Chad was a malignant welfare bureaucracy, a tiny fraction of aristocrats whose thugs periodically emptied automatic weapons into starving crowds. The Sudan was run by a radical Muslim lunatic who consulted dervishes while factories washed away and airports cracked and burst. Algeria and Libya were one-party states, more or less organized in the coastal provinces but roiling tribalist anarchy in their Saharan outback. Ethiopia’s government was preserved by Vienna’s fiat; it was as frail as a pressed bouquet, and under siege by a dozen rural "action fronts."