{"id":4796,"date":"2019-12-27T21:11:57","date_gmt":"2019-12-28T04:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=4796"},"modified":"2019-12-27T21:40:48","modified_gmt":"2019-12-28T04:40:48","slug":"legacy-of-the-toyota-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=4796","title":{"rendered":"Legacy of the Toyota War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
My interview in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood this past summer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

New York-<\/strong> Last month I was featured in an Al Jazeera Arabic documentary entitled For the rest of the story – Hifter .. General Coups <\/a><\/em>about Libyan General\/Colonel\/strongman\/warlord Khalifa Haftar’s (I prefer the more commonly accepted transliteration of his last name) decades-long relationship with the United States. In the film I discuss the once infamous battle of Ouadi Doum* that took place in northern Chad in March 1987 between Libyan occupation forces led by Haftar and Chadian state forces defending the then government of the US-aligned, ruthless President Hiss\u00e8ne Habr\u00e9. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*”Ouadi” is the Francophone transliteration of Wadi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ouadi Doum lay in the Sahara in what was then known as the Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti Prefecture, or simply BET (Chad’s administrative political geography has long since be reorganised), and was a crucial target for several reasons. Seen through the prism of the Cold War, the Libyans had installed the latest Soviet and Czechoslovak military hardware which both the French and Americans were eager to have captured by proxy forces to deconstruct and examine. Ouadi Doum was also significant because the aircraft positioned there were threatening the Chadian capital of N’Djamena much further south. <\/p>\n\n\n