Chadian Armed Forces

The Chadian Armed Forces, known in French as the Forces Armees Tchadiennes or FAT, were the army of the central government of Chad from 1960 to 1979, under the southern presidents Francois Tombalbaye and Felix Malloum. After Malloum fell in 1979 the head of the gendarmerie, Wadel Abdelkader Kamougue, took command, and with gendarmerie units the FAT became a regional force that drew mainly on the Sara ethnic group of the five southern prefectures. It joined the Transitional Government of National Unity forces fighting against Hissene Habre and received aid from Libya. The FAT began to break up during 1982 after defeats by Habre's Armed Forces of the North, and most of the remaining soldiers either accepted integration into those northern forces or went back to insurgency as the rebels known as codos.