The last time I spoke to Succès Masra before his arrest, he sounded torn. He had returned to Chad after years of exile, having agreed to serve as transitional prime minister under a military regime many of his supporters distrusted. He knew the risks. “I’m trying to hold the door open” for democracy, he told me. “But I don’t know how long they’ll let me keep it that way.”
That was more than three months ago.In the early morning of May 16, security forces burst into Dr. Masra’s home and detained him without producing a summons. The charges, which included inciting hatred, were vague and appeared politically motivated. He was imprisoned without a fair hearing. His health deteriorated after a hunger strike. And the international community, including Chad’s closest security partners, remained largely silent, issuing no strong condemnations or demands for his release.
Dr. Masra, the leader of a popular opposition party in Chad, is not just a former transitional prime minister. He is someone who mentored me and with whom I worked closely as an adviser during his leadership. He is also my brother in law.
But this is not a personal plea. Rather it is a call to defend democratic principles. His case is emblematic of something far larger: the rapid, quiet collapse of democracy across the Sahel region of Northern Africa and the enabling role in that collapse that the international community, particularly the United States, continues to play with its silence.
On July 30, a court in N’Djamena allowed the criminal case to go forward despite what Dr. Masra’s lawyers call a complete lack of credible evidence. The charges against him included “complicity in assassination” and “spreading racist and xenophobic content.” His legal team walked out of the courtroom in protest, denouncing what they called trumped-up charges and a hollow judicial process.
Then on Aug. 9, the criminal court sentenced Dr. Masra to 20 years in prison and ordered him to pay a fine equivalent to $1.8 million. His lawyers, calling the verdict a sham and a humiliation, pledged to fight on.
Across this vast and politically fragile region, stretching across the continent horizontally from Mali to to Burkina Faso to Niger to Chad, numerous military coups have taken place in recent years. Civilian governments have been replaced with juntas. Constitutions have been torn apart. Protesters have been arrested, journalists silenced, elections postponed. Chad, for years treated as a key security ally by the West, is now hurtling down the same path.
Dr. Masra’s brief role in the transitional government was an attempt to steer Chad away from this cliff. He returned from exile to help guide a civilian-led process. He was not without flaws — too idealistic for some, too pragmatic for others. But his belief in peaceful change drew thousands of young Chadians to his movement. When it became clear that the promised transition was veering toward military consolidation, he resigned.
Then came the raid and the arrest. The government alleges that Dr. Masra incited communities in Mandakao in southern Chad to defend themselves with firearms, contributing to deadly intercommunal clashes in May. They point to an audio recording he made in 2023, according to his lawyers.
Dr. Masra rejected the accusations and his party expressed condolences to the families of the victims in the May violence. And his lawyers argued that his comments on the audio recording were taken out of context and that he was advising citizens at the time, in 2023, to defend themselves when being attacked. They said the prosecution offered no direct link between his words and the violence this spring, making the case, in his lawyers’ view, a politically motivated attempt to find a scapegoat.
The government has defended Dr. Masra’s prosecution as a legal process rather than a political maneuver, arguing that the recording contained language inciting the violence in Mandakao in May 2025.
Why should Americans care about all this?
Because the Sahel is not an abstract chessboard. It is home to around one hundred million people, many of them young, ambitious and yearning for freedom. Its future will shape global migration, climate resilience and transnational security. And because turning a blind eye now guarantees deeper crises later.
For Washington, the Sahel’s importance has long been tied to security concerns, particularly the expansion of jihadist movements linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The United States has invested heavily in counterterrorism operations in the region. American policymakers understand that moderate, accountable governments are essential to preventing extremist groups from taking deeper root. But that understanding has too often translated into supporting repressive leaders, so long as they cooperate on counterterrorism.
Under the first Trump administration, U.S. foreign policy in the Sahel was largely transactional. If you worked with Washington against extremists, little else seemed to matter. Human rights abuses were acknowledged but rarely penalized. Military assistance continued to flow. President Joe Biden pledged to restore democratic values as a cornerstone of U.S. engagement abroad.
With Donald Trump back in the White House, the United States is further retreating from democracy promotion. This makes it all the more urgent to act now.
The logic of the American approach seems simple: better the autocrat we know than the instability we fear. But this is a dangerous miscalculation. Repression is not a bulwark against chaos; it is a driver of it. The more closed political systems become, the more likely citizens are to abandon peaceful pathways and embrace radical alternatives.
Washington and its partners must recalibrate. Military and economic assistance should be contingent on basic democratic benchmarks. The African Union must be more vocal and consistent in condemning the persecution of opposition figures. International observers should be granted immediate access to Dr. Masra and other detainees.
Men like Succès Masra — flawed, determined, idealistic — are precisely the kind of people who might pull their nations back from the brink if they’re given a chance. His supporters have shown restraint. They still chant for change, not revenge. But that window will not stay open forever.
Esias Bedingar was an adviser to former Prime Minister Succès Masra of Chad and is a recent Ph.D. graduate of Harvard.
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