Background
In April 2006, soon after the beginning of the civil war in Chad, government forces repelled a rebel attack on the capital in which hundreds of people were killed; the rebels responsible for the attack, the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC) led by Mohammed Nour Abdelkerim, rallied to the government in December. Many FUC soldiers resisted integration into the Chadian National Army, and instead joined other rebel groups such as the newly emerged Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), founded in October 2006, and led by Mahamat Nouri
In the summer and autumn of 2007 extensive peace talks were held in Tripoli through Libyan mediation among the Chadian government and the four main rebel groups, that is the UFDD, the Gathering of Forces for Change (RFC), the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development-Fundamental (UFDD-F) and the Chadian National Concord (CNT). Eventually the negotiations resulted in a peace agreement signed on October 25, 2007 in Sirte, in the presence of the President Idriss Déby, the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. As part of the deal, the rebels and the government agreed to an immediate ceasefire, a general amnesty and the right for the rebels to join the military and form political parties.
In November 2007 the peace agreement collapsed and war resumed. While the CNT rallied to the government, the other signatories at Sirte decided to counter Déby by reaching a major level of military integration. Thus on December 13, 2007 the UFDD, the UFDD-F and the RFC announced the creation a Unified Military Command with a collegial leadership. The UFDD could count at this moment on 2,000-3,000 men, while the allied RFC had around 800 troops and the UFDD-F 500 troops.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of N'Djamena (2008)
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