in Chad, life among the mines after the war – Libération

The countless battlefields that dot the territory are today riddled with unexploded ordnance. In the Kanem desert, where Idriss Déby was killed in 2021, a team of humanitarians is carrying out slow and meticulous clean-up work.

One hand on his hip, the other on his GPS, Abbas Ahmat Kosseï looks like a pole planted in the middle of the desert. He looks to the right, to the left, but does not move. Where are the damn rockets? He had covered them with branches some time ago so that children wouldn't play with them, but here, in the middle of the Chadian Sahara, the dry bushes all look the same. The GPS coordinates are nevertheless good, he complains. Finally, here they are. The ammunition was well hidden, only a few meters away. “We did a good job, he said laughing. As long as we don’t touch it, there is no danger of explosion, you can approach.”

A turban and sunglasses cover three-quarters of his face, on which a small smile still stands out. Abbas Ahmat Kosseï, 40, from a region of northern Chad torn apart by several conflicts since independence, did not choose, like most of his friends, to join the army. This father of three young children, who graduated in economics in Algeria, preferred to get involved in post-war management. How to clean up the thousand battlefields in Chad? How can we inform residents that this old mortar shell lying around in the sand is not a child's game but a death machine?

Printed designs

With two colleagues from the Chadian National High Commission for Demining (HCND), seconded to the British NGO M