One week after the attempt on his life, Guinea’s military leader, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara is still recovering from his injuries in a Moroccan hospital. The incident tells us a lot about the state of Guinea’s army, as the neighbours try to work out a solution.

About Bram Posthumus

Bram Posthumus is a freelance producer for Radio Netherlands Worldwide and, since shortly, is based in Dakar, Senegal. Besides RNW, Bram is a regular contributor to other publications in the likes of Zam Magazine. His areas of interest and experience are Africa (politics and economy), international relations (trade, aid), the arts and music (jazz, world, and much more)

 

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When young soldiers took power in December last year, following the death of president Lansana Conté, a lot of Guinea-watchers (me included) were happy. Happy to see the end of a deeply inept, corrupt and dysfunctional regime. Maybe this new generation of military men represented a break with the past. It happened in Ghana, in Mali, so why not here?
 

Rag-tag armies

Well, we forgot that Guinea not only has a border with Mali. It also has one with Sierra Leone and Liberia…and the soldiers in power have much in common with the former rag-tag armies from these two countries. Here’s how.

Captain Camara and many of his friends come from Guinea’s Forest Province. For years, this breathtakingly beautiful region was the rear-base for two Liberian war factions that the Conté regime supported. They were Ulimo (United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy), which later morphed into LURD, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy. This last group toppled former Liberian president Charles Taylor.

Guinea Forestière was also, for a brief spell in 2000-2001, the scene of a vicious border war that drew in members of Ulimo/LURD, the Guinean army, locally recruited volunteers and freelance fighters. It has never been quite clear who was fighting whom but when I visited the area shortly after the war, it was extremely clear what kind of story the Guinean authorities wanted to prevail: Charles Taylor has attacked us and we have pushed him back. Not a single word about Ulimo/LURD; that would ruin the plotline.
 

A wild scene

It was a wild scene: as they walked me through the ruins of Guéckédou, previously a lovely market town, local volunteers told me stories about how they had killed anyone they suspected of being an invader. “He was up in a tree, hiding. We shot at him and he fell. Like a fruit! We killed others too…” This, then, is the region and these are the kind of people that are close to the junta. Not a crowd that has developed a natural liking for polite conversation.

And then there is another element: the rot eating away the heart of what used to be a regionally respected army. You can thank the previous regime for that, too. Ever since he was nearly toppled by an army mutiny in 1996, the late Conté surrounded himself with a core of trusted generals and played everybody else off against each other. He also created special forces, a presidential guard and – crucially – allowed trust, hierarchy and discipline to slip away.
 

No-one responsible

And now we have seen the results. In the aftermath of the September 28th massacre, the International Crisis Group reported that members of the junta had been using their connections in volatile Guinea Forestière to recruit their own militias. There were eyewitness reports from the scene of the September massacre about uniformed men speaking with Liberian accents. And to cap it all, captain Camara told French radio that “of course”, he did not control the army. In short: no-one was responsible.

And now the junta is breaking up. The relationship between captain Camara and his aide-de-camp, Aboubacar Sidiki Diakité (“Toumba”), who tried to kill him, had been deteriorating. Junta members have military/business/contraband interests they want to protect, a further cause for conflict. Above all, the divisions are political: the shooting incident coincided with the investigations into the September atrocity by a visiting UN team. Either someone wanted the two men seen as chiefly responsible (“Toumba” and Camara) out of the way – or “Toumba” feared that the captain would put the September atrocity on his plate and didn’t like that prospect. We do not know for sure.
 

Matter of urgency

The neighbours, however, have a far more urgent question on their minds: how to get rid of this band of feuding gangsters. They know how dangerous a disintegrating state can be, with no institutions, no united and disciplined army and millions of extremely poor and angry people. ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, has been pondering ways to intervene. The organisation is monitoring talks between junta and opposition representatives. Held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, these talks are going nowhere. The opposition wants the junta out – and the junta has just walked out of the talks. Military action is on the menu – but who will pay for such an operation?

This week ECOWAS has come off the fence and has called for the junta to leave. How such an exit strategy will look depends quite heavily on the physical and mental state of captain Camara. If he retires from the power game, things may get just a little less complicated. If the rest of the junta leaves with him, so much the better. Otherwise, some kind of regional intervention looks increasingly inevitable, possibly with discreet backing from Europe and the US. And then it’s over to the politicians again… another headache for another story…