In 2020, former Chad president Idriss Déby Itno was conferred Marshal of Chad by the country’s national assembly. The parliament bestowed him the highest military honor of the land for “service rendered to the nation and the numerous military victories won” especially for leading troops to eliminate Islamic attacks in the Lake Chad Basin. A year later, he died from wounds sustained on the battlefield. His son, General Mahamat Idriss Déby was quickly positioned as president of a military council set up to oversee the country’s transition. Mahamat legitimized his rule when he claimed victory in the May 2024 contested presidential election, having led a military government for three years. In December last year the National Transition Council elevated him to the rank of marshal, making him the only second person to receive the designation after his father. At 40, there are concerns if Mahamat’s ambition to have a protracted and iron-fist rule like his father, who reigned for 30 years, will end there.

In classic Chadian tradition, the National Transition Council said Mahamat was raised to the level of a marshal for serving the nation and leading it to battles. The “battles” reference the operation “Haskanite” in October, which sought to edge out Boko Haram militants in Lake Chad. Members of the terrorist group killed 40 Chadian soldiers in the Lake Chad Basin, which is also communally used by Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria. In military fatigue, he is seen commanding government troops and giving updates on the counteroffensive. Déby ruled Chad for 30 years before he was made marshal. His son had only been in the job for three years before assuming the title.

As former head of the presidential guard who led UN peace-keeping missions to northern Mali during his father’s reign, Mahamat’s rise to power fosters Chad’s troubled history of military leaders and their brutal politics. When pioneer president François Tombalbaye was toppled and killed by angry soldiers in 1975, the military officer who took charge, Felix Malloum, relinquished power to rebel leader Goukouni Oueddei after ruling for four years. Oueddei’s pro-Libya policies led to a coup d’état by his own defense minister Hissène Habré. Under a one-party system and support from the US and France, Habré’s tenure was marked by political elimination, torture, and crimes against humanity until Déby marched in unopposed with Libyan-backed forces to overthrow him in 1991. 

Under Déby, there was hope for democracy when he introduced multi-party politics in 1992. But after he won the country’s first election in 1996, he asserted his power and went on to be re-elected for five more terms until his death. Muammar Gaddafi’s fall from power in Libya in 2011 rendered Chad’s northern border vulnerable to attacks from rebel groups like the Front for Change and Concord in Chad, FACT. Since 2016, the Libya-based insurgents have been waging war to overthrow the government in N’Djamena. The group calls the establishment a monarchy, claiming the 2016 and 2021 elections, which extended late Déby’s rule, were fraudulent. It says it wants to establish democracy and free the Chadian people. Mahamat had a taste of FACT’s attacks in the north when the militants attempted to march on the capital, days after his father succumbed to injuries while leading troops to suppress the same group.

Post-Déby events exposed how repressive the government could be. At least 73 demonstrators were killed in October 2022 when they demanded a return to civilian leadership. Opposition leader Yaya Dillo, cousin of Mahamat, who was a long-time challenger of his father, was killed in February 2024 when government forces thundered his party headquarters. Dillo was considered a top challenger to his cousin in the May election. When former Prime Minister Succès Masra ran and lost the May polls, he resigned as head of government. Masra was roped into the transition government four months before the elections to appease the opposition. Unlike the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, which ensures its West African members adhere to democracy and human rights, the regional blocs—including the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS)— that Chad is a member of, are largely economy and integration-driven. CEMAC members, including Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, whose leaders have been in power for more than four decades, barely interfere in political affairs in one another’s countries. Having regional communities that hold leaders to account explains why military leaders in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali have broken off from ECOWAS to create their own alliance, further ushering uncertainty in the Sahel.

Geopolitically, Chad is considered a stabilizing force in the Sahel region despite the country’s protracted leadership and violent political transitions. It sits at the heart of Africa more than twice the size of Cameroon, it borders in the south and is more square kilometers larger than the continent’s most populated country Nigeria, which shares a western border. It shares strategic boundaries with Libya, where FACT militants regroup to launch attacks; Central African Republic (CAR), which tussles with rebels for governance; and Sudan, where there is a long-drawn-out civil war. It is still considered a partner of the US and the West’s fight against terrorism in the Sahel though former colonial power and long-standing ally France withdrew its troops on N’djamena’s order. There is a concern that the vacuum left by France, which used Chad as one of its bases for Operation Barkhane to wipe out Islamist groups in the Sahel, could be filled by Russia. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Chad in June 2024 following Mahamat’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin in January of the same year. Chad said Lavrov’s trip focused on counterterrorism, military, economy, and diplomacy. The visit was part of Russia’s Africa tour where its top diplomats and officials made trips to Libya, Guinea, and Niger. With Russia increasingly present in the Sahel, Chad is likely to tilt to Moscow with Mahamat driving the policy shift.  

Despite the marshal title, Mahamat has yet to consolidate and unite Chad’s ruling elite and its people. In early January 2025, gunshots reverberated near the presidential palace. Soon after, the country’s Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah said in a Facebook live post that soldiers were defending President Mahamat from an attack from a group of armed men. The Minister later confirmed that 18 attackers were killed. He said they had gotten drunk and came from N’djamena, and were not terrorists. The fact that the attempt on Mahamat’s life came from his fiefdom and reportedly staged by his own people, reminds Chadians and the world the country has not left its violent past.