Chad Spoils of the Saharan Sands

By John Greenwald

At the Ouadi-Doum air base, the stench of death was overpowering. Inside the onetime Libyan stronghold, which was overrun by Chadian troops in March, the unburied bodies of five Libyan pilots lay in a pit. Nearby, some 30 Soviet and Czech jet fighters, half of them unscathed, glittered in the sun. The aircraft were a small part of the advanced Soviet bloc weaponry that the forces of Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi left behind as they fled. The value of the abandoned materiel, along with the base itself and Libyan armaments lost in other desert battles, was estimated at nearly $1 billion.

The victory at Ouadi-Doum capped a remarkable Chadian drive that has all but ended 3 1/2 years of Libyan occupation of the north. When Western reporters toured battle sites recently, they found evidence that Gaddafi's fleeing troops had in some places laid down their arms without firing a shot. Near the oasis town of Faya-Largeau, the Libyans abandoned a column of Soviet- made T-55 tanks with the keys still in the ignition.

The armaments were a bonanza for Chadian forces, which routed the enemy by attacking aboard Toyota pickup trucks mounted with light machine guns. Among the haul were more than 200 tanks and armored personnel carriers, countless rounds of ammunition and two giant early-warning radar systems. Western intelligence experts were delighted by the capture of three batteries of Soviet-made SA-6 surface-to-air missiles complete with radar guidance systems.

In spite of the magnitude of his victory, Chadian President Hisene Habre still has problems to solve. Foremost among them: he must reach an accord with Rebel Leader Goukouni Oueddei, a former President of Chad himself and Gaddafi ally whose forces last year joined with Habre's to help defeat the Libyans. But after an unproductive meeting last week between Goukouni and Ivory Coast President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, who is trying to mediate between the two leaders, the President and the rebel commander reportedly remain far apart on issues ranging from Chad's provisional constitution to Goukouni's role in a new government.

Gaddafi, for his part, emerged last week in Tripoli for a bizarre 20- second appearance marking the anniversary of the 1986 U.S. bombing raid on Libya. After stepping onto a platform before an audience of some 500 mostly foreign guests, Gaddafi inexplicably turned around and left. Aides could not account for the mercurial leader's sudden exit, which left the four-day anti- American get-together to speakers ranging from American Indian militants to seasoned '60s radicals and at least one British Labor M.P.

With reporting by Tala Skari/Ouadi-Doum