Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 26.3
Chad-Libya boundary in the Sahara
(Resolved by the International Court of Justice, February
1994.)
Libya surprised the court by invoking Ottoman history
and the influence of the Senoussi Order to claim Chad
as far south as 15° north (Figure 26.5). After three and a
half years, the ICJ gave its judgement in February 1994.
The Chad-Libya boundary had been confirmed by a
Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourliness
concluded by the parties in August 1955, which
recognised boundaries in place at the time of Libyan
independence in 1950. Franco-British conventions of
1898 and 1919 had clearly established the boundary, and
the Aouzou region was south of the boundary with Chad.
In due course, Libya withdrew from the Aouzou Strip in
accordance with the findings of the court (Blake 1994b).
The boundary dispute between Chad and Libya came to
a head in June 1973, when Libya's troops occupied
11,000 km2 of northern Chad known as the Aouzou Strip.
There were exaggerated reports at the time of uranium,
iron ore and other riches in the region to help to explain
Libya's action. Libya relied politically on a 1935 boundary
agreement between the French and Italians by which the
area was ceded to Italian-occupied Libya. In return,
Italian claims to parts of French-occupied Tunisia were
dropped. Neither state ratified the agreement, however,
partly because the Second World War broke out in 1939,
and it seems to have been forgotten until the 1970s. The
dispute was referred to the ICJ in 1990. In its submission,
Figure 26.5
The Chad-Libya
boundary (resolved 1994).
Communist Revolution in 1949. Half a dozen
areas are claimed by China, the largest being Aksai
Chin in the west and Arunchal Pradesh in the east.
China took military action on several occasions in
the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in a border war
in 1962 in which the Chinese gained control of
the strategic Aksai Chin region. Aksai Chin now
provides a vital road link between Tibet and
China's Sinkiang province (Allcock
et al
. 1992: pp.
428-39).
Much of the China-India problem turns on
the validity of the McMahon line, which India
regards as marking its northernmost limits, but
China does not. Sir Henry McMahon proposed
the line at the Simla Conference (1913-14),
convened to discuss the status of Tibet. It seems
doubtful whether the McMahon line is a
legitimate claim, but it has never been put to the
test. Several efforts have been made to resolve the
border problem in bilateral talks, the most
encouraging of which resulted in reopening the
border in 1991 after being closed for thirty years,
and subsequent border troop reduction
agreements.
