Chad, 1977 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
The dataset records an attempted military coup in Chad on 1 April 1977 during the rule of General Felix Malloum, who had taken power in 1975 after the assassination of the founding president Francois Tombalbaye, and amid the escalating civil war between the government in the south and the northern rebel factions of FROLINAT, increasingly backed by Libya. Malloum's Supreme Military Council governed a country fracturing along regional and factional lines, its army strained by the northern insurgency and by rivalries within the officer corps. A coup attempt in April 1977 came within that turbulent context and did not unseat Malloum, whose position nonetheless continued to weaken.
Facing the loss of the north to rebel and Libyan forces, Malloum eventually entered a fraught power-sharing arrangement with the FROLINAT leader Hissene Habre in 1978, which broke down into open fighting in the capital in 1979, shattering the state and plunging Chad into a prolonged multi factional civil war.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
48304011977- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-483-1977-04-01
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: General Felix Malloum survived the April 1977 plotting amid Chad's escalating civil war.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Luttwak
Los Angeles Times
New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →