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.
President Joe Biden has given Ukraine permission to use American-supplied weapons to strike targets in Russia It’s so Joever comrades.
this just feels like a reconfirmation of what Ukraine was already doing. they were already shelling Belgorod
Putin laid out the use of US cruise missiles on Russian territory as a red line which would provoke a Russian military response directly against American targets.
Not doing anything when your red line is crossed
But what if he does something
Wait which red lines didn’t Putin respond to?
Good example: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/atacms-ukraine-russia-putin/
More here under “Identified red lines”. Yeah it’s wikipedia, but everything is pretty well sourced
So the first article never has Putin drawing lines that get crossed its always a tv personality or a military official or the usa arguing with themselves over whether it would be too much of a provocation. Same with the Wikipedia red lines, they don’t have Putin drawing the line or they have a response.
There have been times when Putin has said definitively “don’t do x or we will y” and he has followed through every time as far as I am aware. Like with cluster munitions, (which didn’t get on the list) he said “don’t send cluster munitions or we will start using them too” and they did and Russia did.
I mean when it’s his spokeswoman drawing the red line it’s fair to say it’s him drawing it. Then that line gets crossed and as far as I can tell Russia is not treating the US like a “direct party to the conflict” as they said they would, although Putin concedes that the US is “more deeply involved”.
We’re so back.
This fucking sucks and I would like off Mr. Bones Wild Ride.
It seems the West and Ukraine are committing to an asymmetrical strategy. They know they cannot beat Russia on the frontlines, so they hope that long range strikes into Russian territory will cause enough damage to slow the front down or bring Russia to the negotiation table.
They wanted to and Bojo nuked the negotiations on behalf of nato to prolong the war. The west is deranged if they think theres a conceivable scenario where Russia loses at this point.
No, they want to provoke Russia into striking capital N NATO targets to get NATO directly, officially involved to come to their rescue
US concedes Kharkiv region now belongs to Russia
What is even the point of this? Like from a Biden’s internal logic/US imperialist perspective, how does this further their interests in any way? Is it just a cynical calculation that if Russia hits back it’ll be Ukrainians bearing the brunt of it? But what’s the benefit for NATO if Ukraine is turned into a nuclear battlefield? Make it make sense
I want an explantion, too. What is the thinking behind escalating a war you can’t win like this?
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How to get rid of blowback? Have your proxy get nuked off the face of the planet and then intern the remaing ukranians in the west for “safety”.
Dead ukranians dont do 9/11s that kill rich people.
It’s one way out of this.
Sometimes I think it is all a cynical play to keep the arms manufacturers happy, more tension means more NATO paranoia means more money for Raytheon.
At other times I think they’re stuck in the mind prison of their own exceptionalist ideology. We can’t let Russia win, we are the good guys, we always win in the end just like in the movies.
They have been doing this for months, this is just cope theater
Guess we’ll see if russian geniuses at work decided to distribute stuff beforehand
Legit 50-50 chance. I won’t be surprised if they manage to ruin their entire momentum because they stored all their weapons in one random barn in bumfuck nowhere.
Russia doesn’t have to do anything in response to this. Terrorist attacks inside Russia with western missiles hurts but materially they’re not going to change the course of the war. Russia is slowly winning by draining the west of weapons and of forced Ukrainian conscripts.
The chance of a retaliatory strike on NATO soil successfully deterring the yanks is low and it seems like that is exactly the thing Washington wants Russia to do. Rather than cooling the tempers in NATO it would be likely to lead to further escalation which would firstly risk interfering with Russia’s successful strategy of attrition, secondly risk ending in a scenario where everybody loses.
If Russia really wanted to do something they could have supported their own terrorist attacks in Finland, Baltics or Poland. But I doubt they will ever do that, if Putin ever do that, the West will 100% start to detain in camps and deport the Russian minority to Russia.
There has been a lot of sabotage of western weapons factories and the like, I bet Russia is involved in some
Russia doesn’t have to hit nato territory to respond. They could hit us bases in Iraq or Syria no problem.