The Government of Chad has replaced the heads of the Gendarmerie and Police Corps, as well as of the Intelligence Services, after last month’s violent protests against the extension of the transition process in the African country, which resulted, according to the official balance, in fifty deaths and more than 300 wounded.
General Ismat Issaja Acheij has been appointed new director general of the National Gendarmerie to replace General Zakaria Ngobongue Vare, who will move on to «other functions», according to the official decree reported by the Al Wihda news portal. Likewise, Hisein Dudua Hamit will become head of the Chadian National Police, replacing Musa Haroun Tirgo, according to a second decree reported by the Toumai Web portal.
Finally, Amadji Nangar will replace General Ahmat Dari Bazine as the new head of the General Directorate of Intelligence and Investigations.
Sources consulted by Radio France Internationale (RFI) interpret these appointments as another «turn of the screw» of the repressive apparatus designed by the current Chadian leader, Mahamat Idriss Déby, whose mandate, installed by the Army in 2021 after the death of his father, Idriss Déby Itno.
Mahamat Déby’s mandate was consolidated for another two years in early October following «national dialogues» boycotted by most members of the opposition, as well as two of the three main armed rebel groups and numerous civil society organizations.
The two-year extension sparked a wave of protests which the Chadian government described as an «act of insubordination» encouraged by, among others, opposition leader Succès Masra, and exonerated the country’s security forces from any responsibility, government spokesman Aziz Mahamat Salé.
RFI’s sources recall that, before becoming head of the Gendarmerie, General Issaja Acheij severely repressed the population during his time as governor of Borkou, where the security forces left, according to NGOs, several dead and wounded when they fired on demonstrators who criticized his order to impound vehicles without valid papers. According to RFI, such was the discontent generated that Ismat Issaja Acheij had to be evacuated from the area by a plane sent by the central government.
Media sources also recall that the new police chief, Hisein Dudua Hamit, has been accused of organizing repressive operations last year against protests organized by the opposition Transformers party. Opposition leader Yaya Dillo Djéru, who has also denounced on several occasions a campaign of harassment by Chadian authorities, has assured RFI that Dudua Hamit replaces his predecessor, Harun Tirgo, because the latter «had refused to support the planning of the repression».
