🇹🇩 CHAD STABILITY INDEX

The Sudan war stopped being a neighbor's problem in early 2026. RSF-SAF fighting for Tine on the Darfur border repeatedly crossed into Chadian territory, culminating in a drone strike on Mabrouka (Wadi Fira) that killed 17 civilians at a gathering in March.

• Retaliation doctrine: Déby placed the army on maximum alert and issued a standing order to strike back at any Sudanese belligerent — SAF or RSF — attacking Chadian soil.
• Total border closure: The 1,300km frontier closed in March with no humanitarian exceptions, squeezing aid flows into Darfur and stranding civilians.
• The UAE transit problem: Chadian security officials have criticized Déby for allowing UAE supply shipments (including weapons bound for the RSF) to transit Chad — entangling N'Djamena in the war's logistics while its own soldiers die at the border (7 killed in a January RSF attack).
• Refugee load: Over 1.2 million Sudanese refugees now in eastern Chad — among the world's largest refugee operations, layered onto a malnutrition crisis and collapsing aid budgets.

JAS and ISWAP factions are re-establishing a foothold in Lake province after months of retrenchment. A May 2026 attack on the Barka Tolorom island garrison killed 23 soldiers, triggering a provincial state of emergency.

• Military-led response: Airstrikes and ground operations are expected through 2026, but the army's limited intelligence capability and its Sudan-border commitments risk overstretch.
• Regional squeeze effects: Nigerian counter-insurgency pressure in Borno pushes militants toward the Chadian lakeshore; Lake Chad basin cooperation (MNJTF) is under strain.
• Seasonal rhythm: Attacks typically ease during the rainy season through September — a lull that should not be read as suppression.
• Civilian-harm risk: Heavy-handed operations around lake communities historically fuel recruitment; the emergency framework raises that exposure.

Chad ended its French military presence in January 2025 — the last Sahelian domino — and has since balanced between Russian outreach, Gulf patrons, and residual Western ties without fully committing to any camp.

• Russia option: Africa Corps operates in every neighboring Sahel state; Chadian drift toward Moscow is real but slower and more transactional than the AES juntas'.
• Saudi-UAE rivalry: Gulf competition over Sudan's future runs through Chad — Déby's 2026 Saudi outreach sought money and mediation cover as the UAE-transit controversy grew.
• Western hedge: Possible resumption of French security cooperation would restore surveillance and intelligence capability the army visibly lacks on both fronts.
• Watch item: Which partner underwrites the Lake province campaign and the eastern border build-up will define Chad's alignment for the platform's Russia-influence wheel.

Oil is the state's fiscal backbone — roughly the majority of export earnings and a large share of revenue — leaving the budget hostage to price swings, pipeline politics, and disputes with operators.

• Doba-Kribi dependence: Exports flow through the Chad-Cameroon pipeline; any Cameroon-side disruption is a direct fiscal event for N'Djamena.
• Militarized budget: Two active fronts plus the Haiti deployment crowd out already-minimal social spending in one of the world's most climate-vulnerable, malnutrition-stressed countries.
• Aid contraction: Global humanitarian funding cuts in 2025-26 hit both Chadian communities and Sudanese refugee programs, stoking intercommunal competition over wells and land — 42 killed in April 2026 Wadi Fira clashes over a single well.
• Exposure note: Chad's commodity profile (oil out, food in) is queued for the platform's commodity tracker as coverage expands.

The regime's core vulnerability is internal: the Sudan war's ethnic geometry cuts directly through Chad's own military elite, where Zaghawa officers dominate senior ranks and feel kinship pressure from Darfur.

• Defection dynamic: Chadian Zaghawa defectors have crossed into Darfur to fight the RSF; more officers openly taking sides in eastern intercommunal conflicts would erode command cohesion.
• RSF provocation loop: Each RSF incursion or drone strike pressures Déby to respond harder — while a direct Chad-RSF war would expose the army's tribal fault lines to deliberate manipulation.
• Succession memory: The regime was born from a battlefield death and a constitutional bypass; every northern rebel column (FACT's 2021 drive on N'Djamena) is remembered as proof the capital is reachable.
• Analytical frame: No Zaghawa figure currently commands enough support to challenge Déby — but a weakening grip amid two-front strain is the convergence pattern the platform's coup-watch logic monitors.