From a favour for Orban’s son, to murky business and resource deals, to an intelligence hub for Russia, the motives behind Hungary’s planned military mission to Chad remain opaque.
You can call it boundless ambition when a country of 10 million sends stabilising forces to a state ten times its size.
In Budapest last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban rolled out the red carpet for Mahamat Idriss Deby, president of Chad. During the visit, the two leaders signed an agreement for the deployment of 200 Hungarian soldiers to the Central African country to “provide advice, support and mentoring”, and to “protect Hungarian nationals and Hungarian national interest”.
The idea for the mysterious Chad mission has been floating around since last November when the Hungarian parliament approved a resolution on the deployment, but silence around the issue since made it look as though it had dropped off the agenda. Now it is back for good, sparking widespread speculation.
Critics say there is no rational argument for Hungary to send troops to Chad, one of the world’s poorest countries and uncharted territory for Hungarian diplomacy. Hungary has no business interests in the region and there are no Hungarian communities there. Not to mention the costs and the risks of such a mission.
The government, however, claims the mission is in line with its commitment to fight migration. “Illegal migration cannot be stopped without cooperation with the Sahel region,” insisted Peter Szijjarto, minister of foreign affairs and trade.
Defence Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobroniczky chimed in to stress the importance of “joint counter-terrorism cooperation between Chad and Hungary”.
In addition to the military presence, Hungary will support Chad with a loan of $150 million-200 million to strengthen its agricultural and food processing sectors. And Hungary’s state-run humanitarian organisation, Hungary Helps Agency, will donate $1 million to Chad’s health system “to fight epidemics”, which critics pointed out was ironic given that Hungarian hospitals lack basics like toilet paper and soap, and the whole sector is notoriously underfunded.
Hungary Helps has already set up a regional office in Chad to help “make Africa a land of opportunity rather than a land of danger”, according to its website.
Orban’s government is also lobbying for support at the European level, requesting €14 million from the European Peace Facility to help Chad. “The issue will be discussed by EU ambassadors on September 26,” said Foreign Minister Szijjarto.
Out of Africa
Security experts who spoke to BIRN on condition of anonymity said the most plausible explanation is to provide the Hungarian military with a training ground where it can test the latest military technology the country has acquired.
“Hungary’s ambition is to have 1,000-1,200 Hungarian soldiers on foreign missions, but since the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq there are no high-intensity zones where the special forces can train and develop their skills,” one source told BIRN.
Hungary is a member of the international peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR – ALTHEA) and Kosovo (KFOR) with around 800 troops, but these fall short of the government’s ambitions.
“The real challenge is to set up a mission on our own, to train in completely different geographical and weather conditions,” the source said.
But sending the Hungarian military “overseas” is also in line with Orban’s foreign policy ambitions to set foot on a continent where major global powers – France, the US, Russia and China – are battling it out for influence in the 21st century. It is another sign of Orban’s readiness to make Hungary punch above his weight.
While the Hungarian military may be convinced of the mission, most observers are wary of sending troops to a landlocked country in the middle of the volatile Sahel region, torn by tribal wars and political infighting.
The country’s president, Mahamat Idriss Deby, was elected in May after having led a military junta for three years. His father, the former president who ruled Chad for three decades, was killed by rebels in 2021.
This year’s election campaign was far from peaceful, with Deby’s cousin and main rival killed and his uncle, another rival, arrested, signalling infighting in the family. EU observers were not allowed in to monitor the election process, and the results sparked violent street protests in the capital. Although the situation has since stabilised, the peace remains fragile.
“Sending soldiers to this region is recklessness, and it could put the lives of the 200 people at risk,” one critic told BIRN. “We have no business in Africa, we don’t even speak French, let alone the local languages.”
Speculation about other, hidden reasons for the mission is rife. According to investigative website Direkt36.hu, the Chad mission is actually a pet project of Orban’s only son, Gaspar Orban. Last year, videos went viral of Orban Jr trying to hide behind a pillar when a Hungarian delegation visited Chad. A graduate of the UK’s prestigious Sandhurst military academy, young Orban has lived in Africa before (he taught football in Uganda) and has a soft spot for the region. His involvement was officially confirmed when he was appointed liaison officer for the Chad mission by the Ministry of Defence. It is unconfirmed but widely expected that he will join the mission.
“The mere fact that the prime minister’s son is somehow involved creates a national security dilemma,” Agnes Vadai, a defence expert from the opposition Democratic Coalition party, tells BIRN. “Nobody knows what his real role is there: is he part of the military or rather a representative of his father?”
Some experts also suspect possible business deals behind the scenes. Chad is rich in uranium, gold and oil, but transport would be a challenge, as the country is 4,000 kilometres away from Hungary, and has no pipelines nor ports. Its raw uranium could not be used in Hungarian nuclear power plants and neither Chad nor Hungary has the technology for uranium enrichment.
Personal business motives could always play a role, but it is difficult to forecast any major deals, especially as government-allied companies do not seem to especially thrive even in neighbouring Central European or Western Balkan countries, while Hungarian businessmen are famously restrained in making adventurous investment opportunities far from home.
The heart of the matter
To add spice to the story, the international media is speculating about Hungarian troops setting up an intelligence hub for Russia in Chad, though BIRN’s sources, while often critical of the Orban government, called that simply “nonsense”. Despite Orban’s reputation as the EU’s most Kremlin-friendly politician, the mission – officially an independent one – is believed to be counting on the logistical and intelligence support of both France and the US, a source close to the defence ministry told BIRN. He also recalled that the EU has officially welcomed the Hungarian plans, saying that the more EU countries help in Africa, the better.
The Russian connection is also doubted by regional security expert Balint Pongracz of King’s College London, who studies Russian mercenary activities in Africa. He says that following the death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin – whose plane mysteriously crashed last year after he staged an aborted rebellion against Vladimir Putin – Russia’s priorities in the region have shifted from the economic to the political dimension.
“The Africa Corps [the successor to the Wagner Group], under the control of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, is being used to win the support of the Global South, while driving France, the former colonial power, and the US out of some key African countries,” Pongracz says, adding that Chad is not one of those countries.
“In the Sahel region, Russian mercenaries are present in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, but not in Chad, and there is no domestic demand for their presence there,” the London-based security expert tells BIRN, adding that surprisingly, even a small military deployment of 200 troops from a Western nation could act as a deterrent.
“If the Hungarian deployment helps humanitarian aid reach its destination, and contributes to stabilising Chad – which hosts a large population of refugees, mostly from neighbouring Sudan – it could further discourage local actors from turning to Russian mercenaries,” he says optimistically.
Assessing all the pros and cons of the mission, the opposition politician Vadai, who served as defence secretary in the previous socialist-liberal government, sees the lack of transparency as the main problem with the Chad mission.
“We have never seen such a degree of secrecy about the Hungarian military,” she tells BIRN. “This only strengthens the existing mistrust in Hungary and fuels rumours and even conspiracy theories, which further undermine our image.”