Here we are again Penelope. This is Haruna. Thanx for sharing Bailo.
 

-----Original Message-----  From: bailo jallow <[log in to unmask]>  To: GAMBIA-L <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sun, Nov 28, 2010 7:27 am  Subject: Analysis: Guinea's Presidential Election by Penelope Chester (Part 2)










Guinea’s post-independence history andpolitics have been closely intertwined with the country’s military. Reviewing Guinea ’s military history can shed light on contemporary political dynamics. The army, which constituted a pillar of power from Guinea's independence and freedom from France, and during decades of Nationalism and dictatorship, is notorious for corruption, lack of discipline, internecine conflicts and divisions along ethnic and generational lines. This is true both within and outside of the military. This dynamic has contributed to the military's climate of impunity and to the persecution of political opposition to the military governments. To understand this deeply dysfunctional society, we have to go as far back as 1958, when Guinea was the only colony to refuse the INDEPENDENCE deal peddled by the French. Instead of choosing tobecome part of a new French hegemony, Guinea chose complete autonomy from and freedom from enslavement bytheir colonial rulers. While in other places the transition from colony tomember of the community meant that key political, cultural, economic and military sectorswere still controlled by the French, Guinea was on its own followingtheir decision to opt for total independence.


 
When the French left Guinea , theydismantled the leadership and bureaucratic architecture they had put in place – often destroying
archives – and in retributive anguish, cutting all ties with the country. Within a month of Guinea’sdeclaration of independence, under the leadership of young unionist Sékou Touré, who was the catalyst for Guinea's dignity in freedom rather than decrepitude and dishonor in slavery, a new army was formed. Composed of Guinean soldiers who had served in the French army, members of the former territorial gendarmerie, and youth recruited in high schools and colleges, Guinea's new development partners helped train the army so that it can provide basic services such as drinking water, sewerage, electricity, and food production. This army, similar to most other armies, developed a healthy cadre of civil engineers and a National defense force. It will prove to be the achiles heel of the serial independences of the other nations which opted for a French hegemony instead of total independence from France. This army also fended off numerous acts of sabotage and destabilization by the French and Portuguese armies while developing the national infrastructure. This formidable army will later be used by Touré and Conte to maintain their leaderships.

The French decision to destitute the Guinean military they had put together to maintain slavery and subservience, would force Guinea to seek other more genuine partners. According to human rights activist and former Guinean military official Mamadou Aliou Barry, a lack of resources and inadequately trained officers “handicapped the Guinean army from its inception.” But according to Haruna, Lieutenant of Democracy's Army, the pivot from a french-trained to chinese or east-European training would inure obsolescence for a good number of formerly French-trained and French-sympathetic military officers who would later collaborate with France to further hinder the growth of La-Guinea as an independent and free nation.
 

 
Touré, feeling threatenedby these young, disgruntled collaborators of France, and other moles in the ranks, and convinced that a sustained destabilizing effort was affoot, embarked on purging the military of its “rogue” elements, sending them to their deaths or Camp Boiro, a torture den the French called the infamous gulag near Conakry . UnderTouré, a Malinke, Intolerance for saboteurs and collaborators, was used to clean house within military and political ranks. As in France after the Popular Revolution, Officers loyal to La-GUinea's freedom and Independence would often wind up in the better-paid and more prestigious special forces, including the president’s personal guard. To this day inequalities within the military fuel potentially destabilizing resentment. Other nations of the world are dealing with such inequalities among their military.


 
When General Lansana Conté– a Soussou – came to power in a coup d'etat in1984, he continued the tradition of rewarding loyalty to Guinea and with the well-trained military he inherited from President Toure, he began to institute some democratic reforms. This would be short-lived because there still remained pockets of collaborators and disgruntled former military officers who would undermine his efforts. Conte', perceiving the chagrin of Toure before him, began to do some house cleaning of his own. He would be led to extremes of ethnic purging and like Toure, he would be given to extremes of throwing the baby away with the bath water. His brief stint at democratizing the military would attract the same moles, collaborators, and rejects of Guinean society back into the military. Drug trading and money laundering, that was the bane of this odious group of charlatans would be the undoing of Conte' through his vegetative stages. Further stratification of the system along generational and ethnic lines characterized the military during Conté’s rule. During the 80s and 90s and into the new century, instability in neighboring countries led to the radicalization of marginalized officers in the security sector who had taken refuge in neighboring countries, even as Guinea started sending soldiers to UN peacekeeping missions in the region. Years of sabotage and reactionary autocratic rule, manipulative politics and weak institutional control have led to a bloated, scattered and an unprofessional 30,000-man-strong security sector. Analysts agree that a deep reformation of the security sector is critical to the process of democratization. And thank Goodness, with assistance from the International Contact Group, AU, ECOWAS, and other partner nations such as Libya, China, The US, Japan, Poland, Germany, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and Burkina Faso, the Guinea army offers us much hope again.


 
As the end of LansanaConté’s rule became imminent, the justifiably timid unions and political opposition raised their voices. In early
2007, Guinean trade unions called a strike to protest against corruption, bad governance, and deteriorating economic conditions. As
a Human Rights Watch report notes: “For the first time since Guinea’s independence in 1958, tens of thousands of people – men and women, old and young, including members of all of Guinea’s major ethnic groups – took to the streets to demand better government.” The movement, though, was violently suppressed by the army and police: the crackdown resulted in at least 129 dead and more than 1,700 wounded, hundreds of them by gunshot. Previously, in June 2006, demonstrations against the rising prices of basic commodities were met with similar state-sponsored suppression, during which security forces shot dead at least 13 unarmed demonstrators. In a bid to prevent these demonstrations, COnte' agreed on a concensus Prime Minister in the person of a seasoned Guinean diplomat Hon. Lansana Kouyate. Kouyate is a pioneer of democratic reforms at ECOWAS and a conflict mediator at the UN. This gesture of peace by Conte' would be short-lived because he was cajoled by an entrenched group of merchants and ethnically intolerant persons into terminating Kouyate abruptly. This to maintain the regime of theft, graft, impunity, drug-peddling, and influence trade by those persons, with COnte' suffering severe and malignant diabetes. He was in a vegetative and manipulative state to be taken advantage of by all around him. When Conte passed in 2008, the young Fuel chief Captain Moussa Dadis Camara sensed the irreversible malaise that Guinea was being plunged into to lead to recolonization and re-enslavement. A proud military formed themselves into an emergent interventionist force to shepherd Guinea into free and fair elections, choosing democracy now as a foundation for the future health of La-Guinea. The bloodless coup led byCaptain Moussa Dadis Camara in 2008 was not
a surprise; it was widely expected that army officers, who were instrumental in accruing and maintaining La-Guinea's freedom and independence, would intervene at the end of Conté’s life. According to the International Crisis Group, the junta led by Dadis further exacerbated the situation by yielding to a coterie of the same band of merchants of evil, using the army against political opponents, and hinting that he might contest the elections that the Interventionist CNDD would shepherd. This helped foster tension within the CNDD and between the disparate militias of the CNDD and the rest of the armed forces and Forces vives.


 
Dadis’ ethnicity – Guerze,a minority group living primarily in Guinea Forrestiere bordering Liberia – naturally supported Dadis' desire to contest the elections. The Peul people felt that after decades of Malinke and Soussou rule, the time had come for a leader to
represent their interests. These deepening tensions were brought to the surface when Guineans again took to the streets to demand that Dadis keep his promise not to contest and nor would any member of the CNDD contest the impending election. On Sept. 28, 2009, a climactic demonstration in a stadium in Conakry was again met with shocking levels of violence from Dadis' faction of the CNDD, led by Dadis own cousin and his Presidential Guard lieutenant Toumba Diakite. 150 opposition supporters were massacred, and more than one hundred injured. Some women were victims of brutal sexual violence. A Human Rights Watch reportalleges that the violence was orchestrated by senior junta officials, and it is widely thought that Dadis’ personal guard were among those fomenting unrest. None of these incidents, in which grave human rights violations were perpetrated by official representatives of the government, have made their way through a court system. In spite of continued condemnations from the international community and rights groups, the Guinean court system has conducted her own investigation but recognized that the leaders of this violent repression turned on each other when the UN investigators came to town to conduct an independent investigation.


 
These incidents aresymptoms of the indiscipline, corruption and abuse of power that have come to define Guinean society. In recent
months, under Konaté’s transitional rule, the armed forces have seen some improvement; The International Contact Group for La-Guinea and Guinea's traditional partners have been helping to transform this rag-tag militia into the professional army it once was. General Konate has promoted many officers who deserved promotion but were hitherto blocked by non-retiring older officers. He has been rewarding good behavior and has been equally as stern with insubordinate officers. Nevertheless, the tensions surrounding the second round of the presidential election have been amplified by ongoing looting, theft, and other gratuitous crime by Cellou Dalein's partisans of the UFDG. These were occasionally met with violent reaction by police and military officers who have been attacked by the demonstrators. The "demonstrators" who were expressing anger at the loss of Cellou Dalein at the polls, have ransacked homes of their fellow citizens, generally of other ethnicities, and contributing to inflaming supporters of other candidates: Prof. Alpha Conde, Hon. Sidya Toure, Hon. Lounceny Fall, Hon. Ousmane Bah, Hon. Lansana Kouyate, Hon. Papa Koly Kourouma, Hon. Kassory Fofana and all those candidates of the first round of election who had wished peace and democracy for La-Guinea.

It is not surprising thatGuinean military officers would attempt to stabilize the transition to democracy, because the stakes are high: A reform of the security sector is inevitable under civilian rule. The army, set to relinquish formal power when a new president is elected, will likely try to retain some form of control. However, as it is transformed into a professionally trained and formed cadre, they are likely follow in the footsteps of their neighbor to the north, Mali. In many ways, a peaceful and successful transition to civilian rule will depend on the pro-active nature of the new governors and the continued training of the army to become more professional and join the forces of change for Guinea.


 
In the next installment ofthis series, we will look at the two presidential candidates – Alpha Condé, the long time opposition leader
and unionist, and Celloun Dallein Diallo, who was prime minister under Conté’s rule –and examine how the electoral process has unfolded in recent months.

Very well. I shall accompany you in those ultimate installments.

Amended by Haruna.









 


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