Mr. Colly, I cannot thank you more for your insight (defined: 'the capacity
to discern the true nature of a situation' ….only for the benefit of our
illiterate subscribers). You have certainly put the record straight again.
Giving credit where credit is due. You were even magnanimous to Sidat Jobe.
His actions in Bissau does not in any way absolve him of the culpability of
the government he supports. They will all account for their actions. This
might be a mitigating factor only. However, the most credit should go to
the brave soldiers who ferried from front to front in order to broker peace.
Left to those suits with the Yaya mindset, who are so scared they cannot
think for themselves, who have mortgaged their souls to the devil, who could
not save our children on April 10 and 11, who cowardly murdered their
comrades in November 1994 because their comrades told them among other
things that it was wrong for them to be engaged in corrupt activities so
soon after July 22 ….the list goes on …..left to these reptiles, I doubt
whether there would be peace in Bissau by now. I hope some of Yaya's
supporters will learn from your candor and present facts in their genuine
light; even if it means crediting the other side or discrediting ones own
master. Even without knowing the details of what happened in Bissau, an
amateur like me could tell that the Senegalese were not routed. So it is
baffling and troubling that we would have an irresponsible government in
place that would want to deceive people and tell them that the Senegalese
were embarrassed. This is ridiculous. Colly, we thank you again for setting
the record straight in plain English (not French, Finnish, Arabic, Swahili
etc.). I join you and others in reiterating to the neighboring governments
and their citizens that the Gambian people have no quarrel with them. We are
always peace loving. We are unfortunately governed by a band of lawless
bandits bent on perpetuating themselves in power; bandits who would have the
callousness to murder women and children and the cowardice to deny their
actions in front of real men.
KB
>From: ebou colly <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: THE BISSAU CONFLICT
>Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 22:14:23 -0700
>
> THE
>BISSAU CONFLICT
>
>
>
>
>The notion that the Guinea-Bissau Army defeated the
>Senegalese Army during the Bissau crisis last year is
>the most incorrect statement anybody could say about
>that regrettable event. It is only those wishful
>thinkers in blind support of the Junta in Bissau who
>were foolishly going around peddling that impossible
>story. But for those of us who were part of the crisis
>from start to finish and had a live experience of what
>happened there knew better.
>
>We first received the information at Yundum Airport
>that President Vierra and his former chief of staff
>General Ansumana Manneh had clashed militarily in
>their capital Bissau until the president’s protocol
>officer Mr. Ugine Spain and some senior officers were
>killed. Yaya was that morning flying to Mauritania for
>a one-day working visit. So he had little time to say
>much about the hot information. However, just before
>taking his flight, he made few remarks that showed us
>where he stood in the crisis. He clearly expressed how
>disgusted he had recently been with President Vierra
>for allowing Senegal to “lure” him into changing their
>currency to the CFA. Yaya had believed that President
>Vierra in agreeing to that monetary deal had sold the
>sovereignty of Bissau to Senegal. Whether he was right
>or not, Yaya had thought that Bissau as a result of
>the currency change was going to be dependent on
>Senegalese financial institutions such as their banks
>for any money to flow into the former Portuguese
>colony. So he was hoping that General Manneh would in
>that conflict easily overthrow Nino from office and
>revert all that policy of cooperation between Senegal
>and Bissau for a more anti-Senegalese stance. He flew
>away that morning with unhidden joy in his face,
>expecting to be informed sooner rather than later that
>Vierra had lost.
>
>Anyhow, what he did not understand at the time was
>that President Vierra had successfully consulted both
>Senegal and Guinea Conakry to lend him military
>support to overcome the General’s forces. By 11.00
>a.m. that morning we also received a distress call
>from President Vierra at the GNA headquarters, Marina
>Parade Banjul. (That street’s name has since been
>changed and is now called Momarr Ghadaffi Avenue,
>effected by Yaya alone). In that telephone call
>however, President Vierra speaking from his office in
>Bissau first explained how he had tried Yaya before
>calling us but was informed that the President had
>traveled. He then told us that he needed urgent
>military assistance in Bissau to deal with a “small
>gang of mutinous soldiers under the command of
>Manneh”. That was exactly the way he put it, the very
>way I suppose he also presented the problem to the
>Senegalese and Guineans. Yes he was detailed enough to
>inform us that he had spoken to both Presidents Abdou
>Joof and Alansana Conteh and that they had assured him
>their full support and would respond immediately.
>
>We told President Vierra that we could not take such
>decision of sending him any military assistance in the
>absence of Yaya. He accepted our excuse with the hope
>that he would soon reach Yaya somewhere for his
>approval to commit the Gambian troops in Bissau. He
>did not seem to know much about who Yaya was.
>
>Within the hour after President Vierra’s call, General
>Momodou Secka the chief of staff of the Senegalese
>Armed forces also called on the same number asking for
>whether we could all coordinate our forces into
>deploying to Bissau to help the president. Gen. Secka
>disclosed that he had contacted his counterpart in
>Guinea Conakry for a similar coordinated intervention
>and that the Guinean chief of staff had already
>started writing his operation orders on that premise.
>But again, we told General Secka that without Yaya who
>was in Mauritania, we could not make any decision on
>the issue. Anyway, the way Gen. Secka sounded that
>morning, he sincerely thought that they had a simple
>mission in hand to deal with which they could easily
>finish and leave Bissau at record time. That was the
>reason why I think the Senegalese hastily assembled
>one infantry battalion plus, mainly composed of their
>newly trained recruits with no battle experience and
>had them sent to Bissau. There were very good officers
>and NCO’s among the combatants including a fine
>captain, called Capt. Jasseh who out of pride fought
>his way into Bra Barracks and was killed. Bra Barracks
>was the Junta’s most heavily defended base. It was
>there; they had their toughest operation commanders
>such as Emilio Costa and Verrisimo.
>
>When the Senegalese moved into Bissau they certainly
>realized but a little bit too late, that President
>Vierra misinformed them about the strength of the
>force behind Gen. Manneh. Instead of “a few mutinous
>soldiers behind the General”, it was over 90% of the
>Guinea-Bissau Armed forces with almost all the
>Cassamance rebels based in the country. After several
>failed attempts by the Senegalese to overrun the
>Junta’s key positions, they changed their tactics from
>the offensive to the defensive. That was all the
>hoopla about the Senegalese Army being defeated by the
>Bissau troops. After that tactical withdrawal by the
>Senegalese, the battle changed from direct contact to
>indirect firing and shelling. The Senegalese depended
>mainly on 122mm and 81mm mortars, while the Bissau
>troops used the BM21 rocket- launchers. The Senegalese
>barely maintained their positions against the barrage
>of the firepower behind this formidable arsenal, the
>BM21. But they successfully defended the city from
>being taken over by the Junta forces until the
>peacekeepers arrived, a precondition they stated for
>their withdrawal out of the country.
>
>There is no doubt that Yaya started brokering for the
>peace, but for reasons completely different from what
>most people had believed. Yaya was seriously outraged
>when he learnt that the Senegalese and the Guineans
>had intervened on the side of President Vierra. He
>knew that if the fighting was not stopped until it
>escalated to an all out war, Senegal together with
>Guinea Conakry would have totally wiped out the
>military capability of Bissau from the sub-region,
>permanently ending the Cassamance rebellion as well.
>So he took the same aircraft and flew around back to
>Mauritania first, then to Senegal and finally to
>Guinea Conakry. On a frank note, Dr. Sidat Jobe who
>was very sincere about the peace initiative virtually
>came up with all the questions and answers The Gambia
>government had to offer in the search for peace. Of
>course, President Vierra and Manneh met in Banjul
>under the chairmanship of Yaya when the conflict
>seemed to have been at a stalemate; nevertheless, the
>actual merit for bringing the Junta and the Vierra
>government to accept a shared interim government was
>made possible by three people. In their genuine and
>honest efforts, these men were Dr. Sidat Jobe, Mr.
>Kofigo the foreign minister of Togo and General
>Hassani, the Togolese Defense minister. These two
>Togolese ministers were absolutely pivotal in the
>final solution.
>
>However let me shift to the GNA part in the crisis. It
>was the GNA’s peacekeeping role that took us to the
>ground when the situation was still fragile. While the
>French were working on sponsoring a peacekeeping force
>in which The Gambia was urged to participate as the
>only Anglo-phone contingent among the lot, Senegal on
>the whole was upgrading its battle fire power in
>Bissau with the modern 155mm American-made artillery.
>By the way, the other contingents were from Togo, the
>leading force (because Iadema was the ECOWAS
>chairman), Niger and Gabon. Anyhow, on the 3rd of
>February 1999, the day we were to deploy to Bissau,
>the Senegalese went into an offensive against the
>Junta, which caused the Gambian force to abort its
>participation until there was peace again.
>
>The effect of that assault was too devastating to the
>Junta. The new weapons were so destructive that the
>Junta fighters thought the firing had originated from
>the French battleship that brought the peacekeepers
>minus the Gambians from their assembly point in Dakar.
>The Portuguese, their former colonial masters, who
>were sympathetic to the Junta came close to being
>convinced that the French were actually firing the
>heavy guns. Mr. Fadul the Priminister of the interim
>government, chosen from the Junta’s side, had his
>house reduced to rubbles by a direct hit from a 155mm
>shell. His guards and those at the building at the
>time were all killed. The airport, that was considered
>too far for any Senegalese missile to reach was hit
>with deadly accuracy leaving the points of impact with
>frightening craters.
>
>The Gambian contingent the last to arrive in Bissau,
>left the Gambia on the 9th and arrived on a French
>landing craft in the war torn city on the 11th of
>February. The final decision from Yaya for the GNA to
>go to Bissau happened on the 6th of February at the
>Yundum Airport again. It was the day the former
>Nigerian head of state General Abubacarr came to the
>Gambia on a day’s visit. Just after his aircraft
>started to taxi its way for the Nigerian leader to fly
>back home, the crazy NIA brought the most ridiculous
>news to Yaya about the situation in Bissau. They said
>that their intelligence just informed them that the
>Junta forces had taken over the city of Bissau and
>that the Senegalese soldiers were running, taking off
>and throwing away their uniforms in order to blend
>with the population unnoticed. The naďve ignorant Yaya
>believed in every word of the impossible story making
>him so happy that he, at that moment, ordered that the
>GNA should be prepared to go to Bissau now. At that
>spot, the French Charge d’ Affairs in the Gambia, Mr.
>Allain Tapartua, responsible for the movement of the
>troops was contacted on a cellular phone and informed
>that the Gambia was finally going. How the NIA came up
>with that lie still amazed me. For such thing to
>happen in Bissau without the BBC mentioning it was
>practically impossible. Yet at that time, there was a
>Swedish female correspondent in Bissau City who had
>been updating the whole world through the BBC on the
>day to day developments of the conflict.
>
>Upon our arrival in Bissau, the overall operation
>commander Colonel Berena of Togo welcomed us. The
>situation was so uncertain that the colonel told us
>that if we were not able to pull out something within
>the next 48 hours he was afraid the fighting factions
>might again resume their battle for the city. However
>with out white flags raised high on top of our
>vehicles, we moved from one line of defense to another
>until both sides agreed to meet and talk for peace. To
>our amazement, the Senegalese force commander colonel
>Konny who was termed too intransigent and very
>difficult to deal with accepted us in his office and
>served us coffee. Coffee served in that battleground
>was a very humane gesture from a hard liner like
>Colonel Konny. We assured him that we were there for
>peace and nothing more, and he knew that we were very
>genuine indeed. By the end of that week, the Junta had
>given up their stiff demand that the Senegalese forces
>must withdraw from the country before the interim
>government was sworn in office. The Senegalese had
>made it clear to them and the peacekeepers that they
>would not leave Bissau until after the deployment of
>the peacekeepers and the swearing in of the interim
>government. And it happened in the exact way they
>prescribed it, although with the knowledge that
>President Nino Vierra also misinformed them about
>everything in the conflict. A defeated force could
>have adopted such a hard position in the face of its
>conquerors.
>
>The Senegalese army cannot suffer a defeat in the
>hands of the Bissau armed forces, especially when
>there was Guinea Conakry fighting side by side with
>them. It was only a very tiny fraction of their force
>sent to Bissau during that event. The Senegalese Armed
>forces in totality could swallow that of Bissau’s in
>any theater of war. That false story was purely
>garbage orchestrated mainly from Yaya and his rebel
>comrades in Cassamance.
>
>And by the way, did anyone try to reason out why the
>Yaya government deported Senegalese from the North on
>the accusation that they made remarks in support of
>the children’s demonstration, but few days later
>rebels from Cassamance identified as Senegalese were
>captured with Gambian ID cards? Hmmm!
>
>
>Ebou Colly
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________________________
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