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Idris Deby was no hero. To some, he was. There's hardly any living head of state in the 21st century who would personally lead a war effort on the front line and pay the ultimate price. Deby disproved the maxim that old men declare wars while young men fight and die.
But the chances that that was the case with the former president of Chad, is questionable at best, given that his death was announced by the military.
Did the military decide to say he died of injuries sustained from the Front lines after visiting troops just a day after winning a controversial reelection, in order to accord him legendary status?
We may never know. What we do know is that Idris Deby Itno, product and director of the battle hardened Chadian army whose "heroics" impressed his opponent Muammar Gaddafi so much so that the latter decided to help him overthrow his commander in chief, is dead.
And his son, another military blowhard, has been appointed in his stead.
Personally, I do not like Deby. I never liked him when he was alive.
I am also not going to join the Pan Africanists who may want to write hagiographies and white wash his very dirty legacy like has been done with the likes of Thomas Sankara, Ghadaffi, Bob Mugabe, Nyerere and much others in their generation.
I am simply going to respect the fact that France and other major western powers see him as a dependable ally in the Sahel against Islamist terror, especially on the basis that elite units in the Chadian army was deployed to Mali and Burkina Faso in the fight against Jihadist…
…elements. But for me, that is where the adulation stops. And for good reason.
My problem with Deby was not rooted in so much the fact that he was a dictator with a special ruthlessness for the opposition's family, as much as his role in allowing Boko Haram to fester and become the humongous threat that is currently is.
Yes, I do understand the fact that Chad's geography presents it as a natural buffer between the volatile North Africa (where Libya's status as a failed state provides tons of weapons to armed groups in the Sahel with international networks) and Nigeria which means that Chad's…
…stability in the wake of Libya's crisis is important, but then again, that's where it ends. History shows that the Multinational Joint Taskforce was at least a year of negotiations in the making.
It bears asking that why would Nigeria's northern neighbours who stand to lose is Boko Haram makes incursion into their territory not join the fight against Boko Haram until France had to activate them? Chad was one of those countries.
