Editing Hissène Habré (section)

==Support of the U.S. and France==
{{See also|CIA activities in Chad}}

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| quote = In the 1980s, the United States was pivotal in bringing Hissène Habré to power, seeing him as a stalwart defense against expansion by Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, and therefore provided critical military support to his insurgency and then to his government, even as it committed widespread and systematic human rights violations—violations of which, as this report shows, many in the US government were aware.| source = —[[Human Rights Watch]]<ref>{{cite web |date=June 28, 2016 |title=Enabling a Dictator: The United States and Chad's Hissène Habré 1982–1990 |url=https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/06/28/enabling-dictator/united-states-and-chads-hissene-habre-1982-1990 |access-date=December 10, 2019 |publisher=[[Human Rights Watch]]}}</ref>
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The United States and France supported Habré, seeing him as a bulwark against the Gaddafi government in neighboring [[Libya]]. Under President [[Ronald Reagan]], the United States gave covert [[CIA]] paramilitary support to help Habré take power and remained one of Habré's strongest allies throughout his rule, providing his regime with massive amounts of military aid.<ref>[http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/2/us_backed_chadian_dictator_hissene_habre U.S.-Backed Chadian Dictator Hissène Habré Faces War Crimes Trial in Historic Win for His Victims]. ''[[Democracy Now!]]'' 2 July 2013.</ref> The United States also used a clandestine base in Chad to train captured Libyan soldiers whom it was organizing into an anti-Qaddafi force.<ref name="hrw.org">{{cite web |url=https://www.hrw.org/en/habre-case |title=The Case Against Hissène Habré, an "African Pinochet" |publisher=Human Rights Watch |access-date=3 July 2012}}</ref>

"The CIA was so deeply involved in bringing Habré to power I can't conceive they didn't know what was going on," said [[Donald R. Norland|Donald Norland]], U.S. ambassador to Chad from 1979 to 1981. "But there was no debate on the policy and virtually no discussion of the wisdom of doing what we did."<ref name="hartford-hwp.com">{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/11/27/chads-torture-victims-pursue-habre-in-court/9da03c6b-ed13-477e-9e94-7f80450ca3b8/ |title=Chad's Torture Victims Pursue Habre in Court |author=Douglas Farah |date=27 November 2000 |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=3 July 2012}}</ref>

Documents obtained by [[Human Rights Watch]] show that the United States provided Habré's DDS with training, intelligence, arms, and other support despite knowledge of its atrocities. Records discovered in the DDS' meticulous archives describe training programs by U.S.
instructors for DDS agents and officials, including a course in the United States that was attended by some of the DDS' most feared torturers. According to the [[Truth Commission (Chad)|Chadian Truth Commission]], the United States also provided the DDS with monthly infusions of monetary aid and financed a regional network of intelligence networks code-named "Mosaic" that Chad used to pursue suspected opponents of Habré's regime even after they fled the country.<ref name="hrw.org"/>

In the summer of 1983, when Libya invaded northern Chad and threatened to topple Habré, France sent paratroops with air support, while the Reagan administration provided two [[Airborne early warning and control|AWACS]] electronic surveillance planes to coordinate air cover. By 1987 Gaddafi's forces had retreated.<ref name="Chad-CS"/>{{Rp|199–200}}<ref name="Meredith"/>{{Rp|355–356}}

"Habré was a remarkably able man with a brilliant sense of how to play the outside world," a former senior U.S. official said. "He was also a bloodthirsty tyrant and torturer. It is fair to say we knew who and what he was and chose to turn a blind eye."<ref name="hartford-hwp.com"/>