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Since last weekend they have been racing in open jeeps, armed with machine guns and grenades, in the direction of N'Djamena, the capital of Chad.
You came from Libya, belong to the rebel coalition FACT and wanted to drive out the newly elected President Idriss Déby, who has ruled his country like a dictator for more than 30 years.
On Tuesday morning, the rebels caught Déby, somewhere far out in the desert sands at the front, and killed him.
The country is likely to sink into chaos for the time being. Chad is a strategic state for Europe. The former colonial power France is supporting the G5-Sahel alliance in the fight against Islamist terrorism in the region with French soldiers and fighter pilots stationed in Chad. Déby was a long-term partner of the West and was seen in Brussels and Berlin as an important supporter in the fight against illegal migration.
Chad is not an isolated case.
The Sahel zone (Mali, Niger, Chad, Mauritania and Burkina Faso), which stretches south of the Sahara from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, is increasingly becoming a security risk for the West.
Drug trafficking, people smuggling and arms deals, but also terror, death and corrupt heads of state are the order of the day.
Many people are starving or malnourished, and at the same time the population is growing faster and faster.
Refuge for Islamist terrorists
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That cannot be indifferent to Europeans. Because the Sahel zone is increasingly becoming a retreat and a place of recruitment for Islamist terrorists. Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State (IS) mostly work closely together in this region and form alliances with local militias. The war is taking place right on the EU's doorstep. In addition, the countries are important transit countries and countries of origin for migrants. In short: the European Union can only get its migration problems under control if the Sahel zone becomes safer and the people have a perspective.
This realization is also increasingly gaining acceptance in Brussels. EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell is traveling to the Sahel zone this Wednesday. His message is: Europeans want to do more. Immediately before his departure, Borrell told WELT: “In recent years, the EU has mobilized all the instruments at its disposal, from humanitarian aid to security forces and training, to support the Sahel region and to improve the security and humanitarian situation on the ground as well as to reduce pressure on the particularly endangered population groups. ”But they now want to go further and“ take a civil and political leap forward. ”What is needed is“ a combination of short-term stabilization and long-term prospects for sustainable social, ecological and economic development ".
The new approach to protecting human rights and promoting basic public services is to concentrate more than before on the training of security forces and judicial personnel, the targeted financial support of ecological and economic development projects and measures to strengthen women's rights.
This is what it says in a new “Declaration by the EU states for more security, stability and development in the Sahel region”.
Source: WORLD infographic
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Borrell: “Only an approach that combines military efforts with civil and political engagement can be successful.
And although military means alone will not bring peace to the people, the EU will continue to support our partners in the Sahel in combating armed terrorist groups and promoting their efforts to reform the security sector. "
The security situation is constantly deteriorating
In Brussels, concern about the time bomb in the Sahel is growing. For eight years, 12,000 international soldiers are supposed to ensure more security in the region. The EU has invested more than 4.5 billion euros in the past seven years, plus hundreds of millions of euros in bilateral aid. Nevertheless, the security situation has deteriorated more and more. The number of attacks quintupled in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
Germany is represented by up to 1,500 soldiers on site.
They train security forces as part of an EU mission (EUTM Mali) and a United Nations mission (Minusma), they create situation reports and help with air transport.
They don't fight.
This particularly annoys Paris.
Since 2014, 5,100 French soldiers have been deployed to fight Islamist terror.
This force has been supported by the Task Force Takuba for a year.
It should actually be an elite unit made up of European combat troops, fighting terrorists especially in the critical region of Liptako.
So far, 115 French soldiers have participated, but only 30 soldiers each from the Czech Republic and Estonia.
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French President Emmanuel Macron is angry about this kind of European burden-sharing. Despite multiple inquiries from Paris, Germany is not there either. But Borrell expressly praises the efforts of the German soldiers: "Germany's commitment and the role of the Bundeswehr in training and strengthening the security forces in the Sahel region to fight terrorists and fight organized crime are of the greatest importance."
The pressure on Germany to finally become involved militarily in the crisis region is likely to increase in the future. At the same time, the EU has recognized that the fight against local militias and Islamist terrorists can only be one building block. And this fight, according to experts, has to be waged differently. The French soldiers were initially seen as liberators, today they are often perceived as an occupying power because they behave arrogantly in the eyes of the population and sometimes work with militias and corrupt state security forces.
The EU now wants to invest more in schools, hospitals and new jobs. It wants to help establish functioning state structures. "We are not having a terrorist uprising here, but a social revolt and a civil war - and fighting terrorism will certainly not solve these problems," says Denis Tull from the Science and Politics Foundation (SWP) with a view to Mali. But it applies to all Sahel countries. Borrell's journey can be a fresh start.