Living by the Gun in Chad: Combatants, Impunity and State Formation

Drawing on more than ten years of fieldwork conducted in Chad, Marielle Debos explores the recourse to arms in a society in which living by the gun has become both an acceptable form of political expression and an everyday occupation. Debos shows that contrary to the popular association of the fighters with violence and chaos, these fighters actually continue to observe rules, informal borders, and hierarchies, even as their allegiances shift between rebel and government forces and the fighting drifts from Chad, Libya, and Sudan to the Central African Republic. Ultimately, Debos demonstrates that the real issue is ending the “inter-war” maintained and reproduced by state violence.

Combining ethnographic observation with in-depth theoretical analysis, Living by the Gun in Chad is a crucial contribution to our understanding of the intersections of war and peace that also serves as the definitive guide to the current situation in Chad.