Oueddei Kichidemi

Who was Oueddei Kichidemi?

Oueddei Kichidemi was the father of the former Chadian President Goukouni Oueddei and was the tribal leader, or derde, of the Toubou Teda of the Tibesti during the First Chadian Civil War.

The derde exercises judicial rather than executive power, arbitrating conflict and levying sanctions based on a code of compensations. During the period of French rule in Chad, his authority had been respected; but when Chad became independent in 1960 and last French forces left the Tibesti in 1965, the Teda found themselves under the control of Chadian authorities that looked down on the Toubou as backward.

Provocations and abuses by the new authorities grew so unbearable that at the end of 1966 Kichidemi went in exile with a thousand of followers to the oasis of Kufra, in Libya, after that the President François Tombalbaye had stripped him of his judicial powers and refused to appoint his son Goukouni secretary of the Bardaï tribunal. Tombalbaye had also offended the derde by supporting a rival, Chaimi Sougoumi, for a seat from Tibesti in the National Assembly. What followed was an uprising of the Toubou, in which four of Kichidemi's five sons were killed, in what is considered the starting of the civil war in the north.