Source: allAfrica.com
Donald Steinberg
3 April 2007 - Most Americans would be hard pressed to find the Republic of Guinea on a map. Not to be confused with Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, or Papua New Guinea, this small West African country has rarely had reason to make international headlines. It does now.
When I visited Guinea five years ago, the country was experiencing relative stability in a fragile and explosive region. Guinea’s neighbors – Liberia and Sierra Leone – were engulfed in brutal civil wars, and hundreds of thousands of fleeing civilians found refuge in the outskirts of Guinea’s capital, Conakry, and in the country’s dense forest region.
The tables have now turned. Liberia and Sierra Leone are striving to restore stability and democratic rule, thanks in large part to sustained engagement from the international community and the deployment of UN and African peacekeepers, and many refugees have returned home. Now it is Guinea that poses a threat to its neighbors.
This January, more than two decades of frustration with President Lasana Conte’s reign of corruption, nepotism, and incompetence boiled over in a popular revolt as Guineans took to the streets in support of a strike launched by the nation’s trade unions. Although rooted in decades of misrule and discontent, the immediate impetus for the strike was the decision by President Conte to release from prison two members of his elite clique who had been indicted for embezzling $2.5 million from the nation’s Central Bank.
The Guinean government responded to the strike with inexcusable brutality. Security forces have killed well over 100 civilians since the strike began. When President Conte declared a state of siege on February 13 – imposing martial law and giving full powers to the army – troops went on a rampage and engaged in unlawful arrests, torture, theft and rape.
Recognizing the threat to the region, the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) stepped in to negotiate an end to the stand-off between the government and the army on one side and the trade unions and population on the other. President Conte conceded to a key demand of the unions by appointing Lansana Kouyate, a distinguished diplomat and former UN Under-Secretary General, to the new position of Prime Minister. Kouyate’s appointment is a step in the right direction, but the crisis is far from over.
The recent unrest reflects deep problems: a repressive and ineffective government, widespread corruption, and vast poverty and inequality. More than 70 per cent of the population is illiterate, only one in five has adequate sanitation, one third of all children under five are stunted from malnutrition, and the Government spends ten times as much on defense as it spends on health for its suffering population.
Kouyate and his team of technocrats must be empowered through a constitutional amendment to make fundamental changes, and the Guinean people must be included in shaping the new government’s economic and political priorities through a national dialogue. Security forces who participated in the killing of civilians and their commanders must be held accountable for their crimes, in part to demonstrate to regime hardliners that there are costs for blatant disregard for human rights and international law. [..]
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