GAMBIA
Fifteen years of one-man
rule
Few outsiders are prepared to support the doughty opponents of Yahya
Jammeh’s corrupt and brutal regime
Since Lieutenant Yahya Jammeh led
a succesful coup just 15 years ago on
22 July 1994, he has managed his
small country against strong domestic
complaints, but without much interference
from the neighbours. His regime poses
no noticeable threat to the region – at
least while, as at present, the festering
problems of Senegal’s Casamance region
are on hold. The summit meeting of the
Economic Community of West African
States (Ecowas) in Abuja in June spent
a lot of time on the recent overthrow of
the governments of Guinea and Guinea-
Bissau, and on the drive for a third term
by President Mamadou Tandja in Niger.
Gambia was left alone.
However, Ecowas has been doing its
bit to see that Jammeh obeys the rules. In
June 2008 the Ecowas court ruled that a
disappeared journalist, Ebrima Manneh
of the Daily Observer, had been unlawfully
detained; Jammeh’s government denies all
knowledge of the detention and rejects the
court’s jurisdiction. (Jammeh is reported
to have said at one point: ‘The Ecowas
court can go to hell’.) Manneh has not
been found. Another Gambian journalist,
Musa Saidykhan, editor-in-chief of the
banned Independent, won in June (against
Gambian objections) a landmark ruling
that the court is mandated by an Ecowas
protocol to hear cases of human rights
abuses. This concerned in particular
Saidykhan’s writ against the notorious
National Intelligence Agency, in whose
headquarters he was held for a month in
2006 without charge. Saidykhan claims
he was tortured.
Ecowas was also brought into the
affair of Ghanaian fishermen killed in
Gambia in 2005, which has poisoned relations
for some time. At the request of the
two governments, a joint United Nations/
Ecowas fact-finding mission set up in August
2008 published its report in May. The
report says that they had been victims
of an immigration ‘scam perpetrated by
Captain Taylor and Lamin Tunkara, a
Gambian, to transport them to Europe by
sea’ and that while there was no official
government involvement, ‘rogue elements
of the Gambian security services’ were involved
in the killing. This led to moves to
settle with Ghana. The numbers of those
killed or disappeared (which included citizens
of other West African countries) was
still uncertain. Gambia mentions eight,
while Ghana claims forty-four.
The Banul government, noting the
exoneration of the Gambian state over
the killings, still agreed to repatriate the
bodies of six identified Ghanaians and
compensate the families. A memorandum
of understanding (MoU) was signed on
2 July by the two governments in Sirte,
Libya, at the African Union summit at
which they agreed to pursue ‘through all
available means the arrest and prosecution
of all those involved in the deaths and
disappearances’. This may not seem to go
very far, but there is at least some implied
acknowledgement by the Gambians of
responsibility, as well as a commitment
to continued investigation. The ruling
National Democratic Congress in Ghana
made a big issue of the matter while in
opposition and Ghanaian public opinion
continues to be exercised on the subject.
There is a strong Nigerian community
in Banjul, where five Nigerian banks have
opened their doors. Ex-President Olusegun
Obasanjo would occasionally pull rank
on Jammeh, whom he regarded as a very
junior officer, he mediated in judiciary
problems in 2005, but President Umaru
Musa Yar’Adua has shown little interest.
His Foreign Minister, Ojo Maduekwe, has
been heavily involved in Ecowas and was
a witness to the Ghana-Gambia MoU in
Sirte. Nigeria encouraged Gambia to send
98 policemen to the UN peacekeeping
operation in Darfur, Sudan.
Senegal keeps a watching eye on it,
treating Jammeh with kid gloves for fear
he might allow Gambia to be used for
subversive activities in Casamance. His
relations with the province’s rebels have
sometimes been suspect, but Casamance
is quiet now. President Abdoulaye Wade
barely hides his contempt for Jammeh,
but the only serious rift came four years
ago when Gambia tried to tax Senegalese
traders at the border. Obasanjo stepped in
to mediate and one result was a proposal
to revive both the Senegambia Secretariat
and the long-mooted bridge on the River
Gambia, but nothing happened. Senegal
is also anxious that Gambia might get
involved in Guinea-Bissau’s turbulent,
drug-beset politics, but Jammeh has kept
clear of the international drug trade’s
dabblings in West Africa.
Libya’s links to Gambia have
flourished since Jammeh came to power;
his predecessor, Sir Dawda Jawara was
deeply hostile to Moammar el Gadaffi.
The Libyan leader is a quieter character
now (although unpredictable), and Gambia
is regularly represented at meetings of the
29-member Community of Sahel-Saharan
States (CEN-SAD), which includes all 15
members of Ecowas and forms Libya’s
tame African grouping. Figures for Libyan
assistance are elusive (although Jammeh
got US$15 million in 1995, after his takeover).
Libya’s contribution is probably next
to that of the leading benefactor, Taiwan,
which Gambia persists in recognising.
A glowing tribute from Gadaffi on
Jammeh’s birthday (25 May) contrasted
with his rebuke to those, notably Sierra
Leone’s President Ernest Koroma, who
did not make it to the CEN-SAD summit
in Libya four days later. Jammeh strongly
supported Gadaffi’s move at the AU
summit to defy the International Criminal
Court’s warrant for Sudanese President
Omer el Beshir. He attended the Non-
Aligned Summit in Egypt in mid-July.
For a regime that began with a coup,
Jammeh’s has survived remarkably
well. Britain says little about Jammeh’s
human-rights violations, except when
those in trouble are British nationals.
Jammeh has not visited London since the
Commonwealth summit in 1997, probably
because of campaigning by London-based
organisations. Amnesty International’s
damning report ‘The Gambia: Fear
Rules’, in November 2008, was followed
by a statement in March denouncing
the security services’ rounding up and
punishing of a thousand alleged witches,
said to have been treated by witch-doctors
brought in from Guinea. (In March,
around 1,000 people were detained on
suspicion of being witches. They said they
were forced to drink a hallucinogenic
beverage which induced vomiting and
diarrhoea. They were released in April.)
In Africa the Commonwealth tends to
take its cue from its African members, and
in 2001 removed Gambia from the list of
countries under scrutiny for their humanrights
record.
Jammeh seized power a few months
after completing his training as a military
policeman in Alabama; he is still an
honorary officer of that state’s militia, and
of the Alabama State Navy. Some Gambians
suspect his coup was tacitly backed by the
United States, and he sometimes tries
to market himself to Washington as a
reliable ally in the ‘war against terror’. Yet
Gambia’s participation in the Milliennium
Challenge Account was suspended seven
years ago because of its human rights
situation. In May this year, five US Senators
petitioned Jammeh over Ebrima Manneh’s
three-year disappearance. They said
Gambian indifference was ‘reprehensible
and outrageous’. President Jammeh, they
wrote: ‘You owe the world and Manneh’s
family an answer.’ ●

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤