Chad: from colonialism to civil war

Chad was a French colony from 1920, becoming fully independent in August 1960. Fifteen years of President Tombalbaye's repressive dictatorship ended in 1975 with a military coup that led to civil war.
Chad has 200 distinct ethnic groups, roughly divided between Muslims in the north (51 per cent) and Christians (35 per cent) and Animists (seven per cent) in the south. Until 1990, when President Idriss Deby seized control, power was held by southerners.
Since the early 1960s, rebels have used neighbouring countries as bases for military action. Chad and Sudan went to war over this from December 2005 to February 2006.
President Deby's government is ethnically divisive and uses the security forces to suppress political opposition. On November 13 he declared a state of emergency in the eastern provinces.