Chad straddles the Sahara desert. It is a landlocked country of 1,284,000 square kilometers (495,625 square miles) with serious problems of water supply and soil quality. Chad is the fifth poorest country in the world, but a huge petroleum windfall could change its fortunes. Conflict and instability have also played a role in Chad's condition. For much of the 1970s and 1980s its border with Libya was a source of interstate conflict, and there have been intermittent border troubles with Nigeria and a more recent refugee crisis with Sudan. Chad has also experienced decades of civil war between armed movements from the north and south.

At independence in 1960, power was given to a Christian southerner, Nagarta Francois Tombalbaye (1918–1975), who ruled the country for several years despite an organized insurgency led by the National Liberation Front, a northern-based militia. The civil war aside, the country's chronic poverty led to an ungovernable...