THE BIGGER PICTURE
I have decided to shelve my eleventh article this week
in order to participate in the ongoing debate about
Major Chongan. No doubt I am affected as well.
But before that, I would take a moment to commend Mr.
Ousainou Darbo and the U.D.P. for their wonderful
commitment recently by boldly announcing their party's
inclination to constitutionally limit the term of
future Gambian presidents in office to two terms of
five years each. As far as I am concerned I strongly
think that the ultimate solution to the political
turmoil of modern African countries might never be
realized without seriously committing elected
governments to such a regulation. Apart from the fact
that this would condition our leaders to be mindful of
the recklessness, waste and maddening attributes
reminiscent of the hopeless "Mannsa"-style presidency,
it would for the good of all decisively eliminate the
pathetic culture of sycophancy and "juju" or oracle
dependent leadership. It would be the only political
dynamics that would finally awaken the poor masses to
understand that presidents are servants to the people
and that anyone of them who would not perform his/her
role according to expectation would be changed for the
right person. In that case "dirmo" presidents who
think they could amass wealth in any means
possible-crookedly in most cases- and then use their
filthy resources to buy their seats forever would find
something more positive to do for posterity during
their tenure. And once the president is affected, it
is apparent that all other relevant institutions
endangered or corruptible by power monopolization
would somehow be insulated to adopt the same
principle. With votes' cards still purchasable for
mere D25.00, there is little hope of effectively
educating the Gambian masses on the importance of
universal suffrage. We can't blame them much; poverty
should.
However, without doubt the armed forces would be among
those critical institutions that ought to be
immediately affected. Chiefs of Staff, by all
standards, are responsibilities dangerously abused if
their holders see no limit to the time they should
occupy their positions. It breeds low morale and job
apathy, a sure catalyst for mutiny or even coups.
 Coups in Africa, to be frank, have in most incidents
been attributed to power monopolization by governments
shooting their way to office or perfecting all the
election tricks that could always vote them back to
their positions. Such leaders-Yaya being no exception-
could never wake up to the reality that there would
one day come that regrettable turning point that never
fails. Anyway to save a future Gambian president and
the other unsuspecting victims who might unnecessarily
suffer the unfortunate consequence of the ultimate
downfall, I think Mr. Darbo and his party militants
should be commended and encouraged to stick by this
desire all the way to the successful end.
My next commendation goes to Major Chongan. Your
courage and determination to come forward and air out
your flawless views here as former Gambian service
personnel is awesome. The attacks launched on you from
different sources on your past record are ridiculous
but quite normal. You must however remember that there
is a bigger picture that most of these people could
never perceive. But before highlighting the key
elements in that picture I would want to draw your
attention to a simple but hard fact. We are pioneering
a military tradition here that we must continue by all
means. This is the first time in the history of modern
African militarism for active service members to come
forward and discuss what they actually experienced in
one of the several coups that had happened in the
continent. We are talking about a continental agenda
here, not Gambia alone. So with the positive private
mails I have been receiving from different parts of
the world, I am now convinced that we are doing an
honorable job, something that may have helped save the
continent from numerous past coup traumas, if soldiers
who had experienced them in other countries had done
the same. Who would have known or heard the true
stories if we had not volunteered our time, energy and
resources to do so? Not a civilian anyway. I think the
only internationally published work about the coup in
the Gambia originated from a Ghanaian whose work is
acceptable but rather inadequate. It is however a
widely read authority in the subject, now used by
scholars in their research on modern Gambian matters.
We have also shattered that stereotype concept that
soldiers are generally gun-toting-dumb fools who did
not know what they were doing or saying. Most of those
angry expressions originate from funny people
disappointed that we still prevail after they had
perhaps once, in the past, concluded in their shallow
minds that we were headed for purgatory without
failure. Some of these people were the very ones glad
that we were detained at Mile Two Prisons in the first
place and would have happily booked for front seats if
the AFPRC government, for our public execution by
firing squad, had distributed invitations. Certainly
they had made various statements about why we were
arrested without having a clue about what transpired.
Some of them had even fabricated their own stories
about some imagined power struggles that took place
between Yaya the macho man and us the weaklings,
leading to our well deserved demise in 1994. Most
likely they had also naively spread around their
wishes with demonic expectation that death would be
our ultimate fate. So just try to imagine how these
hate elements were reduced to victims of their own
activities when out of the blue they saw us, one by
one, coming back to our meaningful lives, fit and
well, but above all, proven totally innocent. The
abuse of human rights they are trying to slam against
your past records, as a former law-enforcement officer
would have certainly denied you the asylum status you
had been granted in Britain years ago. Perhaps these
people lack the common knowledge that western
countries willing to offer political asylum to victims
like you are thoroughly investigated to see whether
they had committed any identical sins that could
disqualify them. Therefore if you, Sir Dawda, Bakary
Darbo or me were the demons some of these ignorant
bums are trying to make out of us then the British or
American government would have long since thrown us
out of their country or even forced us to face the
justice we deserved. Now if these funny critics think
they know better than those who conduct such
investigations, then all I could say is that we are
dealing with dreamers. All we could do about "them
folks" is to ignore them and leave them with another
future judgement of time. When Yaya is thrown out of
office, I am sure that as usual some of them would
some day in the future be punished again by their own
conscience-if they have any at all.
So Mr. Chongan, hang-in there, tough as a nail and
keep up the struggle. The ratcheted-up rhetoric should
never make you waver. Always remember that you were
the only senior law-enforcement officer in 1994 to
boldly come out and challenge the gang of bandits
whose seizure of our country is the worse to ever have
happened in our history. Your name would positively be
remembered in history, regardless of what. Centuries
from now when Gambians ask about who you were records
would show that you were a gallant son of the nation.
Remember that futile efforts were made from all angles
to batter me into silence since I surfaced in this
forum and I still expect more from these losers who
are probably searching ferociously for more tarnishing
lies that could have maximum effect on my reputation.
Anyway instead of reducing my faith or commitment to
this course, they often help to boost my morale,
especially when it comes from nonentities whose
existence would only be remembered in history by the
epitaphs on their graves tomorrow and perhaps by the
historical accident that we had once reluctantly
mentioned their names in this G-L.
What we should focus on now is to encourage more
soldiers at home and in other parts of the African
continent to break out of that shell of regimental
silence and start telling the world the implication of
coups experienced in our various countries. With the
important development of the information super highway
it is now very possible for soldiers to bring to the
attention of the world the crimes of Gen. Sani Abacha,
FLT Jerry Rawlence, Gen. Ayadema, Samuel Doe Valentine
Strasser Blaise Campaore and all those coup makers who
had once abused power especially on their fellow
service men. It could be a way of warning or
discouraging potential coup makers about the terrible
ramifications of the mutinous act that had plagued the
continent for so long. That is what we should be
focusing our attention on Mr. Chongan and not on
meaningless remarks made by meaningless creatures from
meaningless streets of Half-Die, Soldier-Town,
Latrikunda, Serrekunda, Bundung, Farafenni or Koina.
Just take for instance the chap who the other day was
trying to equate me with Cheyassin Secka. That one
saddened me a little because of the indecency he
showed by dishonoring me that low. At least he could
have compared me with my fellow soldiers rather than
that wasted whore who does not worth a dime.
 This guy had it all wrong but he still made the
attempt to drag me down. In glorifying the profiles of
the Farafenni attackers in 1996, he thought he could
rally more idiots to castigate me on my past records.
But thanks to Hamjatta, some degree of sense was
injected in his knucklehead. Anyhow I still think it
necessary to elaborate on that issue. He did not tell
the truth but was successful in poisoning some minds.
As a result someone even made the outrageous statement
that anyone who had worked for the Jammeh government
is guilty of a crime. I was just glad that the person
was a new nonentity who may soon quit like the others
we had seen before. If you know what I mean!
But on this Farafenni attack, it was not pomposity or
arrogance that you saw in me my friend when I appeared
on TV narrating what happened. It was share anger and
frustration. Witnessing the bullet-riddled body of
nineteen year old private Saidy who died with a pain
so severe that he nearly severed his bitten tongue out
of his mouth was enough to make me look like anything.
The boy was only nineteen, the eldest son of his
father (a poor farmer), had joined the GNA for only
three months and had walked out of bed that dawn to
check out the commotion outside when Yaya Drammeh
gunned him down in cold blood. Corporal Sidibeh's
pregnant wife could never recover from the trauma of
sleeping with her dear husband at one moment and at
the next moment turning to see him lifeless, cold and
stiff in a pool of blood. Staff Sergeant Badjie,
slaughtered with his prayer beads hanging over his
neck as he was going to perform his dawn prayer was
something else.
My man when you stare in the eyes of a murdered young
man whose life is wasted for nothing, or six of them
lying side by side as what we saw that day, the world
turns into a different setting where pomposity and
arrogance would be the last thing to possess your
spirit. Perhaps you just did not like me because in
your book I had always looked pompous and arrogant to
you. Yet you don't seem to find any other person
looking at me the same way. In fact if you read Lamin
Ceesay, he tends to come from the flip side of your
judgement; he thinks I am nothing but a coward and a
crying baby. Can you see what is wrong here? You may
not. This is what's called PREJUDICE OR HATE. Be
careful, it often kills its host.
Anyway lets go back and look at those murderers who
attacked Farafenni-your heroes. Let's look at some of
them still in captivity. Mballow Kanteh, who for ten
years had disappeared from his home in Jarra until his
family members thought he had died, suddenly
re-appeared in The Gambia in 1996 from the jungles of
Liberia as one of Charles Taylor's worse mass
murderers. I understand that his family members broke
into tears of joy when they saw him walking into the
house after being considered dead long time ago. He
told them that he was in Europe and had just arrived
in Dakar with some second hand cars that he could not
clear out of the Senegalese ports because of money
shortage. The poor family sold the few cattle they had
and gave him the money to go for the cars. They used
that money to acquire the weapons used in the initial
stage of the attack. Essa Baldeh, a citizen of Kolda
Senegal was another seasoned killer, very notorious in
Liberia for raping and killing captured women. He
could neither read nor write any language. Asked why
he joined the attackers, he confessed that apart from
being promised a reward of one million Dalasis after
the final victory, he was to be appointed finance
minister of the government that they had planned to
form. John Dampha was an ex-GNA soldier who was
recruited by Taylor as a trainer in one of his
training camps. He was also transformed into a vicious
animal that could kill anybody and sleep at ease.  The
late Yaya Drammeh who shot and killed four of the six
who died had a killer instinct that was marked all
over his face. Sulayman Sarr, known as striker, was
another angel of death feared and detested by many
Liberians. These were the mercenaries being termed
humbled now. It is very likely that this chap, like
his kinds, had jubilated over the death of those
innocent soldiers for no reason other than the fact
that they were Gambians who looked too pompous and
arrogant to him.
Those monstrous mercenaries after cold-bloodedly
butchering six unsuspecting soldiers and critically
wounding six others collected all the weapons in the
Farafenni armory and tried to distribute them among
the youth in the town to start a civil war. Every
single youth they had tried to offer a weapon
declined. That was when Sonko their leader advised
them to move to the Baddibus where he thought they
could recruit devils like them to start a
Liberia-style civil war. Sonko who was never
apprehended was later identified to have come from
Berending Village. These were the sick murderers being
paraded now as helpless victims of my brutality and
torture. I still praise all those soldiers who took
part in chasing them out of the country. And I further
commend the Republic of Senegal with all my heart for
capturing and extraditing Sulayman Sarr, John Dampha
and Essa Baldeh when they fled into their territory. I
am seriously glad to have played the active role I did
to put the puzzle together and finally drew an
understandable conclusion from the incident. For
deviants to come on the G-L classifying me, as another
serial torturer means nothing other than character
assassination from shameless sources. What a
misleading statement to allege that I had taken part,
condoned or encouraged the torture of any of these men
under detention without a single evidence to that
allegation. I have said this before and I will say it
emphatically again. I have never in my military career
carried out any illegal order, never given one to any
of my subordinates and never unlawfully arrested,
detained, tortured or killed any person in that
country, Gambian or foreigner. So for those attempting
to label me as so, I would advice them to find
something better to do with their ungodly lives than
continuing to spin garbage here.
As for the Kartong attack in 1997, I still stand by
the very actions I took to normalize the situation in
that crisis where our young soldiers were murdered
again for no justifiable reasons. It would perhaps
help to wake some of you up that even the opposition
parties sent their official message of condolence to
the army headquarters sympathizing with the families
of the murdered soldiers in both attacks. These people
as normal Gambians had realized that the GNA missions
in both attacks were not about Yaya or the APRC
government but the territorial integrity of the entire
nation at stake. They knew that when the soldiers left
their barracks to quell those potential national
disasters they went all out, risking everything to
protect the country.
 When a military commander is awoken from bed at
around 4:00 a.m. and informed that one of his highly
strategic border posts had been overrun by
unidentified attackers who seemed to have infiltrated
the area from a neighboring state affected by a bloody
civil war, politics, government, presidents, or even
individual families become secondary matters until
that situation is put under control. That is the very
kind of situation we were faced with when Kartong was
attacked by men who appeared to have come from
Cassamance that morning and took over the camp from
the platoon deployed there. Our fear at first was that
the attackers might have been Cassamance rebels whom a
very short while before had attacked a Senegalese
Gendermarie post in Douloulung village but had failed
in their effort to steal arms from that armory. And
our suspicion was further heightened when we were
informed by 5:00 a.m. that the culprits had taken
every weapon in the armory, loaded them on a stolen
truck and headed towards Gunjure village. Hoping that
we might be able to intercept them on the Sifo-Gunjure
road before they branched off to Cassamance, we
dispatched our first fighting unit on that road.
Anyway after the departure of the troops, we received
another call from Gunjure stating that the attackers
had been at the village clinic and had seized the only
ambulance there, transferred the weapons in it and
headed towards the Gunjure-Sukuta road. We later
discovered that they were heading to Mile Two prisons
where they had planned to break the prisons open and
recruit gunmen who could help them topple the regime.
They might have taken their dressing from the RUF
invasion of Freetown those days when the rebels broke
into the state prison and freed all the criminals who
joined them in that carnage.
 Anyway by pure chance the ambulance ran into one of
our nightly patrols which was on routine duties and
were not at the time aware of the problem in Kartong.
The recklessness at which they drove the ambulance was
the main reason why the patrol stopped them to check
out what was going on. The patrol guards even argued
among themselves as to whether it was not going to put
them in trouble for stopping and searching an
ambulance. In the end the majority decided to go for
the search. The corporal who walked to the ambulance
and peeped into the vehicle was shot in the head at
point range. And before the other soldiers could
figure out what had happened, the attackers had
alighted and stated spraying them with bullets
everywhere. Another soldier was fatally hit. The
soldiers returned fire and hit one of them. They fled
into the bush abandoning the weapons and ammunitions.
A well-coordinated search was soon launched into the
Kombo forest where all the attackers were captured
except one. They were identified as the remnant of GNA
officers who survived the 11th November massacre, and
had fled to Cassaamance where they were being
processed for political asylum in foreign countries of
their choices.
Yes we paraded them before GAMTV and explained every
detail of what happened to the Gambian people. They
were later handed over to the police who prosecuted
them for their crimes. All of them are still well and
alive, although they were found guilty of first-degree
murder plus other crimes. Would they have freed Sana
Sabally to help them? Only god knows. Their actions
were irresponsible and dangerous and could have
plunged the country into a crisis of unparalleled
magnitude. I was again proud to be a party to those
who stopped these men and put them behind bars.
As for some of you I don't think you would ever
understand what it means physically and mentally to do
the job we were doing as soldiers, anticipating death
by the day, occasionally being reminded of our
vulnerability when our colleagues are suddenly
murdered in a wasteful manner and always being forced
into missions of life and death whenever the situation
demanded. Yet with all these traumatizing factors, we
tried in every way we could to maintain our sanity,
living normal lives, raising normal families and
sometimes acting as if everything was perfect in our
world. With all the grilling on me, the thing is that
whenever attackers hatch their plans there was a
consensus in their blueprint stating that all senior
officers had to be arrested or executed. The Farafenni
attackers in particular wrote in their diary that we
must die. That made it ever more so important for us
to promptly go out there and fight our enemies
whenever they surface.
Coming back to Major Chongan's case, I would first
thank Kebba Dampha, Ansumana Kujabi , Hamjatta and all
those comrades who came out to support him with
genuine sincerity.
I was very surprised to hear some critics comparing my
records as a former military officer with that of Mr.
Chongan's, a former para-military officer. Our
responsibilities were totally different which by all
indications showed that those critics did not know
what they were talking about.  Mr. Chongan was a
law-enforcement agent while I was an infantry
combatant, period. And it is important for us to
remember the national security mess created in The
Gambia in the wake of the unexpected and unilateral
withdrawal of the Senegalese forces in 1989. We may
find it hard to believe, but I could go on records
stating that the sudden departure of the Senegalese
forces from The Gambia was what accelerated the
subsequent security problems faced by both countries.
The Gambia was as a result faced with the national
threat of its own forces, while the Senegalese for the
first time started encountering more sophisticated and
organized battles from the MFDC combatants. It was a
situation that eventually hurt both Sir Dawda and
Abdou Joof.
However Jawara and Joof are not the issues here but
Chongan. After the departure of the Senegalese, the
Gendermarie unit they had formed but was still young
in experience and age was given to Pa Sallah Jagne who
had had no idea about law-enforcement duties. Mr.
Jagne was an army officer catapulted to that top seat
on strange circumstance. Jagne however depended
heavily on Chongan's knowledge, making him literally
the person in charge of the operational duties of the
establishment, the heart of the force.
It was also a time when the police force was no longer
too credible in the eyes of the public because of
their poor resources and corrupt tendencies. The
country was ravaged with terrible crimes that needed
absolute toughness that the police lacked. Common
criminals were known to have successfully resisted
arrests from frail police officers who had had no
basic self-defense skills and were not allowed to
carry arms like the Gendermaries.. And even with the
armed Gendermaries, some Gambians with their crazy
beliefs in bullet-poof "jujus" would periodically
confront an armed guard with a suicidal attitude to
physically fight him to the end.
As a matter of fact I even had my dose of the vicious
crime wave in the country at the time. A gang of
thieves had broken into my house in an attempt to
steal my entertainment sets and I bumped into them. By
pure accident Ijust walked out of my bedroom and found
them almost ready to move out with the loot. When I
confronted them they all ran away except their leader
who drew out a knife and attacked me without warning.
It took me over twenty minutes before I could subdue
the freak. Of course he was able to stab me three
times. My injuries were not too bad. The bad one was
the cut on my left hand that had to be stitched to
save my thumb. When the neighbors arrived and saw my
injuries they all felt that the man should be beaten
to death instead of being taken to the police station.
I insisted on taking him to the police where I later
claimed him and handed him over to the Gendermarie.It
was a perfect opportunity for a bloodthirsty person to
take a life and justify it. But I suppose if I had
condoned the public's desire, and allowed them to kill
the chap, the incident would have now been brought
forward as a crime I had committed against humanity
during the PPP era.
Anyway the Gambia Police Force in reality were not
pleased with the dominating role given to the new
Gendermarie force that was branded as Senegalese in
form and substance with little experience in police
duties. It was another troubling issue that put the
police and the Gendermarie into an unhealthy state of
antagonism. The police were therefore known to have
acted in numerous cases to ensure that the work of the
Gendermaries was a dismal failure. It triggered an
atmosphere of confrontation between them that was so
bad that around 1992 the situation almost exploded.
Perhaps some of you could remember when a squad of
Gendermaries guards attacked the police station in
Bakau for a fight that left the station officer Bojang
with a stab wound from a bayonet or knife. And guess
who was charged with masterminding and leading the
raid to the police station? Yaya of course!
Apart from the hardened criminals and the
uncooperative police force causing serious challenges
to the smooth operational plans of the new force, the
Gendermarie command was further faced with all kinds
of internal problems. Some officers thought Press
Jagne was not competent enough to command them and
that he had given Mr. Chongan powers that should have
been given to officers who were by date of recruitment
his senior. Some of you again might have heard of the
command crisis that was in the Depot between Captain
Ndure and Pa Sallah Jagne on one hand and Major
Chongan and Major Sheriff Mbye on the other.
Mr. Chongan therefore encountered all kinds of
obstacles from every corner just to prove him a
failure in the eyes of the public who without doubt
had suddenly begun to appreciate and respect the work
of the Gendermarie as being far better than any of its
rival forces, thanks to Chongan's competence and
diligence. As a matter of fact the Gendermarie was so
popular with the public that the government in the end
had no choice but to merge it with the police force
and gave Pa Sallah Jagne the I.G.P. seat again. Jagne
by then had come to know fully well that without
Chongan his field operations would not work well. He
therefore dragged Chongan out of Fajara Barracks and
made him his D.I.G operations, a position he had held
until the coup in 1994. He was by virtue of his age
still very young to hold such a big responsibility,
but ask the Senegalese about the officer and they
would tell you that he was the best among the officers
they had trained in the Gambia National Gendermarie.
But the average Gambian civilian who perhaps had known
Mr. Chongan as another kid once in the block thought
he should be treated in no different way from how he
was measured before. Even in a very serious setting
where there was zero tolerance for jokes or nonsense,
some Gambian "kotor Kehs" would deliberately try to
reduce him to a little "sumaracka" that could
radically undermine his authority in the presence of
his juniors. That "sumaracka" attitude from very
backward "kotors" has no place in barracks atmosphere.
Even that authority entitled to parents over their son
commanders is conditioned to limits where serious
operations are concerned. Mr. Chongan was therefore no
longer that "sumaracka" or that " regular ataya vous
member" or that ordinary schoolmate or  Yandeh's
childhood boyfriend. He was a high-ranking officer
entrusted with a huge responsibility that was usually
handled by people twice his age with decades of
experience on the job. Ordinarily he should not have
even walked in the streets without guards around him
to protect him from all possible harms. So for those
who had trouble understanding or accepting that, they
thought Chongan was a pompous devil that tortured
people who called him "sumaracka" only.
I was in the army but I had encountered similar kinds
of disrespect from people I knew and those I did not.
There was even a police officer I once manhandled
around Churchill's town for constantly harassing me. I
was almost charged and taken to court for that
behavior. And "maan" the cop could lie. He had twisted
the story behind our confrontation so convincingly
that my commander thought I deserved to be punished
without mercy. The only thing that saved me was that I
once wrote a petition to the I.G.P. copied to the
commander complaining about the hell the police
officer was trying to give me in Serrekunda, my home
town.
I could also remember the case of Kebba Keita and
Colonel Ndow Njie. When Ndow was newly appointed
commander of the GNA, Kebba never wanted to bring
himself to accept that the man was no longer a
teammate in a soccer team. Even when Ndow was very
serious, Kebba thought he could ridicule him with old
jokes in public or private. Ndow had to put him
through a grilling mock arrest and detention at Yundum
Barracks before he woke up to the reality that enough
was enough.
 Someone who just wanted to test his prowess at a time
when the officer was the second highest-ranking man in
the GNA also assaulted Major Maba Jobe at a bar.
I could give out example after another of cases where
young officers were treated with total disrespect and
sometimes subjected to serious provocation and
humiliation by idiots out to reduce them to nothing.
Just recently I read in the Gambian papers the serious
beating of the army P.R.O. Lieutenant Gano by two
civilians. I think he was even hospitalized for his
injuries and the matter is in the courts now. With the
nature of a soldier's job, beating us by civilians is
the last thing we want to carry on our shoulders while
still in the service. So I would perfectly understand
it if someone should tell m

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