The Great Toyota War

“The fact of being an underdog changes people in ways that we often fail to appreciate…[it] permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable”

-Malcolm Gladwell

The beginning of this century heavily featured conflict in the Middle East and North Africa. The aftermath of the September 11th attacks witnessed the beginning of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, while instability in Sudan took place only a short flight away from the Yemeni Civil War and Boko Haram War in northern Nigeria. For a period, many of these conflicts became overshadowed by the Arab Spring that erupted across the Middle East and North Africa region in the early 2010s - and continues to affect Syria today.

The Aouzou Strip, the area of dispute, is marked in blue. Source: New World Encyclopedia

The Middle East, North Africa, and Sahel regions are no strangers to conflict, and all three regions continue to struggle with instability after decades. But there’s one that stands out as being somewhat unusual from the others.

From 1978 - 1987, a series of skirmishes between Libya and Chad erupted over a border dispute along their shared border in the Aouzou Strip, an area believed to contain considerable uranium deposits. Hostilities had begun after a revolt in the north of Chad in the early 1960s, spurred on by the president’s banning of opposition political parties, was armed by Libyan forces, then led by Muammar Qaddafi. This guerrilla-style civil war continued for approximately two decades, during which time the appointment of numberous anti-Libyan Prime Ministers, including Felix Malloum (the first to be appointed by the outcome of a military coup), and Hissene Habre, took place.

In 1987, the series of guerrilla skirmishes that had been taking place along the Strip significantly flared up. A Libyan force of over 8000 soldiers, 300 tanks, and a considerable amount of airpower invaded Chad to secure the Aouzou Strip, greatly outnumbering and overpowering the Chadian forces.

Until the donation of 400 Toyotas from the French Air Force changed the face of vehicular warfare.

A technical hauls an anti-aircraft battery through the Sahara Desert. Source: CarsGuide

Although the term itself comes from the Somali civil war in the 1990s, the modern “technical” was so widely used against Libyan forces in 1987 that it gave birth to the name “Great Toyota War”. By being too light to trigger anti-tank mines, and too fast to properly pin down, Toyota pickup trucks with heavy weaponry (including .50 calibre machine guns and anti-tank missiles) strapped to the truck bed allowed for Chad to unleash extremely rapid and powerful attacks against Soviet-supplied Libyan forces before vanishing back into the desert. The tactic proved so successful that at their first use in the Battle of Fada alone, Chadian forces neutralised nearly 800 Libyan fighters, over 90 tanks, and 18 armoured vehicles while sustaining only 18 casualties and the loss of three Toyota pickup trucks. In doing so, Chad successfully retained control over the Aouzou Strip.

Toyotas have since been used - and continue to be used - as technicals in irregular warfare throughout the world, including Nicaragua, Rwanda, and Pakistan. In 2014, likely in response to their use by ISIS forces in the Levant, Toyota issued a statement that reads “Toyota abides by the laws and regulations of each country or region where we operate. [We have] a strict policy and due diligence in place to not sell vehicles to a potential purchaser who may modify such vehicles for military use without our knowledge and consent.”. The Military Times (via the @ToyotasOfWar instagram account) reports that Toyotas excel at warfare due to their development in the Korean War, as well as adaptability, durability, reliability, and availability.

TAI Score: Degree 2. While the Libya-Chad conflict has ended, the use of Toyotas and other civilian vehicles by insurgents and other asymmetric war actors continues to pose a challenge to counter-insurgency (COIN) efforts. The University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, has identified a number of reasons for this, including naivety and inefficient in fighting the enemy through their own means, constrains on state actors created by international laws, and difficulty in identifying technicals using aerospace technology.