The Kanem Empire (c.700-1380) and its successor the Bornu Empire (1380s-1893) existed in Chad's southern Sahelian strip and focused on controlling the trans-Saharan trade routes that passed through the region. By 1920, France conquered the territory and incorporated it as part of French Equatorial Africa. Chad attained independence in 1960, but then endured three decades of civil warfare, as well as invasions by Libya, before peace was restored in 1990. The government eventually drafted a democratic constitution and held flawed presidential elections in 1996 and 2001. In 1998, a rebellion broke out in northern Chad, which has sporadically flared up despite several peace agreements between the government and insurgents. In June 2005, President Idriss DEBY held a referendum successfully removing constitutional term limits and won another controversial election in 2006. Sporadic rebel campaigns continued throughout 2006 and 2007. The capital experienced a significant insurrection in early 2008, but has had no significant rebel threats since then, in part due to Chad's 2010 rapprochement with Sudan, which previously used Chadian rebels as proxies. Nevertheless, a state of emergency continues to be in place in the Sila and Ouaddai regions bordering Sudan. In late 2015, the government imposed a state of emergency in the Lake Chad region following multiple attacks by the terrorist group Boko Haram throughout the year; Boko Haram also launched several bombings in N'Djamena in mid-2015. A state of emergency is also emplaced in the western Tibesti region bordering Niger where rival ethnic groups are fighting. DEBY in 2016 was reelected to his fifth term in an election that was peaceful but flawed. A new constitution promulgated in 2018 allows DEBY to run for two additional consecutive terms of six years when his current term comes to an end in 2021. As of 2020, the country continued to face multiple challenges, including widespread poverty, an economy severely weakened by the drop in international oil prices, and insurgencies led by rebel militants in the north and Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin. In late 2019, the government was forced to declare a state of emergency in three eastern provinces for four months to stop a cycle of interethnic violence, and the army has suffered heavy losses to Islamic terror groups in the Lake Chad area. In March 2020, Boko Haram fighters attacked a Chadian military camp in the Lake Chad region, killing nearly 100 soldiers; it was the deadliest attack in the history of the Chadian military. (2019)