Pickup Trucks and Drones: Who Is Financing the War in the Sahel?

100 kilometers into Libyan territory

By September 1987, Chadian units carried out a daring raid, infiltrating roughly 100 kilometers into Libyan territory and striking the Maaten al-Sarra Air Base. Numerous aircraft, ammunition stocks, and military assets belonging to the Libyan air force were destroyed before they could even take off. Conducted under French command, this raid became one of the most critical moves in undermining Libya’s air superiority in the region and forcing Gaddafi toward the diplomatic table.

The Chad–Libya War of 1986–87 is now remembered as the “Toyota War.” These low-cost pickup trucks, brought into the country with French support and fitted with heavy machine guns and anti-tank missiles, had been transformed into mobile war machines capable of destroying million-dollar T-55 tanks from hundreds of meters away. While Libya’s heavy Soviet tanks sank into the sand and turned into static targets, the lightweight Toyotas, with their wide tires, seemed almost to float across the desert surface. According to an account that even found its way into military reports, Chadian soldiers would cross Libyan minefields at speeds exceeding 100 kilometers per hour. They moved so fast that even if a wheel triggered the fuse of an anti-tank mine, by the time the explosion occurred the pickup had already left the blast radius.

The real strength of these vehicles, known in modern military literature as “technicals,” lay not in their armor but in their speed and simplicity. When a tank broke down, it required a team of specialist engineers, heavy maintenance infrastructure, and a complex supply chain for spare parts. When a Toyota broke down, basic technical knowledge, limited equipment, and a bit of ingenuity were often enough.

Of course, these vehicles were not what won the war on their own. Without France’s suppression of Libya’s air superiority, the MILAN anti-tank missiles it supplied, the flow of intelligence, and the political-military guarantee provided by Paris, such an outcome would not have been possible. For this reason, the Toyota War is remembered not merely as a story of light vehicles defeating heavy tanks, but as a striking example of how asymmetric warfare, when combined with external support, can change the outcome of a conflict.

The Toyota Hilux and similar vehicles, which have entered popular culture as the archetypal “terror pickup,” have become a constant feature of conflict zones stretching from the Middle East to the Sahel due to their durability, low cost, and ease of weaponization. Having first emerged in the deserts of Chad in the 1980s, where speed, simplicity, and geography gave them an edge against heavy tanks, these vehicles are now back on the battlefield in Mali.

So, are the pickups and drones now pushing southward in Mali truly being commanded by the rebel alliance alone?