God’s Gift to Guinea-Bissau Assasinated

João Bernardo “Nino” Vieira, President of Guinea-Bissau for several decades, was assasinated yesterday by soldiers of the country’s army, apparently in retaliation for the killing of General Batista Tagme Na Waie, Vieira’s chief rival and who had previously survived a purge but lived on exile, the day before. Vieira publicly described himself as “God’s gift” to the country.

Vieira was first president of Guinea-Bissau from 1980 through 1999. Like many sub-saharan countries, Guinea-Bissau moved from a dictatorship to a multi-party democracy in the 1990s, and Vieira was unable to hold onto power after he lost reelection in 1999. His successor was disfunctional, so Vieira managed to win back power, and as he forced the resignation of parliamentary officials and purged many of his opponents, the military became his chief rival. Part of it was linked to tribal and ethnic rivalries, with the general hailing from the Balante group, traditionally dominant in the armed forces, and the President hailing from the smaller Papel community.

Literally hours after Na Waie’s death in an explosion, the army ordered two private radio stations in the city to cease broadcasting. Soldiers then went to the president’s house and killed him, largely destroyed the house in the assault. Soldiers looted it for valuables. The cabinet has announced seven days of national mourning for both leaders and launched a judicial inquiry into the deaths. The army has denied there has been a coup, a naval commander has said the military “gave guarantees to the prime minister that it will remain faithful to democratic principles and respect for the constitution,” and the national assembly speaker has taken over at the helm of a transitional government and must organize presidential elections by early May.

The tiny country of Guinea-Bissau should not be confused with it’s larger neighbor Guinea, also known as Guinea-Conakry. However, the two countries are very similar, and its worth repeating Kaplan’s writings on Guinea to get some perspective, quoting The Coming Anarchy:

I got a general sense of the future while driving from the airport to downtown Conakry, the capital of Guinea. The forty-five-minute journey in heavy traffic was through one never-ending shantytown: a nightmarish Dickensian spectacle to which Dickens himself would never have given credence. The corrugated metal shacks and scabrous walls were coated with black slime. Stores were built out of rusted shipping containers, junked cars, and jumbles of wire mesh. The streets were one long puddle of floating garbage. Mosquitoes and flies were everywhere. Children, many of whom had protruding bellies, seemed as numerous as ants. When the tide went out, dead rats and the skeletons of cars were exposed on the mucky beach. In twenty-eight years Guinea’s population will double if growth goes on at current rates. Hardwood logging continues at a madcap speed, and people flee the Guinean countryside for Conakry. It seemed to me that here, as elsewhere in Africa and the Third World, man is challenging nature far beyond its limits, and nature is now beginning to take its revenge.

Guinea-Bissau actually has a higher population growth rate, and its population of 1.3 million in 2002 is expected to grow to 2 million by 2020. It’s hard to tell what comes next, but don’t expect any change from what think-tank Crisis Group calls “a recurrent cycle of political crises and coups d’etat, while criminal networks have proliferated”.

UPDATE: The US is relieved.