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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