Just inside the Guinea-Bissau border on the N4 road north of Sao Domingos (Source: Own photo).
I have just been to Guinea-Bissau, my 176th country! I have now been to 66% of the world's countries and territories and 149 of the 195 (76%) countries recognised by the United Nations (UN).
I am particularly pleased to have been to Guinea-Bissau from the narrow perspective of racking up countries. After all, it is not every day you get to this corner of the world. To me, Guinea-Bissau ranks alongside Sao Tome, Moldova, and Brunei Darussalam in terms of rarity.
But excitement is tinged with sadness.
Guinea-Bissau is extremely poor. Driving around the country you notice the low qualify of housing, the very limited access to running water and electricity, and the poor state of people’s clothing.
It reminds of the grinding poverty of Tanzania in the early 1980s.
Why is Guinea-Bissau so poor?
The answer is that the country is cursed by its own military. Guinea-Bissau has experienced an endless succession of coups since independence. The resulting political instability has made development impossible. After all, who will invest in a country, where those at the very top break the rules with impunity and where the future is so uncertain?
Only days prior to my visit there was yet another attempted coup (see here).
The destructive role of the military in Guinea-Bissau is a great tragedy. After all, the ancestors of today's military officers once counted themselves among the most heroic of all of Africa’s independence fighters.
Guinea-Bissau fought a 11-year-long extremely brutal independence war against Portugal between 1963 and 1974.
Unlike guerrilla wars in other Portuguese colonies, the war in Guinea-Bissau was total; it was fought everywhere, all the time.
Independence fighters controlled large portions of the territory and huge quantities of arms poured into one side of the conflict from Porugal and into the other side of the conflict from Cuba, China, the Soviet Union, and left-leaning African countries.
Significant numbers of Guinea-Bissauans served in the Portuguese armed forces. Their fate would presage what was to come in post-independence Guinea-Bissau.
The starting point in this story is 19 September, 1956, when half-brothers Amilcar Cabral and Luis de Almeida Cabral establish the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).
The Cabral brothers understand that Portugal will never grant independence unless forced to do so. On September 19, 1959, they proclaim an independence struggle “by all possible means, including war.”
War proper starts on January 23, 1963. Portugal deploys a massive contingent of 30,000 troops to the tiny country in September 1963, while the governments of Guinea and Senegal provide military assistance to the PAIGC. Cuba sends weapons, military advisors, and 60 medical personnel in 1966.
Portugal starts to take significant casualties. PAIGC fighters have anti-aircraft capability, so Portugal never establishes air superiority.
On November 22, 1972, the UN Security Council appeals to Portugal to “cease immediately its military operations and all acts of repression”.
Then PAIGC Secretary-General Amilcar Cabral is assassinated in Conakry, Guinea on January 20, 1973. The Portuguese government denies involvement in the assassination. UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim condemns the assassination on January 22, 1973.
The war continues and Portuguese losses continue to mount. PAIGC rebels shoot down a Portuguese military aircraft on April 9, 1973.
The Swedish government provides economic assistance to PAIGC beginning on September 6, 1973.
PAIGC proclaims independence from Portugal on September 24, 1973. Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Madagascar, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Upper Volta, and Yugoslavia recognise Guinea-Bissau as an independent nation on September 25, 1973.
Portugal still refuses to recognise the new nation. The UN condemns Portugal for its “illegal occupation” of Guinea-Bissau on November 2, 1973.
Guinea-Bissau finally attains formal independence from Portugal on September 9, 1974 in the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution (for some colour on Portugal's past see here).
Guinea-Bissau has been called Portugal's Vietnam. The war took 15,000 lives, including 2,000 Portuguese government soldiers. About 56,000 individuals were displaced by the conflict.
But Guinea-Bissau paid the heaviest price for the war. The brutality of the conflict so polarised the country that no way was found to reconcile the warring parties. The nearly 8,000 Guinea-Bissauan soldiers, who had served in the Portuguese commando units and militia were summarily executed by PAIGC after independence.
The military has held on to power behind the scenes ever since.
Today, Guinea-Bissau is a failed state. Beneath the thin veneer of democracy, it has been impossible to challenge the military, which is now imbued with a sense of impunity. The skills of violence, which were once so successfully deployed to free the country from Portugal are now being used to enrich members of the armed forces. And no holds are barred when it comes to making money. Guinea-Bissau has become one of the most important conduit countries for drugs from Latin America to Europe. Every single military official, it is said, is on the take from the drug cartels.
For these reasons, I do not expect to see better housing, access to running water and electricity, and better clothing for Guinea-Bissauans anytime soon.
The End