GUINEA: More trouble in Guinea could shake region

CONAKRY, 23 January 2007 (IRIN)

Guinea's long borders and central position mean analysts view it as a regional lynchpin, saying serious domestic instability could easily spill over, ending tenuous progress towards the consolidation of peace in Liberia and Sierra Leone, which both experienced devastating civil wars in the 1990s.

Bram Posthumus, an independent West Africa analyst with 10 years of experience studying Guinea, said although he does not believe enough of a critical mass of demonstrators has been reached to seriously threaten the Guinean government, which is reinforced with a thus-far loyal 8,000 strong army, he does think Monday’s uprising marks a major change in the country’s mindset.

“What these strikes tell me is that people in Guinea have been tipped over the edge. The strike will continue,” Posthumus predicted. He said it “remains to be seen” how much Monday’s violent response from the government has affected people.

“People have been scared [of the government] for a long time, and for them to go out on the street like this is an enormous change in attitude,” he said.

West Africa expert Mike McGovern at Yale University attributes the country’s previous stability to its socialist past, which he said bequeathed a sense of “Guinea first” among the half-dozen ethnic groups there. He said decades of ruthless dictatorship in the 26 years after independence from France in 1958 drummed popular protest out of the national psyche.

However, McGovern also said in an interview on Friday that Guineans have reached a breaking point. “People seem to be recognising if thousands of people face hundreds or dozens of security forces, even if a few people die they have the capability to take power into their own hands,” McGovern said.

Posthumus said it is Guinea’s army, not the people, that will decide whether Conte stays in power or goes. “If they say they’re not prepared to keep supporting a corrupt government then that might be the tipping point,” Posthumus said. “The army is the only agency able to decide.”

Monday was the bloodiest day in over a decade in Guinea and was the first time people have risen up in such numbers against Conte. Rough estimates put 30,000 people on the streets in Conakry, and tens of thousands of others in towns across the country.
The day’s death toll meant at least 45 people have been killed during protests and riots in Conakry and provincial towns since the strike began, according to witnesses and hospital sources.

Apart from eruptions of violence in 1977 when market women briefly protested in Conakry, and in 1991 when some 1,000 people were killed in 36 hours of inter-communal violence during mayoral elections, Guinea has previously been spared the internal instability and conflict that have dogged its neighbours in the Mano River region: Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

On Tuesday, soldiers quickly quashed early morning protests in Conakry’s restive suburbs, after which light traffic circulated in the city amid heavy army patrols, IRIN correspondents said.

Shops, including those in the country’s vast informal sector, schools, and government offices remained shut as part of the “indefinite” nationwide strike, called by the country’s powerful unions to protest the rising cost of living, which union leaders blame on government mismanagement and corruption.

Ibrahima Fofana, leader of the Guinean Workers Union, who said he was arrested and beaten on Monday, told IRIN on Tuesday that the strike would go on, and unions were sticking to their demand that President Lansana Conte hand over all his powers to a newly appointed prime minister.

“The strike will continue until the final victory. Almost no solutions have been found to the problems we have posed,” he said. Union leaders entered a meeting with Conte at 6pm on Tuesday.