It seems to be coup season again in west Africa. After Captain Amadou Sanogo seized power in Mali on March 21, military commanders toppled the civilian government in nearby Guinea-Bissau on April 12.
Guinea-Bissau is a sort of caricature of an African state.
It has had four military coups since independence from Portugal in 1974.
In 2009, the army chief was blown up and vengeful soldiers immediately killed his rival, the country’s president.
That episode neatly encapsulated relations between civilian politicians and the military. Guinea-Bissau is a narco-state, a conduit for cocaine and other drugs from the Americas to Europe.
Though much about the country is murky, it seems the military officers toppled the civilian administration of interim President Raimundo Pereira this month because they felt their drug trafficking interests were threatened.
Former prime minister Carlos Gomes had just won the first round of presidential elections and seemed likely to win the April 29 run-off.
As prime minister, Gomes had begun to clean up the drug trade and was likely to continue to do so more aggressively if elected president.
Drug trafficking has played a role in previous coups or attempted coups.
The two coups seem like a throwback to the bad old days of Africa, but in fact coups have “evolved” over the years, not least because they have been outlawed by the AU and its regional constituent bodies, in this case the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).
Ecowas has stifled the Mali coup by threatening military intervention and imposing an embargo on the country, which was particularly effective as it is landlocked and so largely dependent on its Ecowas neighbours for essential supplies.
Shaky balance
Recently, Sanogo backed off and handed power to an interim civilian leader to prepare for the elections which the coup interrupted.
Ecowas and the AU are hoping to effect something similar in Guinea-Bissau, though it’s too early to say if they will succeed.
That country’s politics have been marked for many years by an apparent balance of power between the military and the civilians.
In December, the civilians, with strong regional and continental support, faced down an incipient coup.
But the April 12 coup proved how short-lived that civilian victory had been. It also suggested that the real nature of the relationship between the military and civilians was not so much a balance as the military blackmailing the civilians.
In December, evidently, the soldiers agreed to return to their barracks only when the politicians agreed to stop meddling in their lucrative drug business.
In an age where military juntas are no longer fashionable, the Bissauan generals seem to have learned the more subtle game of holding a gun to the heads of the politicians rather than shooting and replacing them.
But that tactic could presumably work only as long as the politicians were prepared to be intimidated.
Gomes apparently could not be trusted to play along.
Now the generals want a two-year transition back to civilian rule, which Ecowas, the AU, the UN and the SA government have all rejected as a transparent ruse to entrench themselves in power.
What happens next is not clear.
No doubt poor civilian governance also contributes to military coups. Certainly in Mali, the putsch was quite widely popular, drawing open support from some opposition political parties.
By drawing the line at coups – or “unconstitutional changes of government”, as they call them – but often tolerating gross abuses of democracy by civilian governments, the AU and its sub-regional bodies have sometimes pushed the military to take matters into its own hands.
Yet that is seldom, if ever, a good idea. Even on its own terms the Mali coup was a disaster. Sanogo and his co-plotters claimed they toppled President Amadou Toure’s government because he was not giving them enough support in their war against Tuareg and Islamist insurgents in the north.
But the insurgents took advantage of the power vacuum and confusion created by the coup to make major advances and now effectively control most of the north. Dumb. – Daily News Foreign Service