Peacekeeping Efforts of the Organisation of African Unity in the Chadian Conflict of 1979–1987 Based on OAU Documents

Abstract

This paper studies the role the Organisation of African Unity played in the Chadian conflict (civil war and Libyan intervention) resolution process between 1979 and 1987. It focuses on the analysis of documents deriving from this organisation devoted to the matter in concern. Special attention is paid to the determining of the stages of OAU peacekeeping development and evolution in Chad, highlighting the differences among participant states in their approaches to conflict resolution and particular political forces involved in the conflict and partially reflecting the Cold War context. Emphasis is put on the matters of the extent to which the war in Chad was influenced by the global context of a standoff between the West and the Socialist blocs, the transformation of external actors’ policies towards Chad during the conflict, and the impact these changes had on the success of the peace-making efforts. The events in focus are the first case of a peacekeeping operation mandated and fielded largely by Africa’s key integration organisation as its track record significantly determined the further development of African peacekeeping efforts. Today this experience is crucial to the modern African Union and other relevant regional structures’ peacekeeping operations. The paper relies on a complex of general historic methods related to the introduction, analysis, and structuring of new information deriving from archival sources found in the collections of the Organisation of African Unity. The author also refers to publications by Russian and foreign scholars specialising in this field, simultaneously offering alterations to the narratives they previously introduced concerning the interpretation of the Chadian conflict events based on the source analysis conducted in this article.