Qualla: Central African Republic–Chad border

Central African Republic–Chad border: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Pick up a pencil and try to draw the border between the Central African Republic and Chad, and you will fail at the first curve. The line is 1,556 kilometers long. It starts at the Mbéré River at a tripoint with Cameroon and ends at the Mare de Tizi at a tripoint with Sudan. In between, it pretends to follow rivers - the Lébé, the Ouaraouassi, the Eréké, the Pendé, the Taibo, the Bokola, the Nana Barya, the Ouham, the Petit Sido, the Grand Sido, the Chari, the Bahr Aouk, the Samoybayn, the Aoukalé - with a few straight-line interruptions where the cartographers ran out of rivers and reached for a ruler. It pretends because rivers move. The line is fixed.

Central African Republic–Chad border: The People Who Were Already Here

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The area that is now the Central African Republic has been settled for at least 8,000 years. The people along the eventual border - Sara, Kara, Runga, Arab pastoralists, Kresh, Mbaka, Banda, and many others - did not wake up one morning and discover that their cousins across the ...

Central African Republic–Chad border: What the Berlin Conference Bought

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Like most African borders, this one emerged from the Scramble for Africa. The Berlin Conference of 1884 set the rules among the European powers for claiming territory, and France took the lion's share of what is now Central Africa, including the lands explored by Pierre Savorgnan...

Central African Republic–Chad border: Rivers That Will Not Stay Still

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most of the border is defined by rivers, which is elegant in principle and difficult in practice. The Ouham and the Bahr Aouk and the Chari braid and oxbow, laying down new channels in wet seasons, leaving old ones as cutoff lakes. In many places, ironstone plateaus meet clay flo...

Central African Republic–Chad border: Soldiers Cross Anyway

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Chadian military has a long history of crossing this border to pursue what it considers security threats. Chad deployed troops to CAR in 2006 at the CAR government's request, after rebels from the UFDR took Birao. Chadian N'Djamena has backed this or that CAR government, or t...

Central African Republic–Chad border: The View from Above

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Flying over the line, you see very little that looks like a border. The rivers that define most of it are brown threads through green bush in the rainy months, dry courses in the dry months. There are no fences. Even the customs posts are sparse - at Markounda, at Maïtoukoulou, a...