AOZOU STRIP

Aozou also spelled Aouzou, northernmost part of Chad, a narrow strip of territory that extends along the country's entire border with Libya. The Aozou Strip has an area of about 44,000 square miles (114,000 square km) and consists almost entirely of the Sahara desert. The Tibesti Mountains interrupt the desert in the northwest, near the only town, Aozou. The population consists of scattered livestock herders and a few subsistence farmers, but interest in the strip intensified in the 1970s with the discovery that the area might be rich in uranium deposits. The Aozou Strip became the object of a fierce sovereignty dispute after Libya occupied the region in 1973 and unilaterally annexed it in 1975. Over the next 15 years, armed conflicts periodically erupted between Libya and Chad as each nation tried to assert its control over the strip. In 1988, however, the two countries agreed to settle the dispute peacefully, and in 1990 they submitted the dispute to the International Court of Justice (The Hague, Neth.). In 1994 the court dismissed Libya's claims to the strip, and Libya withdrew its troops from the area.