Cakes, leaks, and a lonely death
The best reads of the week
In this week’s top pick Ben Taub visits Lake Chad, where history, geography, climate change and politics have conspired to create ‘the world’s most complex humanitarian disaster’.
In 1987, as Qaddafi withdrew his troops, Reagan invited Habré to the White House and praised his commitment to “building a better life for the Chadian people.” Then Habré resumed slaughtering ethnic minorities who protested his rule. He also accused three of his highest-ranking officials of plotting a military coup. Two of them were captured and killed. The third, a young colonel named Idriss Déby, fled east to Sudan, and recruited others to join him in a rebellion. Déby also went to Libya, where Qaddafi supplied him with cash and weapons. The next year, Déby’s group drove back across the desert. Habré fled into Cameroon, and Déby became the President of Chad.
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