more genuine and comprehensive land reform like those of the USSR, China and Cuba? This is the question that pertains most immediately to countries like South Africa but also in the miraculous but inevitable event of a liberated Palestine as Al_Sham had inquired about. My answer is to this is no and that Zimbabwe's example does still serve as a model. Of course it goes without saying that it should obviously not be followed to the letter as the internal flaw of the Zimbabawe example is that this was a popular movement under the Jambanja that co-opted governmental inertia and forced the governent to go along with it but such is the nature of non-socialist land reforms where the national bourgeoisie will always be unwilling to accept the cost-benefit analysis of such a program, a dilemma that Zimbabwe's case highlights very clearly.
The First Congress of the Communist International once famously said: "We say: In the colonial and semi-colonial countries the first phase of the revolutionary movement must inevitably be a national-democratic movement." This must apply to the pursuit of land reform as well if a non-socialist state of the Global South embarks on the program. It is important and momentous enough for the working classes that even an imperfect rendition can be critically supported, particularly in the circumstances of decolonizing states like Zimbabwe that must contend with resolving settler colonial residual control which even market-based land reforms can ameliorate.
I see some parallels with the Irish struggle for liberation, and James Connolly’s line about how, even if they kicked the Brits out, if they maintained capitalism they would still be subservient. I imagine this is part of the widespread support of Palestine among the people of the Republic of Ireland.