A Daring Attack




The Independent (Banjul)

EDITORIAL
June 17, 2002
Posted to the web June 18, 2002

Banjul

The threats by President Kumba Yala of Guinea-Bissau to order a punitive
invasion of The Gambia, because President Yahya Jammeh supported a foiled
military coup attempt against him last month, marks another watershed in our
diplomatic relations with the outside world.

How Jammeh's Government handles Kumba Yala's menace and gunboat diplomacy
will be a real acid test for the regime.

Already, the threats have raised furors in Bissau, with the country's
opposition leaders charging that President Kumba Yala was mentally unstable
hence the threats. But whether Kumba Yala is sane or not, is out of the
question. The real issue is that the president and commander-in-chief of the
armed forces of a neighboring country has threatened to invade us and that
should not be taken likely by The Gambia Government.

To the best of our knowledge, never before has a West African country
threatened military adventurism against her neighbour, and the fact that the
threats came from no other leader but Kumba Yala, one of President Jammeh's
right hand men in the sub-region, makes it even more enigmatic.While
President Jammeh's purported love for peace, his 'peace shuttles' in the
sub-region, and The Gambia's reputation as peaceful nation can actually
belie President Yala's claims, these credentials are not enough to convince
everybody. We never really dabble in the internal affairs of other nations,
much less in Guinea Bissau where we have no national interest other than the
sprouting and maintenance of peace there. Be that as it may, in the event
that Kumba Yala meant his words, how is he going to launch the punitive
invasion?

Does Guinea-Bissau have a navy that can float, sail and bite? Or an air
force that can fly, perpetrate, maneuver and sting? How will Kumba Yala's
rag-tag troops transverse the 100km Senegalese territory between
Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia to invade our nation? Will the Senegalese allow
his men to come all the way, using there as a launch pad. We rightly think
not because Wade and Jammeh have made some many declarations of mutual trust
and confidence to smother any such possibility. This is not the first time
though that Jammeh's Gambia is being accused of connivance. Remember that
the Casamance imbroglio engendered a lot of distrust from the protagonists
in the conflict that The Gambia was tacitly involved in one way or the other
to fuel the war - a suspicion, which could be traced as far back as the
Diouf administration.

While we are not in a position to say that all these accusations from Kumba
Yala and the Casamance protagonists were founded, in the same breath we
cannot rule anything out. That is why the government needs to explain why
Kumba Yala could muster the guts to name no other country but The Gambia and
no other president but Jammeh as accomplices in the Bissau debacle.
Guinea-Bissau is the poorest country in West Africa is yet to recover from
the 1998 rebellion that devastated her.

Living conditions in that country are appalling even by Ecowas standards:
With a population of just 1.2 million, life expectancy is 43 years for men
and 48 for women, while the average annual income is US$180, the lowest in
Africa. And so yet again Kumba Yala may also be trying to divert attention
from his abysmal failure to tackle his country's socio-economic woes, which
has exacerbated since he became the leader of the country that was once
described by the international community as a model of success for third
world countries.This could be his own escape valve for his advanced
paranoia, which could prove to be very costly because Guinea-Bissau needs
The Gambia more than The Gambia may need her.

We may be small and poor like Kumba Yala's Guinea-Bissau, but a sanction by
The Gambia can bite the hell out of Kumba Yala. Just because the elephants
are rampaging and the lions roaring elsewhere in the world, even the snail
too wants to thrust out its delicate eyes from its shell just to be heard.
Or how can we describe this Kumba Yala 'tirade'?




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