French stooges move back into

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LIBYA has withdrawn its troops from most of Chad, though it is still occupying the mineral-rich Aozou strip.

But France has'arranged and given logistic support to a new occupation force, under the banner of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), consisting of troops from a number of Chad's neighbours, to shore up the Oueddei government and replace the Libyans.

This move has delighted the big capitalist powers, which are trying to pressurise and isolate the Gaddafi regime in Libya.

The maintenance of the French connection proves that the new government in Paris is just as much an imperialist agency as the previous one. Indeed, Mitterrand's low-profile approach may have worked much better than Giscard's open intervention.

For most of its 21 years since independence, this thinly populated and desperately poor former French colony has been torn apart by civil war. That civil war ON WEDNESDAY November 4, a meeting was held between • General Jaruzelski (Poland's prime minster and general secretary of the Communist Party), Lech Walesa, and Mgr Glemp, nead of the Catholic Church in Poland.

Jaruzelski undoubtedly hopes that-these meetings, called to discuss the impasse which the country now faces with winter approaching, and where everything 'negot¡able' is apparently discussed, can become the take-off for some more formal goyernmental coalition, encompassing the major political and • social forces in the country.

Walesa has come in for increasing criticism by Solidarnose's national commision.

Although in theory the national commission is the supreme policy-making leadership it has time Congress, lias and again been usurped in its functions by Walesa and his acolytes in the presidium of the union."

Walesa arbitrarily decided to go ahead with the tripartite meeting - to which no other Solidarnose leader was invited - and in fact informed the national commission only hours before. Walesa and his presidium are in a powerful position, given that they control the day to day activities of the union, at a time when new decisions Emere be made continually = = 500301K₴.

But the souring of relatjons in the leading bodies of -he union came out starkly ates Malesa more or less reezied an ultimatum to i camonal commission that I has did not accept his net: co carry on talks, they

by Andrew

Hornung

expressed the extreme backwardness and the artificiality of this landlocked republic, wedged between MuslimArab North Africa and nonMuslim black West and Equatorial Africa.

Overthrown

Its first president, Francois Tombalbaye, ran a corrupt bourgeois-landlord regime shaken by regional, religious and class conflicts, which included peasant revolts in 1964, 1966 and 1967. Despite massive political repression and military intervention by France, the Tombalbaye government failed to contain these conflicts.

Tombalbaye was overthrown by his own army in 1975. The military coup forestalled the impending victory of FROLINAT (National Liberation Front of Chad), an umbrella movement set up in 1966 to coordinate the anti-government military actions of several armed oppositional groups. Two external factors also by Alexis Carras must go to the country and explain their objection.

This was a thoroughly demagogic gesture. Walesa knows perfectly that the entire working population desires the resolution of the economic crisis and the lifting of the shadow of possible Russian intervention. Yet whether talks such as these with the prime minister and the Church hierarchy, without proper consultation with the union's leadership (let alone the rank and file) are the best way, is another matter!

And while Walesa 'gets tough' with the union militants, he is increasingly compliant to the Stalinists -faithfully expressing the attitude of the Church leaders.

The national commission did adopt a three-month moratorium on strikes, but the resolution was couched in exceptionally irate terms and left an enormous loophole - the right to strike would still be recognised by te Solidarnosc leaders during the three month period when necessary for the security of the workers? This clause could tear the moratorium to shreds. Jaruzelski CHAO LIGERIA CEN • AFRICA RE 'UBLIC CAMEROON • GUINEAT GABON CABINDA entributed to Tombalbaye's downfall: Sudan's support for FROLINAT and Libya's occupation of a 100-kilometre deep strip along Chad's border with Libya.

Libyan troops had entered Chad in 1971 and claimed this Aozou strip, basing themselves on a 1935 agreement between Italy (which then ruled Libya) and France (which then ruled Chad). They also supported FROLINAT.

The workers and urban poor of Brazil are mobilising in a wave of class action on the issues of housing and transport. Recent increases in bus fares and rent and the continuing chronic shortag: of adequate housing bave sparked off actions that have rapidly developed into a mass movement.

Most employed workers earn around £65 a month _ and transport alone often eats up 15%, with rents taking up to 30%.

Takeover The most powerful mobilisations have been in Salvador city, where an increase in bus fares was met by a 3 week rebellion in PT ETH PIA MALI UGANDAK EN YA SEYCMELLES ISLES TANZANIA AZANZIBAR The army coup established former Chief of Staff Felix Malloum as president, but he soon proved no more independent of France than his predecessor. Malloum could only stave off defeat by trying to split FROLINAT.

To this end he appointed a KULINA I leader, Hissen Habre, as prime minister. A "transitional government' followed, which consisted of several I ROLINAT tendeneDictator-Figueired and mass squatting.

In Sao Paulo this month, about 3000 families occupied an empty plot of government-owned land and set up shacks. They Gaddafi ies that agreed (on paper) to integrate their armed forces into the national army. That unstable unity existed until February 1979, when troops supporting President Malloum (backed by the French) fought it out in the capital with troops supporting Prime Minister Habre.

Such was the political disintegration of Chad that one commentator described it at this time as "a mere geographical expression were attacked and expr elled by a night raid of car valry and armed troops dogs.

Strength

These struggles are part of the growing class movement against the military regime: and the bosses behind it:

The central task is to link these community-based struggles with the demands and struggles of the workers in the factories, mobilising the massive industrial strength of the Brazilian working class as the spearhead of the mass movement of the oppressed. overwhelmed by an inferno of domestic violence"

After several rapid changes of government, Goukouni Oueddei emerged as head of a new government. He tried to counter secessionist tendencies in the South by including some of

their leaders in the government. Some FROLINAT tendencies remained outside the government and continued to oppose it militarily.

Libya had sent. troops

into Chad, and. . tacked. hetween süpporting opposition trends. And backing the Oueddei government, its policy being basically determined by its hopes of getting a government in Chad that would concede the Aozou strip. (The Libya-Chad merger talked of in the Western press was never a real issue).

The OAU initiative will not solve the crisis in Chad. It will not end the miserv there. It can only provide imperialism with more stable conditions in which to exploit Chad's huge untapped mineral wealth.

By preventing the breakup of this African state, the OAU states also hope to firm up the territorial legitimacy of the artificial units they control. Nigeria, above all, hopes to impress the big capitalist powers with its potential role as a guarantor of order.