Undoing Coups: the African Union and post-coup intervention in Madagascar by Antonia Witt London: Zed Books, 2020. Pp. 296. $95 (hbk).

Abstract

during the Benghazi agreement, only to turn around and blame the rebels for breaking the terms of the agreement, thus leaving France with no choice but to mount Operation Tacaud in . Powell’s argument is rich in anecdotes, such as the story of the French ambassador who kept an undated and signed letter from President Tombalbaye so that he could post it to his superiors in case Tombalbaye was under immediate threat and unable to request military assistance himself. Or how President Goukouni Weddeye had once stayed awake all night with his Kalashnikov, fearing that the French had staged a coup against him. The story turned out to be a false alarm sent by Chadian soldiers who had misapprehended French military movements at the capital’s airport on that night. However, for a book concerned with France’s intervention and its impact on state formation in Chad, it is surprising that Powell does not provide any account of the connection between the colonial and the post-colonial, even more so because of the decades under study. An exploration of decolonisation in Chad would have set the stage for readers unfamiliar with Chadian politics to first understand Chad’s dependence on external military support and, second, the preponderant role of France in its domestic politics.